Assuming the Russians did try to launch a Tsunami Nuke at the UK how likely would it be for the sub to get into position undetected?
In the event the UK was wiped off the face of the earth what contingency does the UK military have for response? Presumably our Sub deterrent would not respond without command or does it have a `UK down` response ?
Hypothetical of course I'm not expecting to learn to swim any time soon.

I doubt that information will be in the public domain for a decade or few.

Whereas the answer to that one is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort

For a very detailed and fascinating account of what submarines of all nations have been up to, as recently as a decade or so ago, you could do a lot worse than "The Silent Deep" by Hennessy and Jinks. That'll give you as good an indication as you're likely to get of current capabilities.

Russia military capability is very limited.

In the cartoon where the UK gets wiped by a nuclear tsunami, it also wipes out Eire. I wonder if Dublin has an opinion?

I doubt Putin worries about collateral damage.

Won't happen. Ireland is very proud of its neutrality and will send a strong diplomatic protest at the very thought of such a happening. Intruding Russian aircraft will be attacked by Eire's fleet of Pilatus PC-9.

We’re doing constant checks on magicseaweed.com so we can get to Lahinch in time for the wave. That’s about it I’m afraid.

As much as lots of the UK could do with a wash, the "tsunami" is a wee bit overrated in its fiziks. Maybe Russia's math is different. Fukushima got hit with a tsunami, and that came about through a phenomenal vertical shift of the seabed... That acts as an actuator to start a wave along the line of the fault.

The underground Aleutian Island 6MT test gave release of energy equivalent to a 6.9 earthquake, but did not cause any earthquake record at all. According to the USGS, the 6 largest thermonuclear tests in the US SW did not have any seismic record of an earthquake that correlated to the explosions. And that is for underground tests.

In the ocean, there is no earthquake, there is a vaporization of a volume of water, and a gas bubble expansion, and then a collapse of the bubble. It forces water upwards, and did damage to the shallow seabed in the case of Helen. but no earthquake. Also, no tsunami. Lots of water column upwards and back down again, and a lot of waves around the epicenter. There is no wave train. The water though is highly irradiated, at least it was for the 5 odd tests that data exists for. That means no more fish for Russia, or Iceland etc... or Ireland... or maybe needing new recipes for 3-head fish stew.

The tests did surprise the USDOD though, they thought that they could recover the ships, clean them up and bring them back to combat status. Didn't get close to that.

Helen was the first test, didn't end well.
The following tests had the same issues of Helen-Baker, and also never gave an earthquake or a tsunami
Wigwam was the deepest explosion and the largest of the efforts, at 6Mt, No Tsunami.

again

HELEN of Bikini (Baker test)



https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....677dc293b.jpeg


BAKER Test

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a56e75b49c.png

WIGWAM

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....104754fb9f.png

Helen

The video of the explosions shows what the direct shockwave does as it expands, and if you look at the water column and how it collapses, you can work out why it does not cause a tsunami.

Now, Mythbusters can probably do a session on this, but i'm calling it as the usual Soviet propaganda bunkum bogus BS nonsense.

You can experiment with this in your bathtub, (that's the thing that holds water in the bathroom that is bigger than a sink, like a water trough...) drop the soap, (the thing that is on the end of the rope) and watch the splash and waveform. Then pick up a piece of 4x2 and lift it up and down rapidly in the same spot in said tub. One is a poor man's analogue of an explosion, the other is a sea floor vertical motion, either up or down, makes no difference. An underwater landslide can trigger a tsunami as well, no question, but nukes don't cause a tsunami just because they are blown up in the water column.

A magnitude 9.0 Earthquake releases about the same energy as a 100Mt nuke, supposedly, but doesn't set off an earthquake,

The biggest nuke in history, Tsar Bomba at Novaya Zemla was calculated back to be the equivalent of 5.0 earthquake at the epicenter. According to the story from ROSATOM, (known for their competency, think RBMK-1000...) "On October 30, 1961, the most powerful hydrogen bomb in the world was tested at the Novaya Zemlya test site . The explosion was so strong that the seismic wave in the earth's crust, generated by the shock wave, circled the Earth three times. The flash was visible at a distance of more than 1000 km."

Tsar Bomba 30 OCT 61

If anyone has the USGS records for 30 OCT 61... that would be interesting.

