OAG
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The story is about the crash of two nuke submarines: British and French nuclear submarines crash | The Sun |News
Nuke Sub Crash (British and French)
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dex
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OAG,
Why do you read the Sun?
Why do you read the Sun?
Why do you read the Sun?
=====
To others - the question is part of a hint to the answer.
Why do you read the Sun?
Why do you read the Sun?
Why do you read the Sun?
=====
To others - the question is part of a hint to the answer.
ziggy29
Moderator Emeritus
Sounds like as good a reason as any for the market to drop another 300 today.
Ed_The_Gypsy
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Let's see...one was driving on the left and one was driving on the right. No?
Ed_The_Gypsy
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Because he needs his daily what-are-the-royals-doing-today fix?
Because he likes funny spellings?
Because he can't get the National Enquirer anymore?
NO! Because you don't READ the Sun:
[Moderator Edit: The following link is NOT safe for work]
Abby Essien Homepage Page3.com
cantlogin
Full time employment: Posting here.
dex
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Bingo.
What I like about that aspect of the paper is that they don't play any games or make a big deal about it; like Sports Illustrated or TV news during sweeps month when they do all those stories about breast enhancements or strip clubs.
The Sun says - you want to see topless women; here they are; now for the rest of the news.
OP
OP
OAG
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Actually, I got to it through Drudge (which I do read several times a day). In any event the "crash" turns out to be minor according to this followup article (AP this time DEX): British French nuclear subs collide in Atlantic - Road Runner.
Ed_The_Gypsy
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
The tabloids everywhere seem to like this feature. e.g., Poletiken in Denmark, the Sun in Calgary, etc. I didn't know that OAG's Sun had it, but I figured it was there.
Ed_The_Gypsy
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P.S., Thank you, Moderator, for the added warning. 
Bummer. The NATO countries generally share info about who's where & when, but it's to the extent of saying "This volume of water, the size of the state of Kansas, might have a submarine in it during February. Or not. But you've been warned." Occasionally it's more specific, as "We're in this 20-mile-wide corridor going north at 10 knots. As far as you can tell." Occasionally the countries (or their militaries) play positioning games to literally mark some territory, or schedules change, or the crews screw up. Each sub should have been continuously copying a radio broadcast containing information on those sorts of movements. But information gets mislaid or improperly plotted.
At slow speeds it's easier to track the quiet spots against the ocean's background noise than it is to track the radiated acoustic signature. Neither one really works in a practical or timely manner. I bet neither one saw the other until they filled the sonar screens.
A whole bunch of submariners are going to be looking for new jobs this month.
At slow speeds it's easier to track the quiet spots against the ocean's background noise than it is to track the radiated acoustic signature. Neither one really works in a practical or timely manner. I bet neither one saw the other until they filled the sonar screens.
A whole bunch of submariners are going to be looking for new jobs this month.
Ironically those pages 3 boosted the morale of quite a few U.S. Navy sailors during many 1980s boomer patrols out of Holy Loch. Squadron 14 submarines were sort of a mobile underwater Sun archive stretching back years. Just in case.
Are we talking about the Sun or about their page 3 models?
thefed
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you would really think that they'd have some sort of sonar or something turned on at all times. isnt someone here a navy sub guy? fill us in...
FinallyRetired
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You submariners don't have cool crashes. You want a real crash? We space guys know how to do it.
SPACE.com -- Debris From Space Collision Poses Threat to Other Satellites
SPACE.com -- Debris From Space Collision Poses Threat to Other Satellites
These are ballistic missile subs, so they generally don't use their active sonar (ping, ping) when on patrol--that would let the bad guys find them easily. Kinda like shining a bright flashlight in a neighborhood of snipers. They just find a chunk of water and loaf about as quietly as possible. They passively listen for other "boomers" and attack subs, but this goes to show that the boomers are apparently darn hard to hear.
TromboneAl
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I was surprised that the satellites collided (there's a vast amount of space up there), and I'm surprised that the subs collided (a lot of space down there).
IOW, orbital space and oceans are a lot bigger than most people realize.
My uneducated guess is that the subs were aware of one another, and were playing some kind of cat and mouse game, and someone screwed up.
IOW, orbital space and oceans are a lot bigger than most people realize.
My uneducated guess is that the subs were aware of one another, and were playing some kind of cat and mouse game, and someone screwed up.
FinallyRetired
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Yes and no. I can't speak to subs, but suspect a similar situation as in space.
There's a lot of volume in the oceans and in space, but there are preferred places to be, and that's where everyone more or less gathers. Satellite orbits used for geosynchronous communications, for example, have to be at around 40,000 km altitude, and around the equator. That's what makes the satellite appear to remain over the same spot on earth, even though both the earth and satellite are rotating.
That geo belt is very crowded, and there are international regulations governing who can put what where. Most of it is electromagnetic inteference, but there is also some concern about physical collisions.
Might be the same for subs. But if it is, I bet they can't talk about it
Lakewood90712
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I'll have to check scuttlebutt on my favorite submarine blogs & boards. I suspect one (or possibly both) of the submarines was out of their assigned waters-- either through nav error, equipment problems, or plain ol' stupidity. (Not necessarily in that order.) It gets messier if the incident occurred within territorial waters or "disputed" waters, but hopefully these NATO allies are above that petty bickering.
The U.S. submarine force's typical target-hunting active sonar is a PITA and generally a waste of time. U.S. attack subs also carry a high-freq sonar for minehunting and iceberg navigation, but I'm blissfully ignorant of its use. I'm told it's quite good.
Underwater acoustics propagate & return in a non-linear fashion, with various paths, and plenty of artifacts. It's almost as much art as science, and the proper pinging parameters change every time the water conditions & bottom topography change.
On my attack tour we practiced active whenever we could, but it rarely told us anything we couldn't have found out by much more covert & safer methods. (The best way to respond to an active ping is to shoot a torpedo down that bearing. One way or another, the pinging stops.) If an attack sub was transiting through what they thought was empty ocean and got jumped with a warshot then they might respond with active sonar to get a target bearing. But there'd be a hot debate over whether it was an act of desperation or suicide.
I've listened to plenty of other active sonars, and they were quite helpful in target detection & classification. Good audio intelligence for later analysis, too. Thanks, guys!
If an U.S. attack sub ever got into a situation where they'd be tempted to go active, they'd probably be wiser to back way off and whistle up a few P-3s to work with destroyers & helicopters. Those guys can ensonify the entire freakin' ocean from a distance/altitude with relative impunity while a silenced ship (or an aviator) with plenty of weapons loiters near the target datum.
On my boomer tour I think we turned it on once a year for maintenance. A line of sonar techs would stand behind the console waiting for their 10-minute turn so that they could claim to have used active sonar. But our boomer used to only go to periscope depth once or twice a month for "proficiency", too. Most of the time was spent poking holes in the ocean at four knots (or less) in a patrol area the size of Kansas. And if someone else's submarine was going to transit through there, we'd be as far away as possible, hunched over like a scared bunny rabbit.
dex
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The editor of Jane's Fighting Ships was on NPR.
He said that the French are not part of NATO, so they did not have the info about the underwater positioning of the British sub.
He said that the French are not part of NATO, so they did not have the info about the underwater positioning of the British sub.
France are in and out NATO, and are currently out. The BBC report today on TV said they are due to re-join NATO in 2 months. The report also said that the USA and Britain share information on the locations of their Nuclear Subs but not with others.
He's obviously misinformed. France is part of NATO (the alliance) and has been since day one (France is currently sending more troops to Afghanistan under NATO's command). But France is not currently a member of NATO's integrated military command infrastructure. France has announced plans to re-integrate NATO's military command in the next couple of months.
A bit more info:
Did France's Secrecy Cause a Nuclear Submarine Collision? - TIME
So it looks like, even within NATO, it is difficult to know where the allies' strategic assets are located at any one time.
France to rejoin NATO Command
France to rejoin NATO command - CNN.com
France was a founding member of the alliance in 1949 but it left the military structure in 1966 amid frictions with the United States. France has continued, however, to contribute troops to NATO missions and to participate in NATO's political bodies.
France to rejoin NATO command - CNN.com
France was a founding member of the alliance in 1949 but it left the military structure in 1966 amid frictions with the United States. France has continued, however, to contribute troops to NATO missions and to participate in NATO's political bodies.
It's always been messy. They've been participating in NATO exercises for years, but they have a reputation of attending all the planning conferences and then canceling at the last minute. That's bad enough, but then they show up at the post-exercise debrief.
Spouse had the same problem at one of her ASW commands where patrols were shared jointly among the U.S., Britain, & France. The U.S. P-3 would be on station waiting for the French to show up to relieve them... waiting... waiting... to be told that they'd just had a material failure and wouldn't be able to make it. Scramble another P-3 or a NIMROD. This could happen a few times a year with no hard feelings, but it seemed to happen more than 60% of their assigned missions.
The U.S. and Britain share info about SSBN patrols, although the OHIO class and the TRIDENT missile have made this less relevant than it was when the U.S. was patrolling in the North Atlantic and the Irish Sea in the 1980s. (OHIO class SSBNs don't even need to be out of homeport to be within range of most of their targets.) And any NATO nation will share info about their submarine movements so that other nation's boomers can quietly slink out of the way.
France is set to re-join NATO's command & control system in a few months, but it's still unclear whether they're going to share their SSBN area info.
There's some snarky speculation on military boards whether the French knew they'd hit a British sub, or if the Brits had to tell the French to check their sonar dome for British paint chips...
