Nuclear submarines collide in Atlantic

[Kanani]

Originally Posted by TaoJones

From British Defense spokesman Nick Harvey, commenting on the recent collision:

"While the British nuclear fleet has a good safety record, if there were ever to be a bang it would be a mighty big one."

TaoJones

His comment was idiotic and protected by the word "Is"......I mean ...."IF".

It was clearly a statement to engender fear and had political rational.....or should I say....irrational......

[Celestialsailor]

I had heard on NPR this morning some "Official" saying the reason they collided was because their sonar canceled out one another's. Like most military accidents, the public will rarely know the truth until years later. I would wager a Tuna fish sandwich that the 2 vessels were play some kind of game...oh sorry...excersize.

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by Don Lucas

As an ex-nuc sub guy; HIGHLY unlikely that a LA class boat had any nuc weapons on it as it is an attack boat not a missile boat. This probably applies to the 2 boats involved in this event also.<snip>

Don, this is from the New York Times story currently running:

"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."

So, had the collision proved catastrophic, and both gone to the bottom, 32 nuclear warheads would have possibly been strewn across the ocean floor in the vicinity of the two wrecks. Thankfully, that didn't occur.

Originally Posted by Gudgeon

Taojones<snip>
If we detected an ally sub while on patrol you bet we notified them it reall piss the other crew off when you get counter detected.
<snip>
Thanks to Adm Rickover the US navy has very good nuclear safety record.

The following is, likewise, from the New York Times report on the incident:

"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.' ”

For the full New York Times story, go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/wo...marine.html?hp

As for the comment that ". . . US navy has very good nuclear safety record," I can only reply that as far as the USN has acknowledged, the safety record appears to be "very good." There is a lot that has happened over the course of the Cold War that will never be officially acknowledged.

TaoJones

[ShadowRWolf]

well atleast it wasent the US navy ******* up agen. had enough troble with the houstions litle leek out here, dont need more ******** protestors standing around with sighnes spelld worse than my spelling......

think this topes the US sub running in to the underwater mountian.....

[sailorboy1]

Never assume what is written/said in press releases about Navy vessals is correct.

We probably wouldn't really even follow this much if the "nulcear" part was missing. I noticed the event was barely a mention on the news yesterday and today haven't heard a word. As far as nuclear reactors and warhead on the ocean bottom; so what! I would be way more concerned about an oil tanker leak.

[Exocet]

Sub against Sub, sounds kinda like mafia against mafia, their only going after their own, however how about sub against commercial fishermen or pleasure boats. To bad the media does not give the same reporting when these marine machines wack a pleasure boat. Ever hear about the sinking of Jory Lord's 50-foot sailboat, Moonglow, in 1994 by the Chilean sub Thomson, which had been in BC waters to use the Nanoose test range, luky he is alive, boat sank almost immediately, and chillian sub was not going to return to save the sailor, they had second thoughts and returned. The end of this fellows saga was to sue Chillian Government for damages, I think the lawyers got all the cash though. m.kitsapsun.com/news/1994/Sep/13/sub-sinks-sailboat-after-leaving-bangor/ - 7k -

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Exocet

Sub against Sub, sounds kinda like mafia against mafia, their only going after their own, however how about sub against commercial fishermen or pleasure boats. To bad the media does not give the same reporting when these marine machines wack a pleasure boat.

And these:

USS Greeneville: The Los Angeles class fast-attack smashed into and sank the Japanese teaching vessel Ehime-Maru, February 9, 2001, killing nine Japanese students.

AS-28: On August 5, 2005 this Russian Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle became entangled by a fishing net. The crew was rescued.

USS Newport News: On January 8, 2007, the Newport News was moving submerged (not surfacing) in the Straits of
Hormuz when it hit the Japanese tanker Mogamigawa. The sub had been a part of the Carrier Strike Group being used to threaten Iran and was led by the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Then there’s these genius’:

USS Hartford: This fast-attack submarine ran aground October 25, 2003 in a harbor in northern Sardinia, Italy.