Today, there have been 7 magnitude 5 or greater earthquakes, all in ocean areas, and amazingly for the Russians, not one caused Ireland to be washed away in the suds, what a waste of whiskey and folk songs that would be! Very few earthquakes cause tsunamis, Fukushima and Boxing day were exceptional events, as have the other tsunami cases. They don't happen just 'cuz some Krazy Psycho Keptocrat Krim in the Kremmin says otherwise.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....5549348527.png



The difference in waveforms.

A seismic event arises from a shear of the crust. Nuke detonations are a point source, and radiate out from that point. The shear has a baseline that sets up the wave train that the movement causes, and the damage is from the SR amplitudes, as well as the cycles of the wave as it passes.

From UC Berkley Seismology Lab,
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d08e52f6cb.png

[[color=#000000]From "Sleuthing Seismic Signals", Science and Technology Review, March 2009, published by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.]


USGS records the Tsar Bomba nuclear test as a 5.8 as below....
Detonation at ~ 1961-10-30, 08:33:31.000Z (it was at 4000mts AGL so the record is after the detonation...)

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....01bfc33b85.png


Now, for the French nuke tests at Mururoa, see below. The take-home is that the SR peak wave was actually notable in these cases, probably because the USGS wasn't dealing with Californians, but the funny thing is, these tests didn't wash away Lou Pescadou's in Papeete, where the best pizza in the pacific was made.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a01c43c828.png



https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cp...-568877141.jpg

https://www.rnz.co.nz/assets/news/73...jpg?1467449123

I wonder how much of a ripple one of these bad boys would actually make? Film of underwater bursts shows that a lot of energy is spent vaporising the water and carrying it into the air where it falls back to create a phenomenon known as a base surge, This is not a wave as such, more a mixture of air and water entrained together in something analogous to a pyroclastic flow. It does travel out from the base of the explosion at about 60 mph but it loses energy quite quickly, which is just as well as it is jam packed with fallout.

Plus the fact that a 'radioactive wave' rendering surroundings uninhabitable is utter nonsense, somebody doesn't understand physics. A pressure wave doesn't move a load of material, it just moves particles, be they gas or liquid, back and forth. Local to the explosion there would be fallout, which would be windborne, but limited in extent.

A 100MT weapon would definitely involve the seabed so there would be a lot of irradiated material carried up in the column. The fireball would almost certainly top out in the stratosphere and I would expect fallout to be carried into the upper atmosphere and it will travel a long way before it falls to earth. At the same time, as I said, the base surge will also contain irradiated bits of seabed but these will mostly be washed out by the base surge which will travel outwards in all directions but obviously further downwind. The area contaminated by the base surge will radioactive for a fair while and will decay according to the 7/10ths law.

War Story: In the past, I had to plot real data from past tests as part of my training, Mostly the plumes made some sort of sense and one could generate a set of isodose contours, a bit like isobars on a weather map, to work out which way the fallout was going. One set made no sense as there were higher dose rates intermingled with low dose rates. Took a while but eventually it dawned that ground zero was near the centre of a low pressure area and the plume was a spiral!

V. Gerasimov
 

What's the chance that Gerasimov looked at the mess that he had inherited from Vlad, and gave himself a wound to get out of dodge? Smart man if he did. His troops don't have that luxury.

Aviation content: the stuff was flying when it "hit" him.

Probably the usual, senior officer flying visit to qualify for the campaign gong then back home for tea….. and surgery.

For you Aussies amongst us, your toys have arrived at the front and he looks pleased.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/assets/news/73...jpg?1467449123

That was on my wall at Uni along with the girl playing tennis ! As for Tsunami, or lack thereof, I realize I will now not get a beach at the Yorkshire House !
Cheers
Mr Mac

It’s not a matter of whether it’s scientifically feasible or not (on that basis you can query why the Russians designed this weapon at all).

It the sentiment expressed that Irish neutrality means nothing to them.

F-35 Pilot: NATO Could ‘Completely Destroy the Russian Forces’
 

F-35 Pilot: NATO Could ‘Completely Destroy the Russian Forces’ (msn.com)

• A former F-35 test pilot weighed in on the fighter jet’s performance in the Ukraine conflict and how it represents a massive leap forward from Cold War-era aircraft.
• Billie Flynn contends the F-35 is so different from Soviet Cold War fighters that pilots used to the latter would be unable to transition to the F-35.
• Flynn also thinks the F-35 is the most survivable aircraft for the dangerous skies over Ukraine.

