Stricken Russian Nuke Sub Crew Prevented ‘Planetary Catastrophe’ | Hacker News Reader

Stricken Russian Nuke Sub Crew Prevented ‘Planetary Catastrophe’

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46 pointsspking101 comments

The article mentions how this sub can operate up to 6,000M underwater and throws out this juicy bit > The craft reportedly was used to target undersea communications and other cables.

I doubt it's more than speculation but...

I believe it's in the order of $5M + 2 weeks to fix cables breaks near the shore and >$10M + 8 weeks to fix them in the middle of the ocean which sounded like a lucrative opportunity for blackmail

Probably tap undersea cables than bust them - which a fishing trawler could do with more deniability. Regardless, prototype Nuclear espionage sub, all officer crew of 25, 7 of the dead were Captain 1st Rank (right under admiral), 2 recipients of the Hero of the Russian Federation. My interest is certainly piqued.

I don't buy it that an all officer crew wasn't able to don rebreathers in time.

Fire drill is like a number 1 drill in the fleet, and a submariner, moreover a captain should be able to do it with his eyes closed

Growing up in an Eastern Eu country (former communism), nobody there underestimates the professionalism of soviet military. They are many, but not brilliant - see MH17 and so on.

Please expand, it is unclear from your words do you think they are professional or not. And what exactly should we see with MH17?

I think it was pretty obvious what they meant.

An old friend of mine has recently finished his term in the Russian military. According to his words explaining his own experience, and things he heard during military exercises from guys from other parts of the country, most soldiers are being trained not to defend their country, but to do three things: paint walls, wash their clothes, and clean up the premises.

It's no wonder you can mistake a passenger airplane for a military aircraft after such a stimulating experience.

Russia still has military draft. Gotta do something with all that free labour. They do however also have actual professional soldiers, and lots of them. Those should be more trained / competent.

Considering that Americans who shot down Iran Air Flight 655 were given medals, shooting down a passenger plane is quite an achievement for a well-trained Navy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655#Post-tour_...

I'm not comfortable sharing details because they can be traced back to specific people and events, but I've seen people doing highly-skilled high-demand tasks under alcohol influence "to calm their nerves".

MH17 was shut down because the radar operator could not read his screen / correlate with other sources of information regarding civilian flights. Can tell you a bit about how professional those operators were.

There was also a mention that the sub is of an unusual design - a set of spheres rather than a conventional cigar shape.

I think that was based on graphics of how the interior is constructed. The sub in question should be a cigar shape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Losharik

I believe the name is from a cartoon character, who is made out of balls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F_hX-QjDQw

A better diagram of the sub here: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Ru_Lo...

basically a series of interconnected bathyspheres with a hydrodynamic shell over them.

So basically personnel can't access the reactor and engine compartments from the life support units, the sub has to surface. Here's a bigger version of the same diagram with readable text:

http://www.hisutton.com/images/Ru_Losharik_Cutaway.jpg

Skegs, hydraulic manipulator, no weapons. It's clearly ment to tamper with undersea cables.

Are any of these details more than speculation? I had the impression that the best information was some not-so-clear pictures which happened to catch it on the surface, plus the admission a few days ago that it is in fact nuclear powered, and had a suspiciously high-ranking crew.

I agree that tampering with cables seems like the obvious reason for the military to go super-deep. With recovering sunken things made by your adversary a close second. And in the mid-1980s, they were much better at titanium than at video cameras.

Not sure if when the knowledge about it's design was made public, but name Losharik gave everyone a hint. It is a cartoon character that's made from spheres/balls connected with a wire. This is a logical way to create a submarine that's intended to go very deep, spheres are the best shape to handle high pressures. So logical conclusion based on the name was that internally it's based around connected spheres.

Submarine itself looks cigar shape, but that is just her outer shell, it's pretty certain that outer shell is not pressure sealed but rather that internal spheres withstand the pressure while the just the shell around it.

Obviously there is lots of speculation since the Russians are tight lipped about the whole incident.

Some of the most speculative (but with little to no support) seem to think they were carrying a cobalt nuke larger than the Tsar Bomba.

Making a major diplomatic incident to get $10 or $50 million? Using two subs that cost hundreds of millions to build?

Seems more like fantasy than speculation.

This article chases clicks by parroting hyperbole from a remembrance service as fact.

This is not the first, nor the worst fire aboard a nuclear submarine. Komsomolets burned and sank with both a nuclear reactor and nuclear warheads on board. The reactor scrammed and was not damaged by the fire; the warheads' biggest risk was leakage of radioactive material.

Losing a nuclear submarine in a fire is a potential catastrophe for the local environment and a tragedy for the fallen crew, but hardly an event that justified the "planetary" scale.

Plus one. And here’s a handy reference to the wikipedia page dedicated to the 9 sunken nuclear submarines so far

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_nuclear_subma...

Could the fire that the crew fought with their lives indeed have damaged the reactor (and thus have caused the "planetary catastrophe" - I assume that is what the article hints on)?

Or basically, was the reactor designed in such a way that a regular fire could damage it that it would become unstable?

And where is the planetary scale when a nuclear explosion occurs? There have been many nuclear explosions on the Bikini Atoll etc. without planetary catastrophes.

Not to speak of the fact that an underwater nuclear explosion would do even less, except for a Tsunami maybe, which again is localized.

The only thing I can think of is preventing nuclear war. A rogue ballistic sub or so. But that is not very plausible.