USS San Francisco: On January 8, 2005, this fast-attack submarine collided virtually head-on with an undersea mountain 350 miles south of Guam. Joseph Allen Ashley, 24, died of injuries suffered in the accident, which occurred when the submarine was on a high speed run at approximately 35 knots.

[Alexei]

Originally Posted by TaoJones

Well, that's comforting.

If I'm understanding witzgall's post correctly, if a US person on sub patrol locates a US sub, but doesn't want to have to go through the "I promise I won't reveal a secret above my clearance" routine, he just keeps the information to himself. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the sub patrols?

It would seem to me that the US Navy would want to know that one of their Los Angeles class nuclear subs is more "visible" than they had, perhaps, assumed. How could they attempt to remedy the problem if they aren't made aware of it?

It's doubtful that any US allies would let the USN know that their sub patrols had spotted a US sub, and any US "enemies" definitely wouldn't. So the Navy may be left with the false impression that no one is aware of the location of USN subs unless the Navy wants them to be detectable.

What's wrong with this picture?

TaoJones

As a submariner, I can tell you that it doesn't work that way.

We play with our allies in exercises all the time, and give each other feedback. They have monitoring stations all over the place, and so do we. If one of our allies detects our boats on an actual patrol, we learn about it quite quickly.

If someone we're not allied with detects one of our boats, naturally they're not going to tell us. But all the boats make recordings of everything they do, and various people here in the states do in-depth analysis of those recordings and can generally tell after the fact if a counterdetection occured.

We also have accoustic ranges where we measure the relative noisiness of our boats against a known standard, so we know for a fact how stealthy we are. It's something we submariners take very seriously, because in war counterdetection will get us killed.


As far as collisions go, they happen. COLREGS don't really apply beneath the water, but subs always maintain a lookout in sonar for safety of ship purposes. During exercises and the like, two boats operating in the same water are assigned different depth bands, so that even if they don't detect eachother, they cannot collide. There are no assigned depth separations on actual missions against an opponent's sub, for obvious reasons.

That said, people screw up and accidents happen. Boats sometimes violate their depth bands or go outside their assigned water, and then collisions occur or boats run aground. It will always happen every now and then, but we work really hard to minimize the frequency of occurence.


Cheers,
Alexei

[Alexei]

Originally Posted by TaoJones

Don, this is from the New York Times story currently running:

As for the comment that ". . . US navy has very good nuclear safety record," I can only reply that as far as the USN has acknowledged, the safety record appears to be "very good." There is a lot that has happened over the course of the Cold War that will never be officially acknowledged.


TaoJones

There is a difference between nuclear safety and nuclear WEAPONS safety.

In general, if you hear nuclear safety, it refers to the reactor. And the US Naval Nuclear Power Program has never had a reactor accident in over 100,000,000 miles of steaming (accident being defined as damage to the core and a release of core materials to the environment - a minor coolant leak isn't an accident because core materials are not released). We work and train really hard to make sure that we never do. Naval Reactors is required to brief congress annually on the status of the program, and any incidents that have occured, so the 4-star is understandably personally involved in making sure the program runs well. Every commander of a nuclear-powered vessel writes him a letter each quarter detailing the status of training and operations on the ship, and plans to improve. There are regular inspections and matinenance availabilities to make sure everything is in good working order. Nuclear programs (and other non-nuclear technical programs) the world over come to Naval Reactors for advise and assistance on process improvement. It's actually quite an impressive program, when you think about it.

Nuclear Weapons Safety is another matter. Different rules and procedures apply that are more strict than those governing a reactor. And with good reason too: a nuclear reactor cannot detonate, while a weapon is designed to. And it's hard to pick up and walk off with a reactor. We've been really good with nuclear weapons safety as well in the US navy. The air force had a couple faux pas in 2007 that you probably heard about in the press, and they've been hammered pretty well over them. But the navy's program came up looking pretty good in the audits that occured after the air force's incidents.