One of the most noted authorities on the F-35 has some interesting things to say about the jet, including how it would fit in with European air forces, and how suitable the fighter is for the air war over Ukraine. Billie Flynn, a former Lockheed Martin test pilot, also talked about how the jet represents a massive leap forward from older, Soviet-designed fighter jets, noting that the pilots who train them would be unable to learn how to fly the F-35. Flynn also believes the F-35 is the only jet that can survive in the lethal air environment over Ukraine.

Billie Flynn is one of the most accomplished test pilots around. Flynn originally flew CF-18 Hornets for the Royal Canadian Air Force, and later flew as a test pilot for the Eurofighter Typhoon. He later went on to fly for Lockheed Martin for 17 years, from 2003 to 2020, in support of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Flynn is a big fan of the F-35, and if there’s anyone who knows the jet inside and out, it’s him.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Aviationist, Flynn touched upon a number of points about the F-35. One of the most interesting is his assertion that pilots in Eastern European countries that still fly Soviet-era fighters are just going to be unable to fly a fifth-generation jet like the F-35. Three NATO countries—Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland—still fly the Soviet MiG-29 fighter jet, classified by NATO in the 1980s as the “Fulcrum.” The MiG-29, designed in the late 1970s, is the equivalent of the American F-16 Fighting Falcon.

The collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989 and the absorption of most countries into NATO means that some countries fly both MiG-29s and F-16s. And, as it continues to modernize, Poland will soon be in the unique position of flying MiG-29s, F-16s, and F-35s. Does this mean a Polish pilot could fly all three?
Not so fast, says Flynn. He contends that pilots that have flown Soviet-era fighters for the bulk of their careers would simply be unable to effectively fly the F-35. The MiG-29 is a completely different aircraft built with different design philosophies in mind. The MiG also lacks the technological sophistication of the F-35, from the stealthy design to the distributed aperture system that allows the pilot to “see” through the side of his aircraft.

A pilot unused to such advances, flying on muscle memory and learned instinct, might not properly take advantage of everything the F-35 has to offer. Flynn believes that Poland’s air force, which could soon fly all three jets, would likely push F-16 pilots into the F-35, leaving MiG pilots to close out their careers on the aging jets.Flynn also believes that the F-35 would dominate in the air war over Ukraine, because it is exactly the environment the jet was built to excel in. The war has already claimed more than three dozen fighters and attack jets from both sides. Ukrainian Air Force jets, for example, not only have to deal with Su-30M Flanker and Su-35 Flanker-E twin engine, multi-role fighters, but S-400 long-range air defense systems and short-range battlefield air defense systems. Russian fighters must contend with Ukrainian fighters, Ukraine’s original air defense network, and now an increasing number of surface-to-air missile systems donated by NATO.

The F-35 is only the second fighter jet in history developed with stealth technology from the ground up, and specifically with the S-400 missile system in mind. Furthermore, Flynn believes the jet’s network of sensors, and ability to share data with other aircraft and ground assets, would make it an efficient air-defense killer, identifying S-400s and similar platforms and then killing them with ruthless efficiency. Flynn asserts that while nobody wants NATO dragged into the war, if it was, it would “completely destroy the Russian forces.”

@havoc: well, he would say that, wouldn't he? :E
The Irish representative at the UNSC


made public condemnation of the Russian 'special operation' (aka invasion) which I found to be both predictable and risible. The French condemnation, which came one or two condemnations later, at least had the potential to have some teeth in it ~ whether or not it actually did.
Why would Vlad and company respect Ireland's neutrality if they are going to make some kind of move versus the UK?
They have already shown that (1) they interpret rules and treaties in their own way and (2) Ireland has (as far as I can tell) no leverage with Russia. (If Ireland has such leverage, I'd be keen to learn what it is).

Well so where do they find pilots to fly any new airframe which has new technologies?

Same place they always do, by asking people to go through the training. The skill sets needed are fundamentally the same, that is SA, and decision making while coping with a mass of data. The F35 automates a lot of that, and there is a lot of specialist training time needed in part-task and simulators, but I would doubt that because someone flew a MiG 29 they would be incapable of being trained on 5th-gen. My F-4 friends that then did time on Edsels ended up teaching F-22's and F-35. They enjoyed the challenge.

Ukrainian stolen grain being shipped to Egypt, I would impound the ship and sell it, the monies paid for the grain would be deducted from the seized Russian bank assets and paid to those farmers that have had crops stolen.