Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:04 pm
Bastard. 
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RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
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Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:04 pm
Wait, don't the French drive on the left?
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:06 pm
Nope - they're responsible for the entire concept of driving on the right.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:08 pm
Oh, so they are the ones who made us different from the rest of the world.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:13 pm
Well, they're also responsible for the metric system (it is nota "Royale With Cheese"!).
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:15 pm
That I don't mind... easier to use. IMO.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:17 pm
Bah, you can take my yards, feet and rods when you pry them from my cold, dead hands!
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:21 pm
That's basically the U.S's attitude as well.Rochey wrote:Bah, you can take my yards, feet and rods when you pry them from my cold, dead hands!
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:23 pm
Except for me. But I'm a physicist, so I work with metric.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:26 pm
You don't count - you short change people when you sell pints.me,myself and I wrote:That's basically the U.S's attitude as well.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:27 pm
Do we really?Captain Seafort wrote:You don't count - you short change people when you sell pints.me,myself and I wrote:That's basically the U.S's attitude as well.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:30 pm
Yep - the US pint only has 16 fl oz, compared with 20 in the Imperial pint. Plus your fl oz are apparently slightly smaller for some reason.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:04 am
Wow the chances of that happening must be tiny.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:49 pm
The whole point of the boats is that they are really hard to detect - an SSBN is just about the quietest thing in the ocean, indeed they are sometimes claimed to be quieter than the background noise of the ocean itself. So it's believable to me that two could collide whilst not realising that the other is there. This is especially true if there was bad whether, which causes greatly increased noise on the surface, and if the two boats were at a relatively shallow depth at the time.
But hitting one another by random chance... it's so unlikely that I find it almost impossible to believe. I am wondering if they were not conducting some sort of exercise together, deliberately coming in close to one another to allow them to test out their sonar performance or something. That's also hard to believe, because governments don't really play about with SSBNs - in many ways they are the single most critical military asset the nation has, and the absolute number one priority of anything you do with them is that you don't take ANY risk of compromising them in any way. Even though France is an ally, to deliberately let the French Navy get close to an SSBN would be an almost unthinkable risk.
Any way you cut it this incident just seems incredible. I'm no conspiracy nut, but I can't help but wonder if there was something more going on here than they are telling us.
But hitting one another by random chance... it's so unlikely that I find it almost impossible to believe. I am wondering if they were not conducting some sort of exercise together, deliberately coming in close to one another to allow them to test out their sonar performance or something. That's also hard to believe, because governments don't really play about with SSBNs - in many ways they are the single most critical military asset the nation has, and the absolute number one priority of anything you do with them is that you don't take ANY risk of compromising them in any way. Even though France is an ally, to deliberately let the French Navy get close to an SSBN would be an almost unthinkable risk.
Any way you cut it this incident just seems incredible. I'm no conspiracy nut, but I can't help but wonder if there was something more going on here than they are telling us.
Re: RN and French ballistic missile subs hit each other
Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:07 pm
I'd love for someone to do the math on this, 2 subs, the atlantic ocean, odds... 1 in 47 pentillion?