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Science

Kursk Destroyed By Cavitation Missles? 179

Posted by Hemos from the bad-test dept.
A reader submitted: "One of Russia's biggest independent TV networks, NTV, broadcast at about 22:20pm that the developers of the Shkval torpedo system (which was discussed here on July 23rd) claim that Kursk was testing their torpedoes, and one of them accidentially homed on the sub itself. It was also mentioned that the torpedo can travel at the speed of 200 knots. What could it mean to the development of the supersonic underwater devices? It seems that even before corporations get to science, blood does." I just saw this on the news as well, and a number of readers submitted this over the last few days.
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Kursk Destroyed By Cavitation Missles? More

Kursk Destroyed By Cavitation Missles?

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  • Sigh.... (Score:4)

    by sdo1 ( 213835 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:28AM (#836192) Journal
    Didn't they learn anything from Hunt for Red October?
  • "Geeks in Space: Kursk Destroyed By Cavitation Missles"

    The Kursk wasn't really destroyed, right? It was just sunk to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

  • Anybody know if this is possible?

    What did they do put in cordinates 0,0?

    I thought Torpedos were Fire & forget.

    Please let me know

  • Yes, I'm sure the crew is alive and ok on a US sub after their successful defection. After all, there were american subs in the waters near the Kursk...

  • Probably Not True (Score:5)

    by scotpurl ( 28825 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:32AM (#836196)
    Since a fast torpedo goes fast and turns slowly -- I doubt that it got turned around.

    More likely they've got the same problems that plagued the US torpedo inventory during the 50's and 60's. Namely, spontaneous arming. One of the US subs was lost in the Atlantic owing to a torpedo that armed itself in the tube.

    Hope the engineer that built that one feels at least slightly guilty.

  • Re:they torpedoed themselves? (Score:3)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:32AM (#836197) Journal
    Sure. Just type:

    torpedo 127.0.0.1

    and kaboom!

    sulli

  • I was thinking the same thing, I wonder if the
    last words on the sub were:

    " You arrogant ass, you've killed us! "

    That's what I thought anyway...
  • i don't think the torpedoe ever left the chute, hence it targeted itself. you know, a misfire.
  • I had a feeling the Russians were testing something. Otherwise why would they release so much disinformation to keep everyone away until they ran out of options (made sure there wasn't anything noticable)?

    The fact that the disinformation came from the higher-ups makes the case stronger. I mean, how would the Secretary of the Navy KNOW everyone is dead, please go away? But he sure would know what was going on and want to keep everyone away. I'll be really surprised if the salvage effort goes ahead if there is anything left of the front of that sub.

    slightly related, did I hear correctly that the explosion was heard as a 3 on the Richter scale, or did I just dream that up again?

    "Yuri, you've lost ANOTHER one?" -Red October quote of the day

    -----
    My karma is still less than my age.

  • Torpedo probably got (Score:4)

    by AbbyNormal ( 216235 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:34AM (#836201) Homepage
    a BOD.
    "Torpedo Program not responding. Press any key to return to submarine"

    You are a unique individual, just like everyone else.
  • Also where did the geeks in space section go on
    thesync.com. I got a 404 for www.thesync.com/geeks
  • From the descriptions in the news, it appears that the forward torpedo room blew up, shredding everything forward of the conning tower. The rest of the submarine is intact but flooded.

  • Homing Missles... (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:35AM (#836204)
    From: Engineering Team (techgods@kremvax.org)
    To: Admiral Xinablutznuk (phb@kremvax.org)
    Subject: homing circuit
    Date: 8, October, 1999

    Hey, like, dude, we just, like, wanted to let you know that, uhh, there's a bug, well, a really small one, in the guidance system. If you, uhh, point the torpedo at yourself, it will, you know.. do it's thing...

    Probably nothing though, we fixed it by putting a sign on the side of the launcher that says "Point this side towards enemy"..

    From: Admiral Xinablutznuk (phb@kremvax.org)
    To: Engineering Team (techgods@kremvax.org)
    Subject: homing circuit
    Date: 21, Jun, 2000

    Das, are you thinkink we are stupid? Remove the sign, our sailors know this!

  • Torpedo Accident (Score:3)

    by Sun_Tzu99 ( 224988 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:35AM (#836205)
    Remember
    Torpedoes don't kill people... People kill people
    I actually have a few issues with NTV, from the filtered, poorly translated material that I see from them they don't really seem to know what is going on. It might be the fact that you can't seem to get a straight answer out of the Russian government or it might be incompetent news people. I'll wait a little before I give this report credability.
    It is a shame that people have to die in the name of science but sometimes things just need to be tested first hand. Think about the first person to eat an egg... or the first person who found out that cyanide kills.
  • Beacause those torpedoes are actually underwater missilles with over 2 mach speed. Imagine what kind of a circle it would have to make before hitting the mothership. Possible that an another boat fired a torpedo and by accident got Kursk.
  • First their were reports that the Kursk crew was tapping on the hull, then there were numerous false reports due to speculation about why it sunk. From the Norwegian video and examination the submarine was most likely destroyed by a missle being detonated in the forward part of the hull. This happened to a US sub in 1968 and wasn't the first time for a Russian sub.
  • Isn't that "destroyed" enough? A billion-dollar (don't even ask me to calculate rubles) submarine sunk in a couple hundred meters of some of the coldest water on earth, with a loss of all hands?

