The Koursk, cold war in shallow waters

[osanowo]

Ok, I'm not such a fan of Tom Clancy but the reality just made his books look like a euphemistic delirium!

It all started with a documentary on a French tv channel called Planete Thalassa. They were relating the time lag between the accident of the koursk and the arrival of the rescue teams although in shallow waters and with a good weather.

Suddenly, we are shown images of the truncated koursk, with a "huge" and perfect hole in the first third of the submarine; then we hear about a distress buoy from an american submarine on site, and a hunt from the russian anti-submarine force next to finland!

So basically here is what happened chronologically. Sit tight:

- Edmond Pope is arrested after dealing for decades with the Russian about the acquisition of a Russian weapon system for the Canadians. Putin hears about the story and decides to arrest the dude because he does not want him to give the technology to the US.

- Russia later organizes the biggest naval and air combined training operation in their history. Is assisting several Chinese generals who are interested in one of the Russian weapons.

- The US can't let that happen, and decide to lurk in the area to see what's going on. The Koursk, a HUGE and very advanced submarine, evoluating in shallow waters at that moment (100 meters deep only), bumps into the american submarine. The american submarine almost opens the Koursk but the russian is now about to shoot the American. Problem: it is equipped with the Shkval, a famous torpedo people have been talking about for years and for a good reason: it travels at 700 km/h where other torpedoes don't go over 100. Basically you're dead before you can turn around and call your mum. Some people even talk about MHD torpedoes which are more "up to date" in the black projects and that can reach speeds higher than the Shkval.

- A second US submarine is indeed present and hears the whole scene. It decides to shoot the Koursk before it kills the fellow swimming hawk - and uses an MK-48, a torpedo with depleted uranium that penetrates the hull and explodes inside the enemy submarine, hence leaving this signature.

- The Koursk sinks and will not be found before 14 days, just the right time for the Russians to kill every witness. Afterwards, they will forbid any diver to inspect the forefront part of the submarine... guess why?...

- They cut the front of the submarine and take the rest to the nearest dock. Big mistake: the MK-48 hole is visible - it took them two days to forbid the access to the press...


What happened then? A war ? no... just a better understanding between the countries! and partnership!

I guess Russia blackmailed with Pope and the submarine shot - great for international relationships? Sure... except for the 160 patriots. RIP.

 

[l69norm]

Sunken Russian Submarine Conspiracy Stories

...It all started with a documentary on a French tv channel called Planete Thalassa. They were relating the time lag between the accident of the koursk and the arrival of the rescue teams although in shallow waters and with a good weather....

There are always conspiracy theories about everything. Howard Hughes helped the CIA raise a sunken Russian sub (K-129) in the 1960's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Jennifer

The conspiracy theorists claim that K-129 was sunk because it had a rogue russian crew that was just about to launch it's nuclear missles against Pearl Harbour.....

"Kenneth Sewell, in Red Star Rogue (2005), offers additional research and speculation. The book notes numerous inexplicable irregularities in the last voyage of K-129, which constituted highly criminal acts under Soviet naval protocols. Sewell makes the case that the particular Soviet submarine was chosen to imitate a Chinese submarine with nuclear armed missiles, hijacked by an 11 man special force masterminded by KGB hardliners, and actually attempted to launch a nuclear missile at Hawaii in an effort to provoke a confrontation between China and the United States. The book's hypothesis is that the missile's fail-safe devices were inadequately circumvented and sank the submarine when the nuclear armed missile self destructed upon unauthorized launch. According to Rogue, unique information from Project Jennifer may have aided prevention of a Stalinist KGB takeover in Soviet Russia and aided Nixon's rapprochement of Mao's China with the US in the early 1970s. The book has been widely criticised as a speculative conspiracy theory with little supporting evidence."

As an aside, the "Glomar Explorer" that Howard Hughes built to raise the sunken K-129 is still around .
http://www.casgen.com/services/projects/glomar_explorer.htm

 

[Aardvark154]

Ok, I'm not such a fan of Tom Clancy but the reality just made his books look like a euphemistic delirium!

