Submarine Quotes of the Month

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Background... shower videos of women submariners
A Navy official confirmed to Navy Times in December that investigators suspected seven (7) videos had been taken with a cell phone camera aboard the Kings Bay, Georgia-based ballistic missile submarine Wyoming.   more background


"My information is that the use of the devices was widespread among most of the crew, officers included. I also have information that by the time the sub hit the docks, officers and enlisted men were using the devices."  -  Told to Navy Times in a Jan. 16 phone interview of James Stein, defense attorney for a sailor implicated in  USS Wyoming (SSBN-742) shower videos.

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Background...  60 kilometers from the border to Norway's border

[T] he world is facing a worst case scenario described as "an Arctic underwater Chernobyl, played out in slow motion," according to Thomas Nilsen, an editor at the Barents Observer newspaper and a member of a Norwegian watchdog group that monitors the situation. According to a joint Russian-Norwegian report issued in 2012, there are 17,000 containers of nuclear waste, 19 rusting Soviet nuclear ships and 14 nuclear reactors cut out of atomic vessels at the bottom of the Kara Sea.  more background

Norway has over the last 20 years granted some NOK 1.5 billion (€175 million) into nuclear safety projects related to the military navy’s activities, including decommissioning of four old submarines, development of casks for spent nuclear fuel, radioactive waste management, physical protection of radioactive- and fissile material. In addition, hundreds of millions are granted to civilian nuclear safety projects including Kola nuclear power plant and the nuclear icebreaker fleet in Murmansk. “It is timely to look into what we are going to spend Norwegian money on. Russia must take responsibility.”

“So far we have followed EU’s restrictive measures. When it comes to the possible new measures will this depend on Russia,” says Brende pointing to Putin as the man in key position to stop supporting the separatists in Eastern Ukraine with soldiers, tanks and artillery.

“Sanctions was right, is right and has had an effect.”  -  Norway’s Foreign Minister Børge Brende  source

Submarines are always silent and strange.

A Prediction in Perspective

The prediction had been:

July 04, 2005 - [H]ere is the prediction based upon current ability and future need to use: STSLN (small tactical submarine launched nukes) from America's Arsenal of Democracy.

For that, Vigilis received an immediate dose of technically accurate and mildly abrasive criticism.

On 27 September 1991, President Bush announced initiatives affecting the entire US nuclear weapons arsenal. The United States removed all tactical nuclear weapons, including nuclear cruise missiles, from its surface ships and attack submarines. The nuclear equiped UGM-109A TLAM-N Tomahawk was withdrawn from service in 1992, though conventional versions remain operational.

Our prediction stood.

Now, we know our former Cold War adversary still gets the advantages of small, tactical nukes.

The International Herald Tribune writes that Russia in 2006 signaled it no longer intended to abide by the 1991 decision when then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Russian submarines were carrying tactical nuclear weapons on patrol. ...

With advances in the range and sophistication of tactical nuclear arms, Russian military leaders say low-yield nuclear warheads attached to cruise missiles fired from attack submarines make more sense than loading powerful bombs onto bigger strategic submarines, United Press International (UPI) reported with reference to RIA-Novosti.

A suitcase-sized (approximately 1 KT) nuke would be very deniable as well as destabilizing. M.E. is opposed to unilateral disarmament of the West. If our SOF found a terror cell with a suitcase nuke, appropriate hygiene might include making them an example of ineptitude with a symmetrical strike from a (Russian or US) sub.

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Submarines are always silent and strange.