    I mean, what would it take to make you happy? Seeing the thing in scattered chunks all over the seafloor, perhaps?

    Sheesh.

    Chris Tembreull
    Web Developer, NEC Systems, Inc.

  • Or Godzilla?
  • "You arrogant ass! You've killed US!"

    =-=-=
  • Torpedos aren't dialed in to attack a specific point. Because they're launched at fast moving targets, it's necessary for them to be able to follow that target, by means of sonar and/or (depending on the type of torpedo) magnetics. It just goes in a general direction until it picks something up. That's why chaff can be used to throw the missle off the intended target. If the intended target is missed, however, the torp has no way of knowing this and will continue to search for a target until detonated or timed out.
  • It's more like geeks at sea...
    GeekQuest DSV, anyone?

  • Didn't the Russians say just last week that a US vessel was nearby, hinting that the US may have shot at them? Hmmm... -Ozzy
  • thank you.

    I always get worried when people start talking about wepon systems that target themselves.

    Or for that matter ME.
  • I forgot to mention that /this/ is the reason for all major f*ckups - management. :)
  • I think it is sad that a country with so many social and financial problems keeps clinging to their cold war mindset. Does russia really need nuclear subs nowadays? I would seem to think that money spent on their military program could maybe be better spent bringing the country back together. Last I heard, Russia (of whatever the country is called today,) had problems even paying its soldiers. It is such a suprise they are having accidents with their nuclear subs, which testing new "state of the art" torpedos? -Pete
  • also with less money in the budget to go to the Russian Millitary, I'm sure some corners were cut.

    A story that stands out in my mind was after the cold war, inspectors went to view the ICBM missle launch stations in Russia. When the American inspectors looked into the silos, they saw puddles of water and rusted metal. These locations would have a hard time launching a bottle rocket, let alone a full sized nuke.
  • Torps may be fire and forget but it's hard to tell the sheep from the goats. They can be preprogrammed before launch to run a specific search pattern but it's possible (however improbable) that the torp did a u-turn after launch and then locked onto Kursk as the choicest target. Torps (like other weapons ranging from ICBMs to bullets) don't have integral IFF (Identification, Friend or Foe) systems. It's up to the controller/launcher to identify the target. The weapon's job is just to kill the target. One sonar blip looks pretty much like another to a torpedo.

    Another option would be that the torp went hot in the boat and detonated before the crew could jettison or deactivate it.

    Yes, there are failsafes to prevent all of this, but sometimes the failsafes fail.

    Neutron

  • Unless the thing misfired. If the torpedo failed to launch and then somehow came to believe that it had hit the target, that would be highly troublesome.

    But I too am highly skeptical of this one. Russian media are well-known for rumor-mongering, so I don't give it much credibility.

    If I were Russian, though, I would be hella pissed. I know it's a little bit off-topic, but this Putin guy is a total incompetent.

    sulli

  • Unlikely. The "Squall" missles cannot be steered. Slashdot had a story on supercavitation which went into detail on EXACTLY this missile only a few weeks ago, I'm surprised no one remembers. :)

    The long and the short of it is this: Shkval can't be steered, so they couldn't have fired on themselves.

  • Error reading DESTINATION.COORDINATES. Press any key to continue

    Error executing SELF_DESTRUCT.EXE. Program is valid in Win32 mode.

    Unrecoverable error. Please reinstall torpedo. Returning to submarine...

  • This looks like a job for the US Navy SEALS.... (Score:5)

    by cybrpnk ( 94636 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:41AM (#836222)
    Anybody want to start a betting pool ***(pun)*** on just how long before covert US Navy SEAL divers are roaming up and down the flooded passageways of this sub? It has never-before-seen surface-to-surface missiles designed to take out US aircraft carriers, maybe warp-speed torpedos, certainly top-of-the-line Russian crypto gear, in only 350 feet of international water. Project Jennifer raised a sub from miles down back in the early 70s, and a Russian boomer that sank due to internal fire off the coast of Bermuda in 1986 in thousands of feet of water mysteriously had the missile hatches peeled open and several missiles gone when a follow-on Russian oceanographic expedition photographed it a few months later. Hmm, wonder who did that? The Kursk is a piece of (very tempting) cake in comparison...
  • "Always remember that the weapon in your hand was made by the lowest bidder..."
  • See? It is comments like that that makes me proud to be a nerd -- I love to laugh uncontrollably at jokes that 99% of the rest of the world wouldn't get.

    Thank you sulli. You rock!
  • It's really hard to tell what happened, but I seriously doubt a torpedo detonation was responsible for the initial explosion. Two explosions were heard by Norway and the U.S. The first one was (relatively) small - smaller than a sub torpedo. It was followed by a second larger blast - more powerful than a single torpedo.

    Submarine torpedos are designed to arm after they've travelled some distance from the boat. I can't imagine a scenario where one would detonate in the tube.

