Brit, French nuke subs collide - fail to 'see' each other British and French nuclear missile submarines collided earlier this month beneath the Atlantic, according to reports. Much is being made of the fact that the two subs "failed to see each other", but this is actually quite normal. The story appears to have first broken with a report in the Sun, stating that HMS Vanguard has …
'why is the sub not informed in real time?'
How exactly would they achieve that? Submarine being sneaky deep underwater, radio waves failing to penetrate said water how do you intend to inform them in real time? Google Communication with submarines to get an idea of the bandwidth they get down there, similarly they don't get GPS.
As for windows (of the glass kind), although you could put a window in a submarine, and some deep research vessels do have them, the visibility at the depths involved is pitiful as light tends not to penetrate more than a few tens of meters at best. There's not much point putting great big headlights on either as it would kind of give away the sub's position.
Oh and SOSUS doesn't cover the whole seabed, it's aligned along areas of interest like the GIUK gap where Soviet subs have to pass to get anywhere interesting. Which is probably no where near Western boomers operate.
Seriously if everyone could red The Hunt for Red October before posting it'd save a lot of time...
A little bird told me that in the '80s if a RN SSN detected another submarine, once identified if it was a US boat, they declared their presence and if it was a French boat or a Russian boat they tracked it as a potential target. Don't know if that is the case today but I suspect as they were both SSBN's, remaining undiscovered and separating would be the order of the day rather than tracking.
Have you been injured in a nuclear sub accident recently?
Well, due to unprecedented demand in the (depres.. - sorry Gordon) recession.
We have expanded our service to include provision for the highly trained numpties who have just realised that when you go cloak and silent SO CAN OTHERS
Sheesh!!!
Turn the f*****g headlights on LOL
>How exactly would they achieve that? Submarine being sneaky deep underwater, radio waves >failing to penetrate said water how do you intend to inform them in real time?
Oh, so the missile carrying submarines cant receive radio transmissions 24*7, so its not a credible deterrent then?
How do we know they haven't? Maybe this is all an elaborate ploy between the French and English to make it look to the rest of the world like we still have the deterrent cruising round the Atlantic?
British Admiral 1: What ho chaps. Now listen, people are starting to say that they've not seen our subs around for some time. They might catch on that we can't afford to run them 24/7 anymore. What should we do?
British Admiral 2: Call up those French chappies, they've not been able to run theirs for years. We can get two of them to have a bit of a ding in the Atlantic, say they were both carrying nukes and everyone will be convinced!
British Admiral 1: Capital idea! Also tip off The Sun while you're about it, they'll print any old rubbish they're told.
And so it was...
Not technically true. An ELF transmission can be received practically anywhere, though ELF transmitters are horrendously difficult and expensive to build and operate, so they've all been decomissioned (apparently). Equally, VLF transmissions can be received at a depth of 20m or so. SSBNs usually shallow at pre-determined intervals to listen for messages. If you have a survivable communications network, then it isn't a problem - retaliation does not need to be immediate to be a credible deterrent. Even if you don't have a survivable network, you can resort to fail-deadly policies (we suspect an attack is imminent, launch if you don't hear from us at the designated time).
Regardless, in either case, the bandwidth is ridiculously low - only a few characters a minute -
far too low for a real-time stream of tactical data.
..thanks to modern measuring devices being so accurate.
After all, the sky's big, and planes collide because, told to fly at (e.g.) 33000 feet, they do, with frightening accuracy. (DHL and Bashkirian Airlines over Germany)
I witnessed first-hand an incident. I was flying Finnair (SAS?) from Frankfurt to NY some years ago, sitting at a window. Most folks asleep, or watching the film. I looked out of the window, and saw a plane. Same height. <HolyGrail> Coming in our General Direction </HolyGrail> and straight at us.
Suddenly, vapour trail (guess it was the brakes slammed on) and it took a hard left. So close, I could see it was a Lufthansa, and just about made out the passengers in the window. I'd guess about 500 metres between us.
Point is, it was exactly at the same flight level.
Definitely an 'air-miss' but I never read about it later.
Tombstone, 'natch.
which may well be because they have the same (rather limited) maps (gleaned from those who know far more than I on here - or at least appear to). Well assuming those maps are not super high secret then these sus are actually rather less effective than advertised, as a serious attempt to hunt/kill simply needs to cover a few (few/few dozen/few hundred) key points, and then kill the subs as they 'come past'.
Slightly concerning.
I always thought they just cruised around in deep ocean at a suitable depth - relying on chance that there wouldn't be a clever tracking boat nearby. Chance in this instance seems to be a rather better option than hanging around with all the other subs (I would call them boomers like the cool kids, but I'd only be name dropping, first time I've heard the term).
Mothballing the fleet probably wouldn't save much if anything assuming you wanted to keep them at any effective state of readiness. They all have nuclear reactors in for starters so they'd need looking after, as would all the other systems if you wanted it to actually work when you put it back in the briney stuff. You'd also need to keep the crews trained to a competent standard which is probably best done in a err submarine. Plus you'd have all your nuclear warheads in one easy to find location. By which point you may actually be spending more keeping them mothballed than actually using them properly.
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