It all started with a documentary on a French tv channel called Planete Thalassa. They were relating the time lag between the accident of the koursk and the arrival of the rescue teams although in shallow waters and with a good weather.

Wow, where even to start when I have only a few minutes in which to post.

At the risk of being rude, either you are naïve or you’re just quoting the conspiracy theory loving French media.

As with most conspiracy theories this one is driven by the belief that a “comedy of (stupid) errors” couldn’t possibly have caused such a catastrophe. However, the brutal truth is that from the Tsarist Russian Military through the Soviet period and on into the present day there has been a pervasive (although I hasten to add not universal) attitude that military enlistees (still mostly conscripts) are largely expandable. In 2000 the boom in oil prices had not yet lifted the Russian Federation out of the considerable financial hole it had inherited from the U.S.S.R.* and spending on the Russian military was low with the Navy suffering from deferred maintenance and other difficulties. The Oscar-II (NATO designation) class submarines were specifically designed to be “Aircraft Carrier Killers” complete with special oversize high speed torpedoes - the problem was and is to obtain that high speed 40+ knots they had to use a volatile concentrated hydrogen peroxide fuel which is corrosive and if it leaks into the body of the torpedo can through chemical reaction cause the casing of the torpedo to heat up - over pressurize and explosively rupture. This in turn started a fire in the forward torpedo room which “cooked off” the stored torpedoes there.

The Kursk had the previous summer gone to the Mediterranean (the first such deployment since the collapse of the U.S.S.R.) However they had been having problems with accidental deployment of the emergency buoy (which gave away their position) and so the hatch in the hull to allow its deployment was welded shut.

As the Manchester Guardian (a rather left of mainstream newspaper) summarized what followed: "The hopelessly flawed rescue attempt, hampered by badly designed and decrepit equipment, illustrated the fatal decline of Russia's military power. The navy's callous approach to the families of the missing men was reminiscent of an earlier Soviet insensitivity to individual misery. The lies and incompetent cover-up attempts launched by both the navy and the government were resurrected from a pre-Glasnost era. The wildly contradictory conspiracy theories about what caused the catastrophe said more about a naval high command in turmoil, fumbling for a scapegoat, than about the accident itself."

I believe the movie you saw was probably Koursk: un sous-marin en eaux troubles the director of which Jean-Michel Carré, has no experience with submarines nor with U.S. naval or Russian Naval operations (other than that he knows everything about everything naval).

Perhaps the most preposterous allegation is that Russian president Vladimir Putin a former Colonel in the KGB deliberately concealed the truth about what happened and let the crew members die, in order to not strain relations with the US Government - about which statement (not that this gives me some special credibility), having Russian friends and a Russian ex-wife all I can say is if you believe that, boy oh, boy do I have a bridge I would be interested in selling you.

Oh, should I also point out another little problem USN, RN, etc... rules of engagement for Barents Sea operations require being fired upon before firing. Further if a NATO submarine had fired first in an exercise area filled with other Russian submarines and surface combatants someone would have heard the torpedo shot.

*I might point out that, thanks to oil exports, Russia has payed off the debts it inherited from the U.S.S.R. in their entirely and now has both substantial trade surpluses and as well as large cash reserves and further has embarked upon a substantial military modernization program - all most none of which has been reported in the Western press.

 

[WoodPeckr]

*I might point out that, thanks to oil exports, Russia has payed off the debts it inherited from the U.S.S.R. in their entirely and now has both substantial trade surpluses and as well as large cash reserves and further has embarked upon a substantial military modernization program - all most none of which has been reported in the Western press.

Ah the irony.
You can bet Vlad just sits back smiling and relishes this as he watches the USA being financially bled white in Iraq as the late USSR was financially bled white, in their '80s Afghanistan Debacle.
....and now these Team 'w' neocon imbeciles are pushing hard attack Iran!

 

[papasmerf]

....and now these Team 'w' neocon imbeciles are pushing hard attack Iran!