    More likely, there was some other cause for the initial explosion. This could be any number of things -- buildup and ignition of hazardous gas or torpedo fuel, hydrogen exploding in the battery compartment, or perhaps even hitting a mine. Whatever happened, it seemed to have set off the rest of the torpedo room.

    Not that I know anything about subs ;)

    Best regards,

    SEAL
  • Sure, let Russia just abandon it's military. I'm sure Chechnya(sp) wouldn't mind. Or China for that matter. Hell, why don't we just waltz in and "help" them. No, there are plenty of valid reasons why the Russians need to maintain their military, just as we did during the Depression. You are using the same arguments some people use when they ask why the US still needs it's big military when we could use the money other places. Simple, because if you don't have a nation to rebuild where are you going to put your money?
    There are plenty of enemies still out there, and defense is as important ( or more important ) then ever.

    I agree tho, it is a sad state, but hopefully they will get through it.
  • This realy is an example of history in action. Russia, or that geographic region, has always been gun ho for the military. It is the only way they survived, in just recent history look at Napolean or even Hitler, who attacked Russia because he felt their army was weak and unattentive because they were fighting Japan in the east. A strong military has become part of Russias cultural Identity, as much as owning a car has become part of America's cultural Identity.

    Plus you don't see the U.S. backing down from it's "cold war" thinking. Yea, We need a 10 Billion + Missile defense system!
  • Do they have any choice? Bush is pushing anti missile defence and more expense for military, including "Black projects". China is almost second in military after US, their fleet is bigger then Russian one already. Russian would be happy to get rid of nuclear weapons and military, but US doesnt want really to follow them.
  • Remember, the original cavitation missile article stated that one of the big problems with these guys are that you can't turn them: the missile's shooting through a big vacuum (no air, no water), so there's nothing for fins to push on. They basically go in a straight line once they're fired.

    However, it may very well be that the missile exploded before leaving the tube. That would make sense.

  • I heard that on NPR riding across Wyoming. But I also heard that there were 2 explosions, recorded, a small one, then the big one (3)
  • But I think the positive side to all of this is that merely a decade ago, this would not have been reported. Likely, there would have been no international effort to help with a rescue attempt. It is sad that a country with their economic woes must still funnel such vast funds into enormous military projects. Worse yet, when they fail. Maybe in another couple of decades even this won't happen.
  • You wrote: over 2 mach speed.

    Just to clarify and state the obvious, 200 knots is only 220 mph. Mach 2 is, in air, something on the order of 1300 mph (depending on altitude), and underwater, more like 4500 mph.
    Rafe

    V^^^^V
  • No, silly, submaries <tt>ping</tt>.
  • It is extremely unlikely that a torpedo - especially one moving as fast as claimed - would circle around and hit the firing ship. The turning radius is just too large, and there's only so much fuel on board the torp.

    It is much more likely that the warhead armed too early, and it detonated in the tube, or perhaps <i>Kusk</i> wound up downrange, and got shot by the tester - although a 200 knot torpedo would make a HELL of a lot of noise, so you'd think one of the Yank subs would have heard it if the latter was the case.

    What strikes me as odd though is that I'm pretty sure <i>Kursk</i> is a boomer, that is, a strategic missle sub. It seems an odd choice to use a boomer to test a hunter/killer weapon.

    The 200 knot torpedo is pretty impressive though. That's like 4 times faster than the current crop. I wonder how long the range is, and how fast it can turn, and how the guidence system (if any) works. Most modern torpedos are wire-guided, active-homing terminal. You steer it from the ship via commands down the wire until it picks up the target with its own active sonar, and then it homes in from there. Keeping a wire payed out without breaking at 200kts is quite the trick.

  • Canada retires all submarines (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Due to the recent tragedy of the Kursk, Canada has decided to retire it's whole fleet 3 three submarines to avoid such catastrophies.

    In other unrelated news, several non-NATO supporting countries have have announced they will be disarming and dismantling their rust seeking torpedoes."

    --CH - "Tailgate" (BB)

  • Anyone else find the humour here inappropriate? (Score:4)

    by Jinker ( 133372 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:48AM (#836236) Homepage
    C'mon people, a hundred and some people died 9 or ten days ago and this thread's filled with all sorts of intellectual commentary such as:
    'Das noogoodnick 0,0 coordinates are targeting torpedo at 127.0.0.1 and causing a bluescreen.'

    The guys are DEAD. Even if it was some giant Russian cock-up, I don't think it's all that funny.

    How amusing were all the morbid NASA jokes when the Challenger blew up?

