And the ocean is such a large place.

Submarines operate in great stealth deep under the ocean. If you have an accident you don't advertise it, you quickly and quietly return to port and then figure out what happened. It seems that is what the French did.
Keep in mind that Submarines are warships. They don't have "running lights" or location transponders or anything like that. They want, and need, to be silent and invisiable.

Take Care, Be Good and don't play in the street!

SteveMule

Reminds me of that incident a few years ago when a US sub surfaced beneath a Japanese fishing boat somewhere near Hawaii. You know you've had an unlucky day when something like that happens.

Well, let's just take a closer look before we start calling people stupid.

First, there are no headlights or windshields on a submarine. You can't look out the window to see what's around you. You rely on charts and very precise calculations of speed and heading to determine your position.

Obviously, to most folks anyway, things that move, like say, submarines, are impossible to chart.

The pilot of the sub can confirm those calculation using active sonar, where you send out a ping, a high frequency sound that creates an echo. The return time and characteristics of that echo tell you if you're close to anything and if anything else around you is moving. The drawback is that the ping tells anybody in the area exactly where you are as well. This is a major no-no for ballistic missile subs, whose job is to quietly disappear in the water. Passive sonar on the other hand is the practice of using very sensitive microphones to pick up noise transmitted through the water. The drawback is that it only works to detect objects that make noise.

Again, ballistic missile subs are designed not to make noise.

Second, judging from the fact that there was only minor damage to the sonar dome, which is a very fragile structure, the contact between the subs was a very light graze. The article states that both subs were moving very slowly, which would also tend to minimize the impact. Additionally, because the subs are designed to be quiet, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that the surface of both subs was coated in some sort of echo reducing material, analogous to the radar damping materials used on Stealth aircraft, which very likely would also act to cushion the impact. The slow speed, angle of impact, light damage, and possible echo reducing coatings all work together to explain why the Le Triomphant classified the collision as one with an unknown container, rather than another sub.

As for the "ocean is a large place" comment, again, let's take a closer look at the facts. We have two submarines with similar construction and similar performance characteristics, carrying similar payloads with similar capabilities, and since they were allies, probably covering similar targets.

How surprising is it really that their patrol routes were similar? It's true that the ocean is large, but both of these subs would be interested in only a small part of it.

And the WSJ article is wrong. This is not the first instance of two nuclear subs colliding. There have been several U.S. Soviet sub collisions in the last 40 years or so, some involving diesel boats, and some involving two nukes. This may have been the first case of two ballistic missile subs colliding, but attack subs and ballistic subs have had many collisions.

Your post and comment provide a perfect example of why many if not most civilians are incompetent to discuss military matters. You simply don't know enough to have an informed opinion. Yet in the arrogance of complete ignorance, you ascribe the cause of this incident to the stupidity of both the French and the British submarine service.

A retraction is certainly in order, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

A submariner comments:

The Stupid Shall Be Punished: French, British Boomers Collide

Submariners know that accidents like this are always possible when countries that don't coordinate waterspace management for certain boats operate in the same waters, but the "big ocean / little ship" theory normally keeps it from happening. In this case, it apparently didn't.

Hmmmm...sounds like somebody's read too much Tom Clancy.

As for the ocean being such a large place, naval battles tend to occur relatively close to shore and in confined waters. The record for the farthest from land two fleets have ever fought is the "Glorious First of June" - a chance encounter that led to a british victory over the french from way back in 1792. The fight took place 400 miles west of Brest, not too far from where this collision happened.

(link...)

My guess is that one was stalking the other in a cat and mouse exercise. The question is, who was the cat captain and who was the mouse captain. The cat will get a medal, the mouse could lose his command. Unless it was the cat that initiated the collision, in which case both could lose their command. And what if the French sub was the cat and they have a secret new sub detection technology? Oh my! That's my Tom Clancy analysis.

Gosh, Rich --
Why so rude and personal? I can't say I know you well, but heretofore, I had a pretty high opinion of you because you were able to disagree without being hateful.

As reported in UKs The Independent:

So, Admiral, what have you got to say about the nuclear submarine crash?

Naval experts, who underlined that the two nuclear submarines were built with hulls designed to withstand huge pressures, expressed surprise that the sonar arrays of both had failed to detect either vessel. Sonar technology is now so sophisticated manufacturers boast it can recognise a small fish.

That it does not seem to have been able to pick out a submarine nearly the length of two football pitches and the height of a three-storey building could be explained by the development of stealth technology, making the submarines less visible to other vessels. Stephen Saunders, the editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, said: "The modus operandi of most submarines, particularly ballistic-missile submarines, is to operate stealthily and to proceed undetected. This means operating passively, by not transmitting on sonar, and making as little noise as possible. A great deal of technical effort has gone into making submarines quiet by reduction of machinery noise. And much effort has gone into improving the capability of sonars to detect other submarines; detection was clearly made too late or not at all in this case."

BBC NEWS

Retired Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, said the cause of the collision appeared to be procedural rather than technical.

"These submarines should not have been in the same place at the same time," he added.

