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Stricken Russian Nuke Sub Crew Prevented ‘Planetary Catastrophe’
- SethTro 7y agoThe article mentions how this sub can operate up to 6,000M underwater and throws out this juicy bit > The craft reportedly was used to target undersea communications and other cables. I doubt it's more than speculation but... I believe it's in the order of $5M + 2 weeks to fix cables breaks near the shore and >$10M + 8 weeks to fix them in the middle of the ocean which sounded like a lucrative opportunity for blackmail
- dirtyid 7y agoProbably tap undersea cables than bust them - which a fishing trawler could do with more deniability. Regardless, prototype Nuclear espionage sub, all officer crew of 25, 7 of the dead were Captain 1st Rank (right under admiral), 2 recipients of the Hero of the Russian Federation. My interest is certainly piqued.
- baybal2 7y agoI don't buy it that an all officer crew wasn't able to don rebreathers in time. Fire drill is like a number 1 drill in the fleet, and a submariner, moreover a captain should be able to do it with his eyes closed
- ddalex 7y agoGrowing up in an Eastern Eu country (former communism), nobody there underestimates the professionalism of soviet military. They are many, but not brilliant - see MH17 and so on.
- alecmg 7y agoPlease expand, it is unclear from your words do you think they are professional or not. And what exactly should we see with MH17?
- unwrap 7y agoI think it was pretty obvious what they meant. An old friend of mine has recently finished his term in the Russian military. According to his words explaining his own experience, and things he heard during military exercises from guys from other parts of the country, most soldiers are being trained not to defend their country, but to do three things: paint walls, wash their clothes, and clean up the premises. It's no wonder you can mistake a passenger airplane for a military aircraft after such a stimulating experience.
- raquo 7y agoRussia still has military draft. Gotta do something with all that free labour. They do however also have actual professional soldiers, and lots of them. Those should be more trained / competent.
- gdy 7y agoConsidering that Americans who shot down Iran Air Flight 655 were given medals, shooting down a passenger plane is quite an achievement for a well-trained Navy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655#Post-tour_of_duty_medals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655#Post-tour_...
- ddalex 7y agoI'm not comfortable sharing details because they can be traced back to specific people and events, but I've seen people doing highly-skilled high-demand tasks under alcohol influence "to calm their nerves". MH17 was shut down because the radar operator could not read his screen / correlate with other sources of information regarding civilian flights. Can tell you a bit about how professional those operators were.
- huhtenberg 7y agoThere was also a mention that the sub is of an unusual design - a set of spheres rather than a conventional cigar shape.
- tapland 7y agoI think that was based on graphics of how the interior is constructed. The sub in question should be a cigar shape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Losharik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Losharik
- iguy 7y agoI believe the name is from a cartoon character, who is made out of balls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F_hX-QjDQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F_hX-QjDQw
- close04 7y agoA better diagram of the sub here: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Ru_Losharik_Cutaway940.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Ru_Lo... basically a series of interconnected bathyspheres with a hydrodynamic shell over them.
- petre 7y agoSo basically personnel can't access the reactor and engine compartments from the life support units, the sub has to surface. Here's a bigger version of the same diagram with readable text: http://www.hisutton.com/images/Ru_Losharik_Cutaway.jpg http://www.hisutton.com/images/Ru_Losharik_Cutaway.jpg Skegs, hydraulic manipulator, no weapons. It's clearly ment to tamper with undersea cables.
- iguy 7y agoAre any of these details more than speculation? I had the impression that the best information was some not-so-clear pictures which happened to catch it on the surface, plus the admission a few days ago that it is in fact nuclear powered, and had a suspiciously high-ranking crew. I agree that tampering with cables seems like the obvious reason for the military to go super-deep. With recovering sunken things made by your adversary a close second. And in the mid-1980s, they were much better at titanium than at video cameras.
- mc32 7y agoObviously there is lots of speculation since the Russians are tight lipped about the whole incident. Some of the most speculative (but with little to no support) seem to think they were carrying a cobalt nuke larger than the Tsar Bomba.
- freddie_mercury 7y agoMaking a major diplomatic incident to get $10 or $50 million? Using two subs that cost hundreds of millions to build? Seems more like fantasy than speculation.
- PietdeVries 7y agoCould the fire that the crew fought with their lives indeed have damaged the reactor (and thus have caused the "planetary catastrophe" - I assume that is what the article hints on)? Or basically, was the reactor designed in such a way that a regular fire could damage it that it would become unstable?