    -Greg

  • Actually, that was my first thought when the Russians initially refused outside help. But it is very strange. Why would the Russians want to keep this a secret when it was apparently public knowledge? And what use is military might in this post-Cold War era? It seems that the Russians might see more profit from selling the weapons than using them.
    Unless, of course, these weapons are incredibly powerful. With the boost in speed must come a comparable boost in range. The Russian test sub must have been taking many precautions. The torpedo must have acquired them as a target and almost instantaneously hit them, in this scenario, since they have a remote detonation control(as my memory of Red October serves). They may have given up on a weapon with which they had lost contact, and by the time it came back on their equipment, it was too late, because of the weapon's blinding speed. Now think about this: extreme speeds and extreme range, such that even when a ship is aware of the danger, it is unable to protect itself once targeted.
    Whatever the case, it seems clear that this weapon is the new naval superweapon. Add nuclear warheads to them, and you have a weapon which is impervious even to the newest US 'Star Wars'-style air defense schemes.
    A new arms race? Perhaps. Don't forget the economic repercussions of such a race--the winner in the arms race is always the more economically viable country. And how economically viable would the States be if nuclear warheads mounted on supersonic torpedoes were to hit every major US port. New York City and Boston unlivable because of fallout from the water table? What if they could be carefully programmed to travel up waterways, and avoid all but their programmed target? It seems that this would be possible in this advanced age.
    Maybe the Cold War isn't over...and maybe it's about to get hot. There are a lot of nukes in the world, and a lot of people who would rather see the Americans without their vast economic resources, even if they don't gain by the loss.
    Of course, I just really like making up conspiracy theories. Don't forget that.
  • Right, and (IIRC) that seemed to indicate that the most likely problem was a torpedo misfire... the bay was closed, causing the torpedo to explode in the tube.

    The idea of a new 200MPH torpedo turning and homing back on them seems a little far-fetched to me. I think I will wait for the investigations before drawing any conclusions.

  • There's an article [newscientist.com] in New Scientist on supersonic cavitating torpedos and submarines.
  • Granted, I don't understand everythign involved. IANADSD (Deep Sea Diver) but I do play one on TV. (j/k!)

    Now, my point is, if it were that easy to send some folks down to have a look-see, wouldn't it have been much easier to rescue the survivors of the initial explosion?

  • One a 1.5, the other a 3.5 (0:2:15 later).
    Learn more here [norsar.no].

    The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

  • So much speculation and conjecture; so little facts or reasoning.

    What if the Mach 2 torpedo was launched by another sub, hit the Kursk, and caused it's demise?

    What if the Mach 2 torpedo did not explode or was not equipped with a warhead? That would account for the initial, low powered thud. I'm sure a torpedo traveling at high velocity and hitting a submarine would cause enough damage for it to turn turtle and crash towards the seafloor, causing the rest of the torpedos to fall off their mounts and go kaboom? Surely this would cause a bigger boom a few minutes later?

    What do I know, though? I always hated that Village People song.

  • SHUT THE FUCK UP (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You know, some people had families on that submarine. And we don't really appreciate you making some big fucking joke over it so that you gain karma points. You are such a fucking prick to poke fun at someone else's disfortune. Shame on you, and shame on the moderators who helped you.
  • Saying that the explosion registered a 3 on the richter scale doesn't mean a whole to to me. Does anybody know a rough translation for this into some more common measure of explosive force (lbs of TNT perhaps)?

    ---

  • That's usual when it's about submarines or ASW.

    Submarines are one of the most secret areas of military. You don't get much news about where US subs are going and what they are doing, do you?

    I believe there really isn't anything very secret there, otherwise they wouldn't let anybody foreign that close to their sub.

    US didn't make much noise either when they lost Scorpion...

  • A recent Popular Science had an article on supersonic torpedoes that utilized cavitation, and they acted essentially like a gun. The nature of cavitation weaponry means you have very little control surface in the water, as the torpedo is surrounded by an air pocket, except for at the nose. If cavitation torpedoes are going to do any turning I doubt it will be any faster than 1% per foot for quite some time.

    --
    Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

  • well, 200 mph mentioned in the article isn't quite mach2. If it has enough range, a non-uniformity (bias?) in the random-walk target searching routine will eventually bring it full circle.

    but I'd expect their firmware to be pretty well debugged.
  • i have it on good authority (someone from COMSUBLANT) that the US had two subs in the vicinity near the Kursk at the time the incident. The subs hear only one small explosion and then a series of explosions following the first. they heard no 200 knot missle....

  • Re:Probably Not True (Score:4)

    by Macgruder ( 127971 ) <chandies.williamson@ g m ail.com> on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:52AM (#836249)
    >>More likely they've got the same problems that plagued the US torpedo inventory during the 50's and 60's. Namely, spontaneous arming. One of the US subs was lost in the Atlantic owing to a torpedo that armed itself in the tube.

    It sounds like you are refering to the dimise of the USS Scorpion. While the batteries of the Mark 37 were known to overheat, and posssibly set off what is known as a 'low-order' cook off, there is little evidence to show this was what sunk the Scorpion.

    Instead, it appears as though the inner door of the Scorpion's Trash Disposal Unit (TDU) failed. The outer door was already listed as out of commision. When it failed, there was approximately a 5 inch hole open to sea. Directly below this compartment are the lead-acid wet cell batteries that provided backup power. When sea water comes in contact with the battery acid, Chlorine and Hydrogen are the byproducts. Not to mention short circuiting the cells themselves. SPARK + HYDROGEN = BOOM.

    The hole found in the operations compartment when they located wreck is located right next to where the batteries were located.