Understatement of the week. But understated is characteristic of the British, I guess.

SSBNs travel an assigned route while they are on patrol. Those routes are some of the most highly classified pieces of information in the Navy. As R. Neal said earlier, it's a big ocean, and it's very difficult to find a submarine when you don't know where to look. But if you know the patrol route, the ocean gets a lot smaller.

Detection of subs can be from underwater, via another sub or passive sonar arrays in the ocean floor; the surface, via destroyers with active sonar; the air, via SB-3 Vikings or whatever plane the USN is using now; or from space, via satellite. The best way for a sub to avoid these systems is to never let anybody know where they are going to be.

The practical implication of this is that patrol routes are not shared, even with allied nations.

Incidentally, the fact that the passive sonar arrays were unable to detect the subs isn't all that surprising. The current generation of US SSBNs are so silent they actually run quieter than the ambient noise levels in the ocean. In essence, that 600 foot three story submarine is quieter than the small fish. Attack boat sailors told me that if they were on a boomer hunt, they had to loo for a spot in the ocean that was too quiet.

More ignorant and uninformed commentary, including remarks by Members of Parliament who clearly have no business commenting on millitary affairs:

MPs demand inquiry into 'hushed-up' nuclear subs crash

Mike Critchley, a former Royal Navy officer and the publisher of Warship World magazine, said the collision in the Atlantic was a "one-in-a-million chance".

Mr Critchley also suggested that budget cuts might have left some Navy officers without enough practical experience.

He said: "The training is extensive, but whether the people who are in command of these major assets have considerable experience at sea is questionable, because the Navy has been seriously cut back in recent years.

"So the progression from a junior officer to a senior officer includes far more shore time than sea time. That is why, I would suggest, some accidents have happened in the past."

[..]

Angus Robertson, the SNP's defence spokesman, said: "The MoD's hush-hush attitude appears to conflict with the French position.

"The MoD needs to explain how it is possible for a submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction to collide with another submarine carrying weapons of mass destruction in the middle of the world's second-largest ocean."

Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrats' defence spokesman, called for an immediate internal inquiry, with "some" publication of its conclusions, in order to reassure the public. He said: "The people of Britain, France and the rest of the world need to be reassured that this can never happen again and that lessons are being learned."

The submarines may have been trying to track each other undetected – an activity that has continued since the Cold War, according to Bob Ayres, a former CIA and US army officer.

When such submarines came across similar vessels from other navies, they sought to get as close as possible without being detected, as part of routine training.

"They were playing games with each other – stalking each other under the sea," Mr Ayres said. "They were practising being able to kill the other guy's submarine before he could launch a missile."

He said several nuclear-armed United States and Soviet submarines had collided during the Cold War, but most of these incidents remained unreported.

The uninformed arrogance is shocking.

Are you seriously trying to say that Bizgrrl is as informed as a former Royal Navy officer?

Pardon me while I clean the overspray off of my monitor.

Obviously, his opinion carries the weight of both knowledge and experience, and the fact that it in no way reinforces bizgrrl's or your own also speaks to its merit.

Angus Robertson, on the other hand, is a different matter altogether. According to his wikipedia page, he has no military education or experience. His degrees are in politics and international relations, and his job before being elected to Parliament was a journalist. Hardly a career path to develop an in depth knowledge of submarine operations.

Bob Ayers is an Army guy, and while I can't reveal details that are classified, his knowledge of SSBN technology is inaccurate and outdated as of 15 years ago. I am certain that the technology has improved even more in the last decade and a half. He's also unaware of the difference between an attack sub and an SSBN. Had you followed the link I provided you would have seen that, contrary to Ayers's comment, most collisions that resulted from cat and mouse games are either attack vs attack or attack vs SSBN. SSBN's don't sneak up on each other as a rule. There are exceptions, to be sure, so there is a slim chance that this is what happened, but given the slow speed and the angle of incidence, I don't see this as a likely scenario. But as I said before, it is possible, just unlikely.

But I'm obviously beating a dead horse here. You want to attribute this incident to incompetence and no amount of factual information will change your mind. I did what I could do to provide additional information, context and insight. You could make use of it or disregard it in favor of your own prejudices.

Your choice has been made abundantly clear.

They might have been talking on their cell phones.

. . I can't reveal details that are classified . .

I use that one too when bragging about my days at the Bomb Factory.

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Richard,

In defense of bizgrrl - at first hearing, especially to civilians, a collision of two submarines the commanders don't know about for months sounds pretty shocking. It did to me also. So heap some of that scorn on me now.

You could have contributed a lot to the discussion with your knowledge of these matters. Instead, your tone, and the fact that you seemed to be more interested in bashing people than providing information, made me stop reading what you have to say about halfway through your posts.

Richard: If you would be a little nicer, you might still be able to get some therapy for your problem.
Have A Nice Day!

This has gone past boring. We know better than to reason with these types.

Funny how liberals love the chickenhawk argument until it gets used on them. Everything is one-way only in the liberal universe. Their way or no way. Their little minds can't handle anything else.