PPRuNe Forums - Submarine collision...odds?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by walter kennedy (Post 8116795)

I wonder what their depth was in relation to the bathythermal conditions.
They may both have been traveling at the same depth that made sonar detection harder - sort of drastically reduces the odds of a collision if in one plane as opposed to 3D.
Perhaps (in peacetime at least) such submarines should adapt a separation scheme like aircraft - east at odd or even levels and vice versa for west, whatever suits.

drastically increases the odds?

Most of the arguments have been mentioned. In addition to finding a nice quiet bit of sea they must also be in an optimum launch zone as well. Given similar target sets and missile performance sort of reduces the odds even more.

In addition to bathythermal conditions you might also consider comms windows might be similar thus requiring similar depths at the same time.

As for promulgating their patrol area, the RN relied on stealth to avoid detection by friendly MPA. The French probably had the same idea. Didn't always work however as the wet team would frequently go deep and silent and stay stumm.

Russian K219 .................book was Hostile Waters

Do remember in 1980's there were a spate of incidents in Irish Sea with a US boat running aground and a number of Trawlers getting towed.

Interesting article on Sub Comms.

http://www.vlf.it/submarine/sbmarine.html

Ha Ha . . . funny that the initial comment regarding "Good military aircrew thread this ..." at #12 was made by "MAD Boom" which of course is a magnetic anomaly detector that is designed to detect submarines from inflight MPA.

Anyway, more seriously, whilst I was participating in a RIMPAC Exercise some years ago, we tracked the target submarine for some time out in the designated area. When we returned to Barbers Point and into the debrief, our tapes were confiscated by the USN and the debrief was severely shortened, apparently we had been tracking a submarine that was not involved in the said exercises, though we all knew it was a USN boat, and assumed it was the exercise boat!
Though the MPA can tell between different boats, we had no way of knowing who was who!

Quote:

Slightly off topic, the USS San Francisco (SSN-711) collision on 8th January 2005 must have had pretty long odds.

This has aviation parallels. The San Francisco hit a sea mount SW of Guam enroute Brisbane. The seamount they hit was not on the chart they were using, although it was on 4 other charts they held but had not crosschecked, although misplotted by 2-3 nms. 4 minutes before impact they upped the speed to max (33 kts). A bit like blind flying below safety height without Terrain Avoidance Radar and being surprised when you hit something.

Wiki gives some information on lost submarines here:

List of sunken nuclear submarines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ping....Dit!