    There is a bit more data, but I belive it's still classified.

    My credentials? I'm a former submariner, and my father (also a submariner) was involved in the Scorpion's investigation.
  • Hope the engineer that built that one feels at least slightly guilty.

    That is an absolutely terrible thing to say. I'm sure he does but you can't blame the engineer for what happened, especially if it's an unproven technology. Why not blame the idiot who planned the test and put the men at risk. Furthermore, if they *are* testing new torpedos why in the hell would they use armed torpedos, why not fire off a bunch of duds and test that way. I have heard (a long time ago) about the problem US subs had with timed torpedos blowing before they reached the safe limit. The whole thing seems fishy to me (really, no pun intended) All I know is that someone has alot of explaining to do.
  • A torpedo is supposed to have a safety mechanism that prevents it from detonating after a 180 degree turn, preventing this sort of accident. If it's true that the Kursk was hit by it's own weapon, and that is an unsubstantiated theory, then it means a bad design or bad quality control. It is more likely that the torpedo exploded while still in the submarine, or just outside it. The 60's era US submarines had a design flaw where a torpedo would start running inside the sub (called a hot run) when some testing leads were hooked up incorrectly. The only way to stop it was to do an emergency 180 degree turn, which activated the torpedo's safety mechanism designed to keep the torpedo from going after the sub that fired it. It would be interesting to see if the Kursk make any radical changes in depth, direction, or speed just before the explosion.
    • The Russian Military had some very experimental technology in the sub, and did NOT want survivors in the hands of the US military, =especially= given the level of connectivity to US military databases.
    • The sub was a "live" target, during training, and the torpedo either armed itself or was armed by accident.
    • There was sufficient EMR to cause the torpedo to spontaneously arm and/or detonate.

  • "hot run" (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:54AM (#836253)

    The Kursk disaster was almost certainly caused by a "hot run" in one of their torpedo tubes.

    A torpedo fired from underwater must carry an oxidizer with the fuel, since it is hard to get the O2 out of H2O on the fly. This creates a potential hazard, and a "hot run" is what happens when the torpedo starts up before it is supposed to (i.e. in the tube or on the rack).

    If this happened, it is possible (although unlikely if you believe the hype in the case of the MK 48's currently used on U.S. submarines) that a warhead could "cook off," causing an explosion. It is also possible that the torpedo in the tube could have itself exploded, causing a serious flooding casualty.

    The men in the torpedo room would have perished instantly from high-speed water in the people compartment and the resultant pressure increase. Those that survived would have been behind an already closed watertight door, because a hull breach of the diameter of a torpedo tube or larger at operating depth for a nuclear sub would cause an increase in air pressure too rapid to permit casualty actions before rendering the crew incapable of them.

    I speculate that there is an engine room watertight door on that class of ship, and no others forward of it. The people in engineering probably survived (accounting for the shut down reactor and lack of a radiological event), and that those are the people who were doing the tapping. If a Russian sub is anything like a U.S. sub, there would have been 8 and 20 people working in the engineering spaces. Everyone else would have been in the forward compartment at battle stations for the torpedo drill.

    A lot of this is based on SOP for U.S. subs, but I have a feeling that the Russian procedures are fairly similar.

  • Re:Anyone else find the humour here inappropriate? (Score:3)

    by SgtPepper ( 5548 ) on Tuesday August 22, 2000 @10:54AM (#836254)
    Actually I did find the morbid NASA jokes when Challenger blew up funny.

    Now this doesn't take away from the tragedy at all. Some people simply deal with these situations better with humour. I know I do. And apperantly so do a number of others.

    Hell, the military has it's own morbid sense of humour about such things. They call the escape hatches "Mother Hatches", supposedly because only their Mom's believe they can escape from them.

    So, yes, they are dead. We are not. They were courages men, regardless of the flag they flew under. Let's not forget that. But for chrissakes, if you can't laugh at tradgedy, what are you going to laugh at? In this real world, light moments are few and far between, if we don't laugh at the dark, we might as well just commit suicide ourselves.
  • I have to disagree. In the book Blind Man's Bluff mention is made of the USS Scorpion which sank in the Atlantic in 1968. Its been about a year since I read it so the exact details may not be correct, but further inquiries have determined that the USS Scorpion was sunk by its own torpedo. Nova also had a special on the USS Scorpion in an episode about submarine spying.
  • The first report russia put out was that the sub had colided with another sub. They seemed to imply that it was a US sub.
  • uh, the cold war is over buddy. i doubt that they were designed to take out the united states carriers. i bet that was the furthest thing from their minds. i mean, they're just not stupid enough to start a war with the US, and hence all of NATO.

    i doubt the US is gonna go after it either. think about it, how much attention would a us ship get if it got anywhere near that thing? that sub has been all over the news probably over a lot of the world for awhile now...

    -------

  • i believe it's deep enough that for single divers (as opposed to in a mini-sub) to go down, they have to wear bulky suits that make getting through the hatches of the sub very inconvinient, even dangerous.