Woody

you seem to be the one pushing for the attack. How sad will it be if an attack does not occur in time for the 2008 elections. That would of course leave Iran to the next prez

 

[WoodPeckr]

Woody

you seem to be the one pushing for the attack. How sad will it be if an attack does not occur in time for the 2008 elections. That would of course leave Iran to the next prez

Know what you mean JAJA.
It seems that in recent history, the Clintons are always there to clean up the messes left by the Shrubs.

 

[Aardvark154]

as the late USSR was financially bled white, in their '80s Afghanistan Debacle.

Most every population center in Ukraine, Russia etc. . . has an Afghan war memorial with flowers etc. . . the contrast between the two experiences in Afghanistan is profound.

 

[Aardvark154]

What do you propose we do?

and now these Team 'w' neocon imbeciles are pushing hard attack Iran!

As I've posted before WPecker, what do you propose as a solution? Certainly merely saying lets see what Iran does once it has the bomb doesn't sound particularly wise.

 

[WoodPeckr]

As I've posted before WPecker, what do you propose as a solution? Certainly merely saying lets see what Iran does once it has the bomb doesn't sound particularly wise.

Well just use what worked very well in containing the now defunct USSR during the cold war. The USSR, a real threat, was removed without a shot being fired. MAD worked very well then and will still work just as well, thank you. Iraq and now Iran are pretenders who will never reach the stature the USSR used to have. Only the truly paranoid think differently and fear Iraq, Iran, et al., in the ME.
Lots of countries have and many more want nukes and over time will no doubt get them but they know if they ever use them they will be reduced to a green glass parking lot. So what's the point other than bragging rights?
Again only the truly paranoid fear them!
Myopic terribly flawed policies of Team 'w' neocon imbeciles have resulted in making Iran the major player in the ME now. Once the Iraqi Civil War that Team 'w' imbeciles spawned ends, there is a good chance whatever is left of Iraq will look more like Iran than the puppet govenment Cheney, Rummy, et al., thought they were going to create.
How ironic that the Viet Nam Debacle is being replayed in Iraq by the same bunch of sniveling coward chickenhawks who ran like hell from serving in Nam and never learned a thing from the Nam Debacle.

 

[Aardvark154]

How does MAD work when you want the end times to come?

Well just use what worked very well in containing the now defunct USSR during the cold war. MAD worked very well.

The critical difference is that Stalin (Dzhugashvili), Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev (Gorbachyov) believed that the destruction of the U.S.S.R. was a bad thing. Despite the veneer of Marxist-Leninism most save Dzhugashvili (who had truly utterly lost his faith) had a sense that God would not approve of them destroying the world.

By contrast the Iranian regime is eschatologically focused. There is a significant cord in Shi'a Islam as practiced in Iran which believes that hastening the coming of the Hahdi (the hidden twelfth Imam) is an absolute moral good (by analogy it is as if a significant segment of Christians believed that it didn't matter if one starts a thermonuclear war because it will "force God's hand" and hasten the second coming of Christ).

How does MAD work with someone who really isn't deterred by the threat, but rather views it as merely hastening the end times (which they want to happen)?

 

[papasmerf]

Good analyses,

Now ask yourself the question: what if an Iraqi Shiite trained in Iran used a Russian suitcase bomb that he purchased with Saudi money in Beirut Lebannon from and Isreali Arab who lives in Jerusalem to blow up Schnectaddy New York after crossing the open Mexican border? Who would you nuke exactly? And that scenario is not so far fetched. The 911 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.

You see every country American or NATO soldiers are in is exempt from nuking. Right now that leaves only Iran and Syria as nuclear retaliation targets. In other words invading Iran or Syria cancels MAD.

This is why I am so against involvement by any Western troops in the Middle East. George Bush has totally convinved me that a nuclear atack by a Muslim is in America's future. Leaving the ME increases the retaliatory targets for Americans. It frees up their hands for a nuclear counterstrike.

EU

Screw them all and send the asswipes to alla.........You want politicaly correct hire a lib to do your press.