Do you think the collision between the French and British nuclear subs was just a clumsy mistake?
I think the French just don’t like following rules. There is a system for keeping NATO missile submarines from colliding with each other – sort of a global underwater traffic control. Not surprisingly, the French don’t participate in this system. See the link. It is important to understand that ballistic missile submarines including these two are designed to do one particular thing very, very well: hide. (They usually do this, in part, by operating at a very slow speed.) To sum it up, they are designed to be undetectable. This ability to hide is intended to prevent a nuclear enemy from taking out all land based missiles because that enemy knows that somewhere out there a submarine that is virtually impossible to find can retaliate with missiles the enemy *can’t* take out. It is often said of US Trident submarines (the US versions of the two subs in the news) that the best way to find them is to listen very carefully to the ocean and find a spot that *isn’t* making any noise – that’s wh