    "Leave the gun, take the canoli."
  • Mattel company made the stocks for M-16s during the Vietnam war. (Nice, eh?)
  • If the folks at ntv.ru did not know about the Slashdot Effect, they will soon.
  • Hitler, who attacked Russia because he felt their army was weak and unattentive because they were fighting Japan in the east.

    Actually, Russia and Japan signed a nonagression pact, with the USSR only entering the war against Japan on 8 August, 1945 (2 days after Hiroshima.)

    The USSR and Japan did not fight each other for practically the whole war.
  • Project Jennifer raised a sub from miles down back in the early 70s...

    Project Jennifer attempted to raise a sub back in the early 70s, and ended up basically turning the sub into a large pile of very small pieces of rusted metal.

    A good book that mentions this is Blind Man's Bluff : The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage [amazon.com]. Pretty good page turner.

  • Wrong. Try again.

    A 200 knot torpedo/missile (that's not even designed to make drastic course changes at all, much less 180 degrees) has a minuscule (read: impossible) chance of taking out its launch platform once launched.

    Far more likely is the theory that K-141's standard torpedoes detonated in the exercise, probably while still in the tube or weapons racks.

    The Bellona Foundation has posted their analysis here [bellona.no], and the venerable folks at Jane's have their's up as well [janes.com].

    Finally, the effect this will have on Naval funding and deployment was discussed at STRATFOR [stratfor.com].

  • Saying that the explosion registered a 3 on the richter scale doesn't mean a whole to to me. Does anybody know a rough translation for this into some more common measure of explosive force (lbs of TNT perhaps)?

    Richter scale 3 is equivalent to 29 tons of TNT going off. 3.5 is equivalent to 73 tons of TNT and 4.0 is around 1000 tons of TNT or a small nuclear device.

    That is a truely sobering statistic.

    Toby Haynes

  • This appears to be a problem ... according to the article, these missiles can only really travel in a straight line.

    Perhaps the shock wave caused by the collapsing vacuum behind the torpedo ripped open the sub ...

    ... Anyone notice how this technology makes surface ships obsolete? One submarine equipped with these missiles could sink an entire fleet of warships in a few minutes, from miles away, and no one would even know who did it ... shocking!

  • Most modern torpedos are wire-guided, active-homing terminal. You steer it from the ship via commands down the wire until it picks up the target with its own active sonar, and then it homes in from there. Keeping a wire payed out without breaking at 200kts is quite the trick.

    Isn't the cavitation going to play merry hell with using active sonar as an targeting mechanism? You are shoving a load of water off the torpedo and making a hell of a racket so that is going to require some impressive sonar signal strength to get a decent signal noise through the cavitation.

    Confused,

    Toby Haynes

  • You mean the "Mom" hatch? The little spot so that the seamen could take the moms on the tour and go "See Mom if the ship goes down I hide in that hatch and I can just swim to the surface." Knowing damn well they'll never make it.
    -cpd
  • I wonder if the place will become a minefield in a week.
  • How amusing were all the morbid NASA jokes when the Challenger blew up?

    quite funny, actually, if I remember. Sick humor does serve a purpose, perhaps akin to satire: You laugh so you don't cry. We have a problem confronting death in our society; humor takes some of the edge off of that. I won't argue that it does so in a tasteful manner.

    Is this whole situation tragic? Very much so. Would I laugh if one of the widows was sitting next to me? Of course not.

    But, like it or not, most of us like to laugh at bone-headed technological screwups, and the irony of being killed by your ships' own offensive weapon. I certainly won't argue that it's "proper" or "intellectual", or that you shouldn't be bothered by the tactlessness of some of it. But I will argue that it is a natural means of dealing with an uncomfortable subject.

    Stevis

  • Actually, TOW (and similarly guided missiles, like Sagger) are actually fairly slow, in the 400MPH range. Of course, the 4km range and the ability to steer the missile make up for it somewhat. ;)

    And TOW wires break *all the time*. The last TOW shoot I did had 2 wire breaks in 10 missiles.

    I would imagine that keeping a wire alive in water, which is much more viscous than air, would be even tougher.

    But it's moot anyway - further reading reveals that the Russian torps in question are unguided.

  • Just hours after announcing GiS going on hiatus, we get another GiS story. Of course, its missing the inane audio track and rambling subject matter, so it doesn't live up to its predecessors :-)

    ObOnTopic, a cavitation missile would have made a horrendous noise which could have been picked up by many nations underwater listening posts. The ruski press tends towards sensationalistic stories so outlandish it makes british tabloids seem resposible by comparison. But a cavitation missile which couldn't leave the tube for whatever techincal reason could have caused the first explosion, leading to the warhead or other explosives in the area getting set off.

    the AC
  • Remember back near 1984, when the Soviet sub K219 brushed against an American sub, causing the nuclear missile tubes to flood, the reactor to almost melt down, and the entire sub to sink? A movie was made about that ("Hostile Waters", starring Alec Guinness and Martin Sheen, as the Soviet and American sub commanders, respectively).

