Posted on 08/13/2017 5:22:47 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
RIGHT now, a British Trident nuclear submarine is gliding deep beneath the waves, primed and ready to launch a devastating strike if the worst should ever happen.
Our nuclear subs operate in the depths of the ocean, where nobody can detect them, and are always on alert to respond to the threat of a nuclear war.
Trident sub commanders keep in contact with the surface as much as possible, but they're relatively cut off from Britain when on deployment.
In the event of a sudden and unexpected strike, the sub crews may have no way of knowing exactly what's happening back home.
But whenever they fear the worst, or need to check in on us, it's thought that they tune in to Radio 4.
The radio station is the UK's most reliable, and is the one which is used as the national broadcaster in times of war or disaster.
Even if every other radio station has been shut down, Radio 4 will continue to broadcast right up to the bitter end.
This has led to the claim that the station acts as a means of checking whether everything is still hunky dory back home.
All of the submarines are famously issued with a "letter of last resort", written by the prime minister and detailing what to do if Britain is devastated by a nuclear attack.
If sub commanders can't contact anyone through their usual channels, and if Radio 4 isn't broadcasting for a set amount of time, then they have no choice but to assume the worst and open their letter.
Trident crews never read the letters, but a sub commander faced a scare in 2004 when Radio 4's Today Programme mysteriously went off air for 15 minutes.
Caused by a fire alarm at BBC HQ, the radio silence reportedly put our patrolling nuclear submarine on alert, even though the downtime only lasted for a few minutes.
The Ministry of Defence has an understandable policy of keeping hush about Trident protocol.
However, the usual reliability of Radio 4 means it's a good way to test whether Britain has been attacked.
On that cheery note, we recently told how one estate agent had released a bizarre guide detailing where in the UK you can buy a home to survive a nuclear attack.
We also recently revealed the chilling parallels between the events of the cold war and the events of 2017.
Doesn’t seem to still be in publication, too bad. I’d like to read it.
PURE BS
An American submarine will NEVER launch nuclear weapons unless they receive a properly authenticated message and then the XO and the CO will announce over the 1MC.......
I was NUC Nuclear propulsion qualified officer. When I was getting my CO sign off for OOD, I had finished everybody on the boat that I needed signatures for and the captain's final sig off was my final signature needed. The captain decided to concentrate on communications and specifically antennas. I had been a ham radio operator since I was a kid, I had a masters degree in Elect Eng and I took every antenna course offered at the Univ of Fla. To pay me back for embarrassing him :-) because he knew a lot of facts about radio/comm (but he didn't understand the physics and math behind what he knew), he changed my life later on.
When one of the Weaps officer transferred, the captain made me comm officer. The Engineer said in front of me to the captain "you cannot take one of my nuclear officers up forward." The captain replied "It's my ship and I can do what I want to."
That was the best year in my short navy career. I spent a bunch of time with radiomen teaching them Morse code..... Before every patrol, the captain, XO, NAV and Comm officer would go to SUBLANT and get briefings. The average junior officer and especially the enlisted crew had little idea of what intelligence was being discussed. To this day, I will say very little about what this paragraph means.
I used to go into radio on patrol (around the Arctic circle where the inside of the engine room hull was covered in ice (seawater freezes a few degrees below 32F) so condensation formed ice on the inside of the sub, especially seawater piping for equipment cooling). I routinely listened to VLF radio stations out of Europe. I won't go into the antenna configurations available as I don't know what is classified and what isn't, but we could hear more than you think.
For official traffic, there was Cutler, Maine and Annapolis broadcasting 24/7. That was where we would got official, encrypted comm. And there was backup to that.
I think my best receiver now goes down to 100 khz so I haven't listened to anything lower since my sub days.
The reason I wrote this is to kill the notion that subs would launch on loss of comm. This statement is absolutely WRONG.
You forget that the British are masters at How Not To Be Seen.
Question:
Subs need to send up an antenna to the surface in order to transmit and receive communications, correct?
I’m pretty sure radio waves can’t travel through water, ....except on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
Indeed I did. But some are not as good as others.
Fascinating. Thanks
In the article it states that if things go silent, they open orders & proceed accordingly. That’s exactly what our guys would do. If an EMP knocks out all communications, they’re not going to sit there wondering what to do. They’re going to follow the pre-arranged orders for what happens in that particular event.
There may be people trained like you for all different kinds of communications. And maybe (today) there would be the ability to get SOMETHING from some kind of technology. In which case, they would certainly try to get orders from the proper authorities. It still does not nullify what was written in this article or the comments of my sub-guy.
Or the exact opposite.
"All is well there has been no bombing we are fine here go back to submarining"
Tridents. “We hide, with pride”
Your sweetie was a BS artist like all sailors. You should have avoided a Submariner as soon as he laid the first line on you. Lol see my screen name.
LOL!
I’m partial to the ‘dead parrot’ ... but this is genius
First Pepperpot Which zoo?
Second Pepperpot How should I know which zoo? I’m not Doctor bloody Bernowski.
First Pepperpot How does Doctor Bernowski know which zoo it came from?
Second Pepperpot He knows everything.
First Pepperpot Oooh, I wouldn’t like that, that’d take all the mystery out of life. Anyway, if it came from the zoo, it would have ‘property of the zoo’ stamped on it.
Second Pepperpot No it wouldn’t. They don’t stamp animals ‘property of the zoo’. You can’t stamp a huge lion.
First Pepperpot They stamp them when they’re small.
Second Pepperpot What happens when they moult?
First Pepperpot Lions don’t moult.
Second Pepperpot No, but penguins do. There, I’ve run rings around you logically.
First Pepperpot Oh, intercourse the penguin.
On the TV screen there now appears an announcer.
TV Announcer It’s just gone 8 o’clock and time for the penguin on top of your television set to explode.
The penguin on top of the set now explodes.
First Pepperpot How did he know that was going to happen?!
TV Announcer It was an inspired guess. And now...
Thanks. I knew the Navy used extremely low frequency comms from ground rich in iron, but I didn’t know it was from WI.
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