The suggestion is the sub may have been carrying a Cobalt Bomb, a nuclear weapon encased in cobalt to increase fallout. In the case of a water detonation I'm guessing massive radioactive contamination that would end sea life for a large area - perhaps even planetary.

Pure speculation to fit the "planetary catastrophe" remark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-media-nuclear-torped...

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...

A truly massive amount of radioactive material has been dumped into the ocean. No amount of 'cobalt bomb' or other fantasy devices will appreciably affect the truly large (geological scale) ocean. Even if you dump every nuclear reactor, nuclear waste, nuclear fuel and blow up every nuke in the ocean, that will simply not seriously affect the ocean.

That seems a stretch?

I would put it into the category of tribute to fallen comrades. Nice guy, good soldier. The type of thing that almost certainly isnt true for all dead soldiers.

Exactly. It's much better to say they died valiantly saving everyone than to say that for example, someone lit up a cigarette that started a fire and then they realized half of oxygen masks wasn't working.

Losharik is a type of a spy sub, probably intended to tap into undersea cables. There shouldn't be a "wonder weapon" on the ship.

None of the leaked diagrams of the Losharik show any torpedo or missile tubes. The "bomb" hypothesis is pure speculation. However, they show a hydraulic manipulator and skegs, so it's clearly designed to tamper with stuff on the sea floor (eg. submarine communications cables).

I don't understand how they made the jump from "200 mega-tonne tsunami bomb" to cobalt bomb. I'm certainly no nuclear physicist, but I thought a cobalt bomb was purely to spread radioactivity and had effect on the strength of the bomb. Even a nuclear bomb creating a tsunami seems quite questionable, as does a fire setting it off.

The whole thing just seems like an odd mix of Russian propaganda, crazy conspiracy theories and scientific misunderstanding.

I suspect a "cobalt bomb" would be less effective in terms of explosive yield than an equivalent normal multi stage weapon design - the neutrons from the fusion reaction in the secondary being used to activate the cobalt rather than into fissioning the fissile jacket of the secondary where most modern weapon designs actually get most yield.

> a nuclear bomb creating a tsunami seems quite questionable,

Yes, a "trunami bomb" is nonsense. We've done underwater nuclear tests (e.g. operation Hardtack's Wahoo test). Water pressure prevents most of the physically destructive effects[2][3]. (it does make the local water radioactive for a while, but much less than the fallout generated by the same bomb on land. (water is a better at absorbing radiation than air) The idea that it might produce a tsunami is anti-nuclear fear mongering and/or baseless paranoia.

> as does a fire setting it off

The could only hypothetically be possible if the bomb was a "gun" design, which was quickly abandoned after the trinity test proved implosion designs were possible, because the "gun" method was inherently risky. (too easy to accidentally detonate the conventional explosives) (gun designs also had a high-ish risk of "fizzling", because they might not hold the critical mass together long enough)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hardtack_I#Underwate...

[2] https://what-if.xkcd.com/15/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tbxDgcv74c

A tsunami creating nuclear submarine drone targeting Europe? And suddenly, the "Floodland" album by Sisters of Mercy feels eerily relevant again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floodland_(album)

Given that the statement originated from a Russian official in 2019, we can safely assume the opposite. The crew's tragic death was preventable and pointless.

No, water is a very good radiation shield and also cools down the reactor. So basically the subs are quite safe under hundreds of feet of water until the material leaks out and contaminates the sea floor.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sunken-soviet-nuclear-sub-le...

Damn. 6000m? A nuclear sub at that depth would be unreachable by surface/aerial ASW systems and can provide definite nuclear deterrence.

Nuclear as in nuclear powered. Not as in, can launch nuclear weapons.

Adding a nuclear weapon to a nuclear powered sub is surely not that hard. The big news is a nuclear powered sub capable of going that deep.

I thought running for a very long time without needing to surface was the entire point of nuclear subs?

Yes, but "normal" nuclear subs can still not go very deep without being crushed. Thus, they can still be hunted for. But a nuclear sub which can go thousands of meters deep in hiding mode, would change the theater of war considerably.

Noise is another point. Diesel engines are louder and if there's one thing you want to be as a military submarine it is silent.

It's not that simple. Launching an nuclear weapon from the deep is very hard, normal nuclear missile subs do not launch from deep. There are multiple reason for this. One of them is that they eject the missile by using steam/gas, if you are too deep, your missile won't reach the surface and thus won't be able to fly away. Second reason is that the missile and the missile tube needs to be under normal pressure. Missiles aren't built to handle hundreds of atmospheres of pressure even if the sub could eject them into the water.

I know. I was thinking about the scenario hiding very deep, and only surface to strike. You could deliver M.A.D. even months after the earth bound battle has come to a halt.

Besides, the talk was also about a submarine drone more like a long range torpedo. While you maybe can't launch such a thing from the very deep, at least you should be able to launch it from much deeper than a missile.

And because of virtually limitless power, it could crack water and produce oxygen for the crew for months submerged.

For reference: The Seawolf Class submarines have a test depth of 490 m.

It's unlikely that it can stay at those depths for long periods of time.

They may have prevented a 'Planetary Catastrophe', but I find it rather likely that they were also the cause of the situation.

History is full of stories where Russian subs are close to causing catastrophes because of rushed production, poor maintenance, training, etc.

Reality is that they didn't have to sail around in a nuclear sub in the first place.

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