British & French nuke sub collision

[localhost127]

caught this article from an obviously sketchy news source, but has anyone heard anything in regards to this event from any other reliable source or media outlet?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2240543.ece

BRITISH and French nuclear submarines which collided deep under the Atlantic could have sunk or released deadly radioactivity, it emerged last night.

The Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard and the French Navy’s Le Triomphant are both nuclear powered and were carrying nuke missiles.

Between them they had around 250 sailors on board.

A senior Navy source said: “The potential consequences are unthinkable. It’s very unlikely there would have been a nuclear explosion.

“But a radioactive leak was a possibility. Worse, we could have lost the crew and warheads. That would have been a national disaster.”

The collision is believed to have taken place on February 3 or 4, in mid-Atlantic. Both subs were submerged and on separate missions.
Row

As inquiries began, naval sources said it was a millions-to-one unlucky chance both subs were in the same patch of sea. Warships have sonar gear which locates submarines by sound waves.

But modern anti-sonar technology is so good it is possible neither boat “saw” the other.

A senior military source said: “The lines between London and Paris have been hot.”

The MoD insisted last night there had been no nuclear security breach. But this is the biggest embarrassment to the Navy since Iran captured 15 sailors in 2007. The naval source said: “Crashing a nuclear submarine is as serious as it gets.”

Vanguard is one of Britain’s four V-Class subs forming our Trident nuclear deterrent. Each is armed with 16 ballistic missiles.

She was last night towed into Faslane in Scotland, with dents and scrapes visible on her hull. Triomphant limped to Brest with extensive damage to her sonar dome.


Triomphant has a crew of 101. Vanguard weighs 16,000 tons, is 150 metres long and has a crew of 140.

The MoD said it did not comment on submarine operations.

cannot seem to find any other headlines out there besides one at the daily mail, which i'll obviously stay clear and refrain from posting for obvious reasons.

 

[AegisFC]

Until something gets reported from a more legitimate source I wouldn't believe it.

I did some searching and the only The Sun and Drudge are carrying it (and Drudge is only linking back to The Sun).

 

[Driller]

Sounds strange in this day and age for 2 subs to collide.

 

[Unicorn]

Sounds strange in this day and age for 2 subs to collide.

It's not common, but not impossible.

Modern nuclear submarines (particularly ballistic missile submarines) are designed for quiet operations (its one of the drivers of the increase in size of ballistic missile subs) and as such, they spend most of their time cruising at a slow speed, often running the reactor on natural convection to avoid using circulation pumps (a common source of noise).

I could imagine both boomers utiling the same patches of water, as the areas they look for are identical. That is low traffic areas, distant from any areas that might attract other peoples ASW assets, far from the shipping lanes and within SLBM range of your targets.

As both France and the UK probably have similar target lists, and their boomer ports are not too far apart, geographically speaking, their operating areas are probably somewhat similar.

So, if you have two very quiet ballistic submarines both resembling an acoustic hole in the water, who both find themselves trying to occupy the same piece of watery real estate, then you could have an accident.

Basically it would have come as a complete surprise and resulted in a lot of collective pants shitting on both boats.

The key thing is that if this story is true, both boats have made it home in one piece.

Unicorn

 

[dave_kiwi]

Until something gets reported from a more legitimate source I wouldn't believe it.

I did some searching and the only The Sun and Drudge are carrying it (and Drudge is only linking back to The Sun).

Well the story has turned up in the Sydney Morning Herald:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/nuclear-subs-crashed-in-atlantic-report-20090216-88s5.html

Not that it makes it any more "legit". See source is AFP. Did see an article some time in the last week saying that the "Le Triomphant" had limped back into port just recently - maybe Defence Talk, but cannot exactly remember where

 

[riksavage]

The 'Torygraph' has posted a report, which appears credible. Looks like the French SSBN came off worse, most likely due to the UK SSBN's greater mass and kinetic force on impact. Makes reference to high-seas, which one assumes is irrelevant if they were both submerged at the time.

Both Captain's no doubt attended 'interviews without coffee' and are now scanning available opportunities at their local labour exchange!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...h-nuclear-submarines-collide-in-Atlantic.html

 

[WillS]

Both Captain's no doubt attended 'interviews without coffee' and are now scanning available opportunities at the local labour exchange!

Or perhaps they'll get medals, after all the whole point of these subs and their deterrent value is that they are 'undetectable'. I remember reading that the RN regularly boasts that nobody has ever managed to detect one of their ballistic missile boats out on patrol.

