This is crazy unlilkely:
A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic, the MoD has confirmed. HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant were badly damaged in the crash in heavy seas earlier this month.
First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band said the submarines came into contact at low speed and no injuries were reported. Both the UK and France insisted nuclear security had not been compromised. BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said the incident was "incredibly embarrassing" for the Ministry of Defence (MoD)....
The submarines are equipped with sonar to detect other vessels nearby but our correspondent said it might the case that the anti-sonar devices, meant to hide the submarines from enemies, were "too effective". "This is clearly a one-in-a-million chance when you think about how big the Atlantic is," she said.
The British SSBN (nuclear ballistic missile submarine) collided with the sonar dome of the French SSBN. The job of both submarines is to go to deep waters and hide, in anticipation of nuclear war; they are designed to be particularly quiet so that they can avoid enemy attack submarines. I'm not sure there's a lesson here, other perhaps than that the UK and France should take some steps to coordinate their SSBN patrols (seriously, the ocean is a big place), and that both need to develop better sonar. On the upside, I think it's fair to say that both have done a pretty good job at keeping their submarines effectively hidden...
--Robert Farley
