You'd really have to wonder how this could happen after the 2005 incident when the USS San Francisco hit an uncharted seamount in the Pacific.
I claim no expertise in submarine navigation/collision avoidance but it seems to me that the something that went awry with the USS San Francisco might have happened again some 16 years later. Why weren't lessons learned?
I'd have thought that the detection of something as big as a seamount would have been child's play to a modern submarine and thus easily avoided. After all, detection of underwater objects is what submarines do - and one's enemy sub is a damned size smaller than a seamount.
What gives? Does anyone with sufficient declassified knowledge know how this could happen? Even if everyone was being inattentive or having lunch (as they were on the USS San Francisco) then why wouldn't sophisticated detection equipment warn well ahead of any potential accident happening?
I've been curious about this since that incident in 2005, now that it's happened again I'm even more so.
Lastly, do we really know the extent of uncharted seamounts? Silly, question being in the negative. Perhaps, rephrased the question should be how reliable are the charts/maps submarines use these days. (This could be just my lack of knowledge, but it seems subs may be blinder underwater than my perception of them has been until now.)
I claim no expertise in submarine navigation/collision avoidance but it seems to me that the something that went awry with the USS San Francisco might have happened again some 16 years later. Why weren't lessons learned?
I'd have thought that the detection of something as big as a seamount would have been child's play to a modern submarine and thus easily avoided. After all, detection of underwater objects is what submarines do - and one's enemy sub is a damned size smaller than a seamount.
What gives? Does anyone with sufficient declassified knowledge know how this could happen? Even if everyone was being inattentive or having lunch (as they were on the USS San Francisco) then why wouldn't sophisticated detection equipment warn well ahead of any potential accident happening?
I've been curious about this since that incident in 2005, now that it's happened again I'm even more so.
Lastly, do we really know the extent of uncharted seamounts? Silly, question being in the negative. Perhaps, rephrased the question should be how reliable are the charts/maps submarines use these days. (This could be just my lack of knowledge, but it seems subs may be blinder underwater than my perception of them has been until now.)