    The Siberia level of Soldier of Fortune reminds me of this, too. Especially with the exploding helicopter and the noxious gas. The Russian space program has some blunders, too: They were the ones to achieve the first fatality in space. I think it was when a Cosmonaut was in Soyuz (maybe Vostok or Voskhod, I lost the October 86 issue of National Geographic, that's what had it). Then came the defective valve on a later Soyuz, which caused the three Cosmonauts onboard to suffocate prior to re-entry. Then there's the Mir blunder, when a Progress freighter was navigated by hand. The monitor went blank, until 400 milliseconds before it hit the station, puncturing one of the modules.

    We only have to wait (probably not long) before the next blunder occurs. The only question remaining is who will be next.

  • I think it is sad that a country with so many social and financial problems keeps clinging to their cold war mindset. Does russia really need nuclear subs anyway? I would seem to think that money spent on their military program could maybe be better spent bringing the country back together.

    Probably more than the US needs its fourteen (sixteen?) carriers and scads of boomers. As North Americans, we've got a bit of an ivory tower complex going. Nobody alive on this continent today, going back I'd say three or maybe four generations, has any recollections of what it's like to have their homeland be on the wrong end of a conflict. Civil War veterans would have had fits if they'd seen what some parts of the world are going through today, or have gone through in the past century.

    Keep in mind that Russia is a very large country and is not entirely surrounded by friendly neighbours. Territorial disputes up and down the east (China, for example, still has a claim on Russia's Irkutsk region, which it said was taken from it under duress), the scads of civil problems in southern European Russia, and so forth.. It's a very hostile part of the world. This is also a country, remember, that has been attacked roughly once per generation for the past seven hundred years. It's not the friendliest position one can be in, considering their only real option otherwise would be to do something drastic like give up Siberia to the Urals.

    As for the Cold War mindset, things like that die hard, as anyone living in a NATO country would know. They weren't bent on world conquest like the propaganda stated - any more than the US was bent on world conquest, like Soviet propaganda stated. Because of that, and the whole slapped-every-few-decades thing they put up with, a large military helps a good number of people there feel secure. A lot of the people in the military (not all, mind you, but a lot) are in there simply because they think they're Doing The Right Thing. Or they're getting three meals a day, depending on the situation.

    I don't think it's inexcusable for Russia to have a modern and/or large military. Ineffecient, yes; but as someone else said the US having a large military during the Depression was almost as bad. However, there's a fairly good chance that if they cut back too much on - or removed altogether - their armed forces, someone foreign or domestic could come along to make their lives a lot worse.

    People have their problems, and sometimes some folks are unfortunate enough to pay the price for it like the Kursk's crew did, but in the end it's in the same interest as any other nation's: making sure they've got a country to come home to at the end of the day.

    -Patrick Stewart

  • A friend of mine who used to be in Navy ROTC said that sub commanders often like to repeat this zinger:

    "Son, there are only two kinds of boats in the ocean. Submarines... and targets."

  • "uh, the cold war is over buddy. i doubt that they were designed to take out the united states carriers. i bet that was the furthest thing from their minds. i mean, they're just not stupid enough to start a war with the US, and hence all of NATO."

    Man, that would have to be one of the most naive comments I've heard in a long time. Just curious - how old are you?

    The fact remains that a *lot* of weaponry that is still in operation today was designed and implemented during the heigh days of the Cold War, and yes - a lot of that Russian technology *WAS* designed to take out U.S. military gear.

    You're a victim of disinformation if you think that the Russian military complex wasn't designed to lock horns with the U.S... or at the very least, you're over-patriotic to think that a foreign power wouldn't challenge the U.S. That's what the Cold War was all about, after all, and there's nothing wrong with any of the gear, from a technology standpoint, that was designed and implemented during that period that would preclude it from *still being in use*.

    Just because the computer world has been inflicted by the insanity of obsessive upgrade-itis doesn't mean that other fields have as well... if a technology works (for example, a torpedo that was designed to blow the crap out of a U.S. aircraft carrier actually does the job), there is no reason why it can't stay in place as a functioning system for years and years.

    Which is the case with much of what's on board the Kursk.
  • If I remember for the year before the Scorpion went down, they scrimped on general repairs on the ship (they spent way less than normal for maintainance for that class of sub).

    It's small wonder why there was mechanical problems on that sub and your scenario of the TDU failure causing a major rush of seawater into the sub, which shorted out the batteries to cause the ka-boom! that destroyed the ship is not so far-fetched.
  • A dud moving at 200 knots, powered by a rocket, isn't much of a dud, and does sync up with the two explosions reported.

    Chris

    Surfing the net and other cliches...
  • couple of points:

    diving to these depths isn't that uncommon on tri-mix.

    your decompression times do suck.

    the divers can reach the sub in a relatively short amount of time.

    biggest problem ?

    you can't get into the sub while wearing your rig. you'd have to cut holes in the sub to get into it which would probably lead to problems for those people inside the sub.
  • some of the most glaring being the early nuclear-tipped (!) torpedo designs like the Mk 45.

    The best nuclear weapon we ever developed, IMHO, was the Davy Crockett [brook.edu]... Though I've a soft spot in my heart for the MADM [brook.edu]..

    Your Working Boy,
  • The Glomar Explorer (the ship built for and used in project jennifer), isn't exactly inconspicous. It's a big honkin ship that the russkies just MIGHT notice.