- Tomte 7y agoAnd where is the planetary scale when a nuclear explosion occurs? There have been many nuclear explosions on the Bikini Atoll etc. without planetary catastrophes. Not to speak of the fact that an underwater nuclear explosion would do even less, except for a Tsunami maybe, which again is localized. The only thing I can think of is preventing nuclear war. A rogue ballistic sub or so. But that is not very plausible.
- divbyzer0 7y agoThe suggestion is the sub may have been carrying a Cobalt Bomb, a nuclear weapon encased in cobalt to increase fallout. In the case of a water detonation I'm guessing massive radioactive contamination that would end sea life for a large area - perhaps even planetary. Pure speculation to fit the "planetary catastrophe" remark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-media-nuclear-torpedo-can-destroy-the-us-europe-the-world-2019-1?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-media-nuclear-torped...
- RomanBob 7y ago>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_... A truly massive amount of radioactive material has been dumped into the ocean. No amount of 'cobalt bomb' or other fantasy devices will appreciably affect the truly large (geological scale) ocean. Even if you dump every nuclear reactor, nuclear waste, nuclear fuel and blow up every nuke in the ocean, that will simply not seriously affect the ocean.
- benj111 7y ago
- RomanBob 7y agoDamn. 6000m? A nuclear sub at that depth would be unreachable by surface/aerial ASW systems and can provide definite nuclear deterrence.
- irq 7y agoNuclear as in nuclear powered. Not as in, can launch nuclear weapons.
- jacobush 7y agoAdding a nuclear weapon to a nuclear powered sub is surely not that hard. The big news is a nuclear powered sub capable of going that deep.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoI thought running for a very long time without needing to surface was the entire point of nuclear subs?
- jacobush 7y agoYes, but "normal" nuclear subs can still not go very deep without being crushed. Thus, they can still be hunted for. But a nuclear sub which can go thousands of meters deep in hiding mode, would change the theater of war considerably.
- neuronic 7y agoNoise is another point. Diesel engines are louder and if there's one thing you want to be as a military submarine it is silent.
- saberdancer 7y agoIt's not that simple. Launching an nuclear weapon from the deep is very hard, normal nuclear missile subs do not launch from deep. There are multiple reason for this. One of them is that they eject the missile by using steam/gas, if you are too deep, your missile won't reach the surface and thus won't be able to fly away. Second reason is that the missile and the missile tube needs to be under normal pressure. Missiles aren't built to handle hundreds of atmospheres of pressure even if the sub could eject them into the water.
- jopsen 7y agoThey may have prevented a 'Planetary Catastrophe', but I find it rather likely that they were also the cause of the situation. History is full of stories where Russian subs are close to causing catastrophes because of rushed production, poor maintenance, training, etc. Reality is that they didn't have to sail around in a nuclear sub in the first place.
- llamaz 7y agoThe Russians never did Hiroshima/Nagasaki, which I consider to be a underappreciated moral crime, just like the Bengali famine at the hands of Churchill. I know this is a form of 'whataboutism,' but I don't think laying the blame on the Russians is the right way to go. Neither side should have developed nuclear weapons in the first place.
- celticninja 7y agoYou can't un-ring a bell but you can avoid using the bell to cause a planetary catastrophe.
- pinkfoot 7y agoFeel free to find out when the existing nuclear powers intend to disarm under their commitments in the NNTP.
- celticninja 7y agoI'm not sure of the relevance. You cannot uninvent the technology.
- mikorym 7y agoI think there is a different argument being made. The Russian nuclear program has suffered a lot of potential and actual nuclear catastrophes due to questionable safety standards and protocol. I think that nuclear weapons is a different topic. But the safety of ongoing nuclear use worldwide, including by the US, is perhaps the topic here.
- whermans 7y agoThis article chases clicks by parroting hyperbole from a remembrance service as fact. This is not the first, nor the worst fire aboard a nuclear submarine. Komsomolets burned and sank with both a nuclear reactor and nuclear warheads on board. The reactor scrammed and was not damaged by the fire; the warheads' biggest risk was leakage of radioactive material. Losing a nuclear submarine in a fire is a potential catastrophe for the local environment and a tragedy for the fallen crew, but hardly an event that justified the "planetary" scale.
- credit_guy 7y agoPlus one. And here’s a handy reference to the wikipedia page dedicated to the 9 sunken nuclear submarines so far https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_submarines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_subma...