Some submariners call the USS Connecticut the luxury sports car of submarines. It's a US$3 billion piece of American military hardware that's fast and outfitted with the latest electronic gadgetry only available when price is not a consideration.
But despite its high cost and sophisticated tech, the United States Navy says the Seawolf-class nuclear-poweredThe Connecticut is now pierside at a U.S. Navy base on the Pacific island of Guam. The Navy says it got there -- more than 1,800 miles east of the South China Sea -- under its own power and its nuclear reactor was not harmed, although 11 of its crew of suffered minor injuries in the collision.
Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of U.S. 7th Fleet, determined that "sound judgment, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch team execution and risk management could have prevented the incident," according to a statement about the decision."Submarining is hard, it's really hard. Not everything goes right all the time," said Thomas Shugart, who spent more than 11 years on U.S.
Officially, the service says it was in Indo-Pacific waters, but U.S. defense officials had previously told CNN it occurred in the South China Sea.Using a method called vertical gravity grading -- taking satellite altimetry measurements of the Earth's gravitational field -- and overlaying those results with mapping of, he was able to identify 27 places where the Connecticut could have hit a seamount that was not on U.S. Navy charts.
"You'd have to do that about every 20 seconds or so," to get an accurate picture, Sandwell said. "It makes a lot of noise." Other incidents have been less serious but illustrate the difficulties of maneuvering subs even in familiar waters., an Ohio-class guided missile submarine, struck a channel buoy and grounded as it was returning to port in Kings Bay, Georgia.
"We have more submarines, they spend more time at sea, they go a lot farther away from home and they operate at higher speeds than probably anybody else's," he said. "These subs have some of the most advanced -- in fact the most advanced -- underwater capabilities in the business," said Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King's College in London.A Navy fact sheet says the Connecticut is capable of going faster than 28 mph under water. That's faster than the average container or cargo ship on the surface of the sea and almost as fast as the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
"The robust design of the Seawolf class enables these submarines to perform a wide spectrum of crucial military assignments -- from underneath the Arctic icepack to littoral regions anywhere in the world," the manufacturer, General Dynamics Electric Boat, says on its website. The subject of nuclear-powered submarines has been prominent in Chinese state media over the past few months in the wake of Australia's decision to acquire such vessels from the United States and the United Kingdom underChinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in September the AUKUS deal "seriously damages regional peace and stability."Washington issued its first public statement on the collision five days after it occurred.
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