Eideard

Two enterprising Polish poachers used a home-made, radio controlled submarine to trawl for fish in a frozen lake.

Police in the small town of Zbaszyn in western Poland said they caught the two red handed with the submarine, although another man managed to escape when the officers approached the “three suspicious characters with nets on the lake”.

A search of the suspects revealed a hand-held GPS device, which took the police the next day to a 40-kilogram stash of fish, and five 200-metre nets.

“They drilled a hole in the ice and then dropped the submarine in on a tether,” said Romuald Piecuch, a local police spokesman. “They then manoeