How the Hell do two Nuclear Submarines Collide

[Muscle Master]

Originally Posted by New York Times

LONDON — In a freak accident, two submarines carrying nuclear missiles, one French and the other British, collided while submerged on operational patrols in the Atlantic

Both vessels returned damaged but otherwise safe to their home ports, with the 250 crew members aboard uninjured and with “no compromise to nuclear safety,” the defense ministries said in terse statements that appeared to have been agreed upon by the nations. The reference appeared to cover the nuclear reactors that power the submarines and the 16 ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads that the British and French vessels each routinely carry on patrols.

But military experts said the episode raised troubling questions about the safety of ballistic missile submarines patrolling the oceans while hiding their whereabouts even from NATO allies. They said that agreements on “waterspace management,” requiring NATO nations to advise one another of the whereabouts of submerged submarines, did not include vessels carrying ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, the most potent and most carefully guarded of all.

The collision spurred a fresh outcry from groups in Britain and France that have demanded that the nations scrap their nuclear arsenals, with representatives saying that only chance had prevented a more serious impact that could have sunk both vessels, along with their missiles. The collision “could have released vast amounts of radiation and scattered scores of nuclear warheads across the seabeds,” said Kate Hudson, the chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a long-established protest group in Britain.

The collision of the vessels on the night of Feb. 3, at a location neither nation disclosed, was described by military experts in London and Paris as a one-in-a-million occurrence, given the expanse of the oceans and the low number of submarines carrying ballistic missiles on patrol at any time. The nations with such vessels are the United States, Russia and China, as well as Britain and France.

Just as startling, the experts said, was that the French Defense Ministry appeared not to have known in the immediate aftermath that its submarine, Le Triomphant, had struck the British submarine, H.M.S. Vanguard. On Feb. 6, the ministry released a statement in Paris saying that the French vessel had “collided with an immersed object,” which it described as probably a drifting cargo container, and that the submarine’s sonar dome, located in its nose and crucial to its ability to track other vessels, had been seriously damaged.

Official confirmation of the collision came only after a report of the episode appeared Monday in The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper. French officials said Monday that they realized that Le Triomphant had rammed the British vessel only after sending inquiries to other navies about the deep-sea impact — an admission that appeared to underline the extreme secrecy NATO allies impose on the whereabouts of their missile-carrying submarines.

The Vanguard, which is 492 feet long, was towed back to its home port, at Faslane on the Firth of Clyde, near Glasgow, Scotland, with “very visible dents and scrapes,” according to the BBC. The similarly sized French submarine took three days to get back to its home port, at L’Île Longue near Brest, according to French news reports.

Official statements in Paris and London appeared eager to play down the seriousness of the collision. The French Defense Ministry said that the impact occurred “at very low speed” and that the submarines had been in physical contact only briefly, without any effect on nuclear safety. In London, Adm. Sir Jonathon Band, the top officer in the Royal Navy, gave a virtually identical account.

He said the two submarines “were conducting routine national patrols in the Atlantic Ocean” and “came into contact at very low speed,” with both submarines remaining safe and with no injuries to crew members. “We can confirm that capability remained unaffected and that there was no compromise to nuclear safety,” he said.

Military experts said there were a number of collisions between western and Soviet submarines during the cold war. In 1992, an American nuclear submarine, the Baton Rouge, was struck by a surfacing Russian submarine in the Barents Sea. But they said the latest episode underscored the need for the three NATO nations with submarines carrying nuclear warheads — Britain, France and the United States — to seek new accords on the secrecy that made the collision this month possible.

Stephen Saunders, a retired British naval officer who is editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, a publication respected among naval experts, said that an investigation would need to cover a variety of technical issues. However, he said, the heart of the problem appeared to be procedural, meaning that neither vessel knew where the other was because of the importance attached to remaining undetected.

But Lee Willett of the Royal United Services Institute in London said the NATO allies would be very reluctant to share information on the whereabouts of their nuclear submarines.

“These are the strategic crown jewels of the nation,” he told Agence France-Presse. “The whole purpose of a sea-based nuclear deterrent is to hide somewhere far out of sight. They are the ultimate tools of national survival in the event of war. Therefore, it’s the very last thing you would share with anybody.”

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How the hell they do that !!!

[CatiaJockey]

Easy, if you run silent you also run blind

[GTAHVIT]

Muscle, it would take so long to explain the intricacies of subsurface navigation that you'd probably go to sleep.

Needless to say, navigating and maintaining the proper speed and buoyancy in ton's of submerged steel while remaining undetected is... complicated.

[Muscle Master]

Originally Posted by gtahvit

Muscle, it would take so long to explain the intricacies of subsurface navigation that you'd probably go to sleep.

Needless to say, navigating and maintaining the proper speed and buoyancy in ton's of submerged steel while remaining undetected is... complicated.

I know how they collided, they can't detect each other is because they don't use active sonar (project sound to reflect). They only listen to other sonars, if there is any nearby.

I'm just .....

[Supermans]

Originally Posted by gtahvit

Muscle, it would take so long to explain the intricacies of subsurface navigation that you'd probably go to sleep.

Needless to say, navigating and maintaining the proper speed and buoyancy in ton's of submerged steel while remaining undetected is... complicated.

Yep, with the growing number of subs in the ocean including a few owned by Billionares, it surprises me we don't hear about more of these..

[GTAHVIT]

Originally Posted by Muscle Master

I know how they collided, they can't detect each other is because they don't use active sonar (project sound to reflect). They only listen to other sonars, if there is any nearby.

I'm just .....

Actually, it's more than that. They can also just listen to the ambient noise of another contact with out either of them using any sonar. Things like propeller noise, generators and pumps are noises that can be tracked by another sub by just listening for them. you can see how this may cause problems when you have to detect that noise over your own ambient noise...

It's actually pretty cool stuff.

And I agree, I'm amazed it doesn't happen more often.

But you may have missed my real point. There is so much going on on the bridge of a submarine outside of detecting and avoiding other subs, It's extremely stressfull.

[PQ]

How the Hell do two Nuclear Submarines Collide ?

By trying to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time.

[GTAHVIT]

Originally Posted by irpq11

How the Hell do two Nuclear Submarines Collide ?

By trying to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time.

His answer is better.

[OUR72GTO]

ambient noise?? It that what you get when there is no ABL?

[CamaroScotty]

They don't have windshields, thus they can't SEE where they're going!

[GTAHVIT]

Originally Posted by OUR72GTO

ambient noise?? It that what you get when there is no ABL?

LOL

[MerF]

Originally Posted by OUR72GTO

ambient noise?? It that what you get when there is no ABL?

That is almost signature worthy.

Yeah being an ex-squid I can definitely back up gtahvit's statements about how silent they run.

Maybe this can put it in perspective. Before every deployment surface ships have to "qualify" that they are sea-worthy and battle-ready by running some wargames in the Caribbean (for the east coast fleet). One of these trials usually involves attempting to find a sub from a surface ship. It's so pathetic that the sub can ping us (being funny) and we still can't find them. The only way we ever did find them is when their periscope would pop up and we'd track them with our very sophisticated radar.

So two of them running that quietly and it's very easy to imagine this happening eventually.

[CamaroSpike23]

they should put windows on them so they can see each other... or screen doors at least. lmao

[Zabo]

Bluescreen'd..

-or-

Told the brits to not upload Windows 98 into their subs, but Nooooooo~ Just because you can play mindsweeper at -3500ft doesn't give you the excuse to keep your eyes off of the sonar screen.

That goes for you too, frenchies. I know it can get lonely down there, but just stay out of the conning tower until AFTER you're shift's up?