Its not as if you can get someone to hang out of a porthole to use the Mk 1 Eyeball on a sub

I love the way that the Telegraph story implies damage to the French boat was significantly more than that to Vanguard - in a sort of "my boat is bigger/better than your boat" kind of way. Old habits die hard.

WillS

 

[Lostfleet]

When I first heard the news, I thought it might be a collision between a US and Russian sub playing cat and dog on the north atlantic but it was a complete suprise to see a UK and a French boomers finding each other on the Atlantic.

A simple question to submariners here, for the two submarines to be at the same location is a coincidence, however is it a coincidence for them to be at the same depth?

From my basic knowledge I know you have to be below a certain line ( I forgot the name of the line) for quiter operation but is there a certain depth according to the salinity of the water and other properties that it is perfect for quiet operations?

 

[kev 99]

Shown on both BBC and ITV morning programmes this morning.

 

[windscorpion]

Glad no one seems to be hurt, from the scanty reports we have anyway.

I trust this will put paid to some suggestions i have read in some places that the RN might try and make do with just 3 boats in the replacement Vanguard class.

I suspect there may have to be better co-ordination between the 2 navies now!

 

[WillS]

I trust this will put paid to some suggestions i have read in some places that the RN might try and make do with just 3 boats in the replacement Vanguard class.

Actually I suspect it might strengthen the case. If Vanguard is out of service for a long period of time and the patrols continue uninterrupted, I can just see some grasping politician, looking to 'save' some defence money to pour into the welfare budget, suggesting that the RN doesn't actually *need* 4 boats.

WillS

 

[wtsimpson7]

Detection?

How could these subs not detect each other by means of sonar? It just seems strange to me.

 

[citizen578]

http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=8577

http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/homepage/d/int/news/world/1/-/news/1/hi/uk/7892294.stm

Le Triomphant took the brunt of the impact, with a crushed sonar dome. From the reports about Vanguard, it seems she has ''dents and scrapes'', rather than anything monumental.

This should not have happened. However, with the sonar signiture of modern SSBNs being miniscule, and the habit of using the same 'bastions', it was never going to be impossible. A one-in-a-billion chance, but hey... how many of you play the lottery?!

 

[Super Nimrod]

All systems have their limitations, as said above despite their size they are very quiet when stooging around. They don't ping because that defeats their stealthiness.

Oh well the RN can no longer claim that they have never been detected on patrol anymore. Interestingly though the French press initially reported that they thought they had hit a sunken container.

You could almost say that both sides were nearly defeated by the effectiveness of their own technology :unknown

 

[WillS]

How could these subs not detect each other by means of sonar? It just seems strange to me.

Active sonar wasn't being used because its make the subs too detectable. Lewis Page in the Register has a nice piece on the subject:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/16/subs_crash/

I like the sub-heading "Expensive undetectable machines undetected - shock".

WillS

 

[StevoJH]

Oh well the RN can no longer claim that they have never been detected on patrol anymore. Interestingly though the French press initially reported that they thought they had hit a sunken container.

Yes they can, if anything this just proves how quiet they are. They obviously werent detected since the French ran straight into them. As for afterwards, special situation, especially if the french government thought they hit a container and not just the press (did they?)

 

[windscorpion]

So is there another RN boat out there maintaining the deterrent or are they going to maintain the deterrent from dockside for a bit? Vigilant is in overhaul i know.

 

[Grim901]

So is there another RN boat out there maintaining the deterrent or are they going to maintain the deterrent from dockside for a bit? Vigilant is in overhaul i know.

I think so, isn't one of the other 4 kept at readiness just in case of an accident so it can put to sea in the damaged boats place. If I remember that was one of the reasons given behind needing 4 subs.

That certainly seems to be the French system.

 

[KGB]

The French boat had damage to the sonar dome, located in the bow. No damage to the bow of the British boat was reported...

Doesn't that suggest that the Triomphant was trying to track the Vanguard? Almost every reported sub to sub collision occurred in the context of one sub closely tracking another. With quiet subs and their short detection ranges, the chance for collision goes up. The fact that "they were going very slowly" is of course meaningless, since that's what subs do when they want to be quiet.

http://www.armscontrol.ru/subs/collisions/db080693.htm

 

[kev 99]

SSBNs don't track each other, they were both on routine patrol and just happened to both be in the same place at the same time.