A submarine of the (former) United States is a very expensive piece of machinery.
The USS Connecticut was operating in the china sea when it collided with an unknown object. They now believe it is an uncharted underwater mountain. Wow. I thought radar would detect that, but I guess not?
The top 3 personnel on the sub have been relieved of command.
And now I run across this article talking about how a metallurgist has falsified reports about the steel the navy bought to make their subs with.
A Metallurgist Faked Steel-Test Results For Navy Subs For Decades
I mean holy crap! What the fuck is going on here? They just now found out about the fake metal reports? How many subs we got out there with unknown quality of hulls?
Makes me wonder if the metal used on the USS Connecticut is part of this batch the lady faked.
The sub was submerged so no radar, and active sonar is only for very special cases underway, in normal cruising at most the fathometer would be active but nothing scanning in front of the ship. Since subs cruise deep the seamount would never be detected without a really detailed side-scanning (active) sonar survey of the area.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the explanationn. I have no clue how that works. It seems to me forward scanning may be something they should look at. Subs ain't cheap.
DeleteNo active sonar, that is like shining a flashlight in a dark forest. Every other hunter in the field now knows where you are, which can draw explosive attention.
DeleteThe is the second seamount collision 16 years and we went decades (and hundreds of ship-years) at sea before the San Francisco in 2005. Losing the Connie is bad but not maintaining sound discipline underway is worse.
Gotcha. I saw a pic of the San Francisco earlier on the net. That thing really sustained some damage.
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