http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090216/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_sub_collision No serious injuries or damage, but still, weird. "Needle in a haystack" factor aside, you'd think they would've been able to hear each other.
Seriously: I guess they designed those things pretty well in terms of being able to avoid detection. Non-seriously: This is soooooo 19th century.
Not sure what you mean?? Yeah, but they also have sonar systems which are designed to be able to detect subs just like them (especially since the British sub was apparently the oldest in the fleet). And usually they're engaging each other at much greater distances, not close enough to actually collide.
unlike the satellite collision of this past week............there is absolutely no excuse for this event both subs have SONAR and they're carrying nukes.......they should be 110% focused on what and where they're going
They do have SONARs but they're designed not to be SONAR detectable. The thing is, the global probability of it happening is slim yet, in this part of the world, the French and British naval forces all head towards the funnel that is the western part of the Channel when they go back to their Breton and Scottish bases. It's still incredible that they were exactly there at the same time... I don't know if it's possible to use some kind of close range optical or RADAR device to avoid collision with such a big mass since they cannot be SONAR detected. Of course, using those may make them 'visible' again.
Well, in retrospect, I could have answered my own question because subs have a military purpose rather than a civilian transportation purpose, meaning that they wouldn't necessarily be letting other nations know where they are, sonar aside. But what I was asking had to do with a given sub maybe operating at a different depth than another sub in the area (like people in a high-rise building, thus the "floor" analogy) so there's less risk of a collision. I recall reading somewhere that aircraft operate that way.
It is a very strange event and highly unlikely occurrence. Of course with these being nuclear subs, they run silent and are very hard to detect when you are looking for them, impossible to find when you aren't. It isn't like either of these subs were actively pinging looking for other subs when this happened. As for being unavoidable and 110% focused on where and when they were going, , the ignorance of such a statement is very amusing. kid come back and talk to us when you have an inkling of knowledge of what you are talking about.
The British sub was probably on the wrong side of the ocean Gotcha. I think you're right that civilian aircraft do operate that way, subs wouldn't though. The weird thing is how ridiculously unlikely this is...the US Navy has I think about 80 submarines in service, say 40 of those are in the Atlantic, the Russians have another 40, and then the rest of the world put together has another 40....hell, even being very generous that's 150 subs in the entire Atlantic Ocean (before you take into account the fact that not all of them are at sea at any given time). If you were to let them randomly sail around the ocean without any human interference at all the odds against a collision would still have to be absolutely astronomical.
I've not never seen no worse double negative than that. As to the main story, everyone knows the histories of the French and British navies. They didn't collide. They were ramming each other. And I bet we won, too.
Easy, the British sub was diving on the left, while the French sub was diving on the right...and bam!