Russia Confirms Failed Missile Launch Caused Norway's Light Show 236
Ch_Omega writes "According to this article over at BarentsObserver, the giant spiral seen on the sky over Norway Wednesday morning local time has been confirmed to be the result of a failed Russian missile launch. Russia now confirms that '...the missile was launched from submerged position in the White Sea by the nuclear submarine Dmitri Donskoy. Studies of the telemetric data from the launch show that the two first stages of the missile functioned as they should, and that a technical malfunctioning occurred during the third stage.' There is also an article on this at The Daily Mail."
Re:Testing missiles? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Placement (Score:4, Informative)
Because White Sea is free of ice year round. For that reason most major submarine bases and shipyards are located on its coast. Most of Russia's coastline is devoid of infrastructure needed to support naval operations or whatever they still have left.
Re:Well paint me surprised: (Score:5, Informative)
as far as I know being able to launch a missile while the sub is submerged would be a huge leap forward in the nuclear arms race.
This video [youtube.com] seems to show underwater missile launches have been done for quite a while now...
Re:Well paint me surprised: (Score:5, Informative)
Have you been living in a cave the past 50 years? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-27_Polaris [wikipedia.org]
Re:Well paint me surprised: (Score:5, Informative)
Nearly all of the unfrozen sea that Russia has easy access to in the north is also relatively close to Norway (purple is the extent of sea ice):
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png [uiuc.edu]
Re:Placement (Score:3, Informative)
You're not thinking of Korea maybe? North Korea and China were close buddies. North Vietnam was better friends with the Soviets, and never really got on well with China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War [wikipedia.org]
The tensions between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge that led to Vietnam invading Cambodia was a chance for the Soviets and the Chinese to have a little war of their own.
Re:Nuclear Armageddon or Computer Glich? (Score:3, Informative)
For ballistic missile launches, other nations are notified well in advance. In this case, Britain, France, and the US were certainly notified, and others may have been provided some level of notice as well.
Re:Placement (Score:3, Informative)
Russia's coastline isn't that open when you look at it.
1. North - Covered with ice during most of the year, including now, so testing here is not an option.
2. East - Would take forever to get there from the sub bases on the west coast (You'd either have to go north and stay under the ice for weeks, or go south down the Atlantic, around Africa, and through the Indian ocean), so also not an option.
3. West - This is the coast of the Baltic sea (And it shares coasts with Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and maybe Norway (I forget where the Baltic ends and the Atlantic beings)), from which you can get to the Atlantic, which puts you right at the south-western coast of Norway, and just a bit northeast of the UK.
Re:Testing missiles? (Score:5, Informative)
So where was the missile supposed to go?
Just a test run and then crash into the sea?
Yes. At this point, they would be quite happy if it would at least do that properly. So far, there were 13 (known) tests, and 6 of them failed. Most importantly, the 2 tests preceding this one were failures. This for a weapon that was supposed to be in service 3 years ago originally, and at the beginning of this year was claimed to be fully operational by the end of it.
Since this is supposed to be the next-gen uber missile to replace the venerable Topol-M, is supposed to be able to penetrate "any defense" (it's MIRV with EM shielding, and ability to maneuver and fire decoys in flight if it's shot at), and since it's the first weapon of that kind developed entirely in modern post-Soviet Russia (not a design developed in USSR, and not a project inherited from USSR), its success was supposed to prove that Russia is "up off its knees", and ready to take on the big boys if needed, as in the good old times... And since it's been such an abject failure so far, needless to say that it serves as a good target for related jokes these days.
Re:Well paint me surprised: (Score:3, Informative)
as far as I know being able to launch a missile while the sub is submerged would be a huge leap forward in the nuclear arms race.
It was, when the US and USSR both achieved it in 1960. [wikipedia.org]
Launch history of the Bulava (Score:5, Informative)
The launch history of the Bulava is discussed here. [russianspaceweb.com] It's worked a few times, but they've been having failures in minor components like explosive bolts. That indicates quality control problems in the supply chain, not design problems.
It's hard to restart an entire high-tech supply chain when there hasn't been any demand for years. The US lost the ability to build nuclear weapons for over a decade.
Re:Underwater aircraft launch of F-15 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12u-ppn_Q3M [youtube.com] --- Japanese Submarine Aircraft Carrier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_aircraft_carrier [wikipedia.org]
Re:Well paint me surprised: (Score:2, Informative)
no, in fact china was hostile to vietnam (Score:5, Informative)
at first after world war 2 there was an idealism in the air that marxism/ communism would result in cooperation between russia and china. but this quickly fell victim to the usual imperialistic instincts of such vast empires. there were massive military buildups along the chinese-russian border, over stupid petty disagreements like tiny useless islands in the amur river (border between russia and manchuria). american intelligence got wind of this and sensed an opportunity: the tension between russia and china was one of the reasons nixon's about face on china and sudden seeking of warm relations with china at the time made so much strategic sense: drive a wedge between powerful enemies of the usa
so when vietnam aligned itself with russia, it was sort of china's version of the united states' experience with cuba: a tiny southern country right on its border having the audacity to fall the influence of a powerful enemy. in fact, after the vietnam war, china had its own version of the bay of pigs (on a much larger scale): china and vietnam went to war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War [wikipedia.org]
100,000 vietnamese civilians were killed by the chinese in that 1979-1980 war. but the chinese lost this war badly, and chinese propaganda has pretty much covered the whole event up and erased the war from chinese history books. because it was embarrassing how badly china lost. to this day, chinese veterans of that war are officially shunned and denied benefits or even recognition
you have to admire the vietnamese: they kicked out a major colonial power, the french. then they took on a world superpower, the americans. and finished it off by repulsing the regional power, china. in one long sustained 30-40 year very bloody struggle, the vietnamese kicked everyone's asses
vietnam deserves much respect, they have suffered heavily for their rightful independence
Re:Well paint me surprised: (Score:1, Informative)
Well, according to this "expert" it's torsion weapons of mass destruction [enterprisemission.com]
Robert Hoagland's science
Re:Well paint me surprised: (Score:2, Informative)
The Typhoon class is able to fire ICBMs while fully submerged from any of its 20 silos. The system creates a huge gas-bubble over the launch-tube in which a propelling charge drives the rocket to the surface, then it ignites its rocket engine and continues as any ICBM.
Recent development would be the RSM-56 Bulava, a Topol M-based marine ICBM, its test launches were performed from Typhoon class submarines while fully submerged. Videos of a Typhoon class launching a missile while submerged have been around for a while now, as well... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxf84ptXBWA 1:38 shows, as far as i remember, on of the akula / typhoon's silos.... the large amount of gas is visible.
Re:Tinfoil is a plot!!!11!eleventeen (Score:2, Informative)
No, it's even worse. Tinfoil hats block most radio signals, but they amplify signals on certain bands reserved for government use [mit.edu].