    That Golf that we grabbed in the '70s was in the middle of the Pacific ocean, FAR from the red fleet's bases... AND they did NOT know where it sunk. We DID know, by virtue of having wired practiclly the entire Pacific seabed with sonar.

    (contrary to what the other poster said, we *DID* get PART of the sub, most of it did disentegrate and go back down tho)

    The Kursk, OTOH, sunk a hundred miles off of the russia's largest naval base. AND the ruskies know EXACTLY where it lies. The red fleet may not be what it used to be, but somehow, I doubt that Glomar Explorer could sneak up and grab the Kursk without being caught and sunk.

    From a purely technical POV tho, grabbing that Oscar would be much easier tho. To grab the Golf, Glomar Explorer had to reach down approx. 17,500ft (MORE than three MILES (!!!)). The Kursk only lies in about 350ft. But, the Explorer's not gonna get anywhere NEAR the place.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • I ask, knowing full well that few of us have that kind of bravery in our harts. We should raise a glass to such heroes, and pray we never have to go there. For if God or loyalty call us to such a place. I will only ask that it be quick and clean not slow and obscene. While if there is to be time between destruction and death let there be duties to keep our harts and minds from the pain.

    This is all I ask. Dear God.
  • I think it is sad that a country with so many social and financial problems keeps clinging to their cold war mindset.

    Uh, wait ... are you talking here about Russia? Or the US?

    I remember hearing the talk about a "peace dividend" and laughing. There are no well-paid corporate lobbyists for peace ...

  • If this is the case, we should send our appreciation to the good work of men in engineering, whereever they may be now.

    I wonder if they could restart the reactors? If the oxygen generation system and heaters had survived, could they have lived for a while in engineering, as the reactor could provide heat, water and air?

    Finally, it is my understanding that subs are now dampened to prevent noise from escaping. Would that not prevent the noise from tapping escaping the ship?

  • Getting back to the situation with the Kursk, here's one possible scenario:

    1. Something flammable in the front of the sub "cooked off" or a torpedo had a propellent explosion, which caused the first explosion recorded by US Navy and Norwegian authorities.

    2. The explosion set off a series of catastrophic events throughout the front of the sub, and this may have caused the propellents in the torpedoes and/or forward SS-N-19 missiles to "cook off," which caused the second, much louder explosion and the major structural damage to the sub.

    Whatever it is, the crew is now on "eternal patrol," as the old Navy hymn goes. :-(
  • Further, just because the Russians wouldn't expect to be able to win a war against the US does not mean they wouldn't design their weapons to at least attempt to inflict some damage on US warships. It would be ridiculous to expect they would simply capitulate in the event of an actual war.

    The contents of a Russian sub would also be an excellent indicator as to the existing state of the art among non-NATO forces and as such be of interest to the US navy.

    Of course I do think that the notion that the US actually caused this to happen in any way is purely preposterous (there are easier ways to find out - including buying spys) and that the original poster was just trolling.
  • I thought it was the USS Scorpion, so thanks for correcting me.

    What tidbit of fogged knowledge that was floating around in my head was this:

    * US torpedos have/had a safety that disarmed the torpedo if it pulled a 180 degree turn.
    * at least one of the models of torpedo out in use would spontaneously arm. disarming it would involve turning the boat around.
    * some US sub sank mysteriously, but investigation later concluded that the ship was in the midst of a fast 180 degree turn when something in a front tube detonated, thus the conclusion that the torpedo had armed, and they were trying to get the safety to pop.

    So, my shared memory pool assembled all that together, stuck the Scorpion's name on it, and got some/all of it wrong. Oops.
  • thats a negative......the personel hatches are very small on our subs and on the russians. you would be able to gain access through the missile hatches but you'd once again have to cut through the doors as they were not designed to be opened from the outside.
  • Rutger Hauer played the Soviet Commander Capt. Britanov, not Alec Guinness.

    -Vercingetorix
  • Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole cover and die.

  • Biggest problem (and this was stated several times, by western as well as russian sources):

    The waters at that depth are VERY active. Divers wouldn't have enough equipment to stay under control. Its not like the depths of the titanic or the depths of that nature (300+ feet) in the smoother-flowing carribean. The waters at the bottom of that part of northern europe are horrendous; they couldn't get a rescue sub to hold still long enough to connect.

    And if a sub couldn't hold still, don't expect a diver to be able to stand still in that...

  • Actually, that was my first thought when the Russians initially refused outside help. But it is very strange. Why would the Russians want to keep this a secret when it was apparently public knowledge?

    Some of the knowledge is public. Presumably a great deal of it is not. Details matter.

    Plus, secrecy is even more of a habit with their military and government than it is with ours.

    And what use is military might in this post-Cold War era?

    No disrespect meant, but ... what?! Even just in terms of a military as only a defense, Russia has at least as much a need for one as any other country, and more than most. The "end of the Cold War" was by no stretch of the imagination the end of war, nor the end of military-based international posturing.

    There's no need for a "new arms race" when the old one didn't end. Slowed down a little, maybe.

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