Submarines are the coolest thing ever, until you realize using one means you’ll be hundreds of yards deep as a small pocket of air in a large, unrelenting body of water—inescapable if something, you know, goes wrong. With that cheery thought in mind, Aston Martin now has a production version of its submarine.
Every couple of years the U.S. Navy conducts a submarine exercise high above the Arctic Circle, known as ICEX. It doesn’t just feature submarines lurking underneath the polar ice caps, as creepy as that sounds. The submarines themselves also punch straight through the frozen landscape. This is what it looks like on…
In late 1984, when the first Akula submarine of the Soviet Navy put to sea, it immediately changed the way anti-submarine warfare would be conducted. With the Akula’s arrival the American submarine fleet would no longer enjoy the dramatic undersea advantages they had possessed since the end of the World War II. The…
Above-ground abodes: so overrated.
On Monday, the USS Jimmy Carter returned home to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Washington flying a Jolly Roger flag beside the American flag. The Jimmy Carter is America’s most secret submarine, equipped like no other for special missions and the covert gathering of intelligence. The Jolly Roger indicated it had…
In May, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson and acting Secretary of the Navy Sean Stackley appeared before a Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing to discuss the recently unveiled fiscal year 2018 defense budget and its effects on the Navy. The news was not good about the state of the Navy…
Normally the location of America’s nuclear subs is a closely-guarded secret. But President Rodrigo Duterte now knows where at least two of ours are, and that’s because President Donald Trump told him in a bragging phone call, according to transcripts obtained by a news website today.
GPS is one of those amazing technologies we use every day and kind of take for granted, allowing us to navigate our hometowns and any other destination without really having to think about it. But what many people don’t realize is GPS signals don’t penetrate seawater, making the already difficult act of undersea…
China is mulling a new law that would require submersive naval vehicles to travel above surface and report its movements to authorities and report their movements to government authorities. In other words, it’s asking submarines not to act like submarines, which is hilarious coming from a habitual maritime law…
The fourth Yasen-class submarine, the Krasnoyarsk, has passed critical tests of its structures and pressure hull, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. It’s supposed to be the most quiet nuclear-powered attack sub ever to enter the Russian fleet.
In the thick of the Cold War, the nuclear submarine USS James Madison crashed into a Soviet nuclear sub off the coast of Scotland in November of 1974. It was one of the most mysterious episodes of the Cold War, and now we finally have official confirmation from a declassified memo published in the CIA document dump…
The British Royal Navy was conducting a test of one of its submarine-launched ballistic missiles last summer, when the damn thing ended up heading straight for the United States. Not the Russians. Not the Chinese. Not ISIS. But the tea and crumpet Brits almost hit us with a missile.
Details remain scarce, but reports state that North Korea has lost one of its submarines. It is not clear what exactly the suspected state of the submarine is but North Korea is frantically searching for it. This event could not come at a worse time as tensions on Korean Peninsula are at an all time high.
Our friends over at Naval Graphics came up with a pair of charts showing all the submarines based in Europe and Asia, including the type and quantity for each country. These are truly outstanding charts that can help us understand each country’s capabilities and the potential threats they face.
A Byzantine shipwreck from roughly 1,000 years ago was discovered on the floor of the Black Sea in May, which was apparently so fascinating to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he decided to check it out for himself. (You can do stuff like that when you’re Putin.)
They don’t call it the ‘Silent Service’ for nothing. The world of U.S. Navy submarine operations may be shadowy, but it’s full of rich culture, honed over years of stuffing bus loads of sailors into a steel tubes for months on end. Out of this unique environment, some colorful terminology has sprung.
What goes on with the submarines that launch nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles is one of the most tightly guarded secrets that any country can have. So with that in mind, one British submariner just uploaded a load of alarming information onto the Internet. And this dirty laundry is unfortunately soiled with…
We tend to go on and on about random exercises here on Foxtrot Alpha, but this time, it’s different. Operation Dynamic Mongoose is the biggest anti-submarine exercise NATO has ever conducted, and it reflects both deep-seated fears and the effort to catch up on years of management mistakes.
All Royal Navy Trafalgar-class submarines have specially strengthened hulls and conning towers for breaking through massive polar icepacks. Yet for some reason, HMS Talent returned to port sporting a massive dent in its forehead, and the British Ministry of Defence is blaming it on “ice.” Okay.
