Monday - February 16, 2009

Oops IV

LONDON — Nuclear-armed submarines from Britain and France collided in the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, authorities acknowledged Monday — touching off new concerns about the safety of the world’s deep sea missile fleets.

The HMS Vanguard, the oldest of Britain’s current nuclear-armed submarine fleet, and the French Le Triomphant submarine, which was also carrying nuclear missiles, both suffered minor damage in the collision. No crew members were reported injured.

France’s defense ministry said the ballistic missile submarines had been carrying out routine patrols when they collided.

“They briefly came into contact at a very low speed while submerged. There were no injuries. Neither their nuclear deterrence missions nor their safety were affected,” France’s defense ministry said Monday in a statement.

The Le Triomphant suffered damaged to a sonar dome in the front of the submarine but returned under its own power to its base on L’Ile Longue on France’s western tip, according to the French military.

“This really shouldn’t have happened at all,” said Stephen Saunders, a retired British Royal Navy commodore and the editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships. “It’s a very serious incident, and I find it quite extraordinary.”

He said while NATO countries let each other know what general area of the Atlantic they are operating in, neither submarine would have had a precise position for the other.

Saunders said submarines don’t always turn on their radar systems or make their presence obvious to other shipping.

“The whole point is to go and hide in a big chunk of ocean and not be found. They tend to go around very slowly and not make much noise,” he said.

Lawmakers and disarmament advocates demanded an explanation of how the submarines could have failed to detect each other.

Britain’s government “needs to explain how it is possible for a submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction to collide with another submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction in the middle of the world’s second-largest ocean,” lawmaker Angus Robertson of the opposition Scottish National Party said.

Looks to me like France got just a little too ambitious here, sneaking up on the Brits. But, if, as it seems, the first the Brits knew of the French was when they felt the crunch, then hurrah for France, that’s exactly the kind of Captain you want driving one of these boats. It’s the Brits who’ve got a bit of egg on. It’s my assumption that these are both attack subs; I don’t really know. I don’t know subs, but it’s my impression they come in 2 flavors: hunter/seekers and hider/boomers. Good hunting France ... but you could have “won” just the same by pinging them from 50 meters.

Just like the froggies, isn’t it, sneaking up for a quick feel from behind?



UPDATE:

Egg on faces on both sides of the Channel, or smiles all around? The French sub is not an attack boat. It’s one of France’s 4 SSBNs, one of the hider/boomer group.

The Le Triomphant class is quieter than its predecessor, heavier, able to dive deeper, and have more advanced computers and software. It is built of HLES 100 steel, and capable of diving to 500 meters, twice the depth of L’Inflexible. Much though has been given to quieting, and the radiated noise level has been described as “less than that of the sea bottom noise ... reduced to a few millionths of Watts.”

Posted by Drew458     on 02/16/2009 at 11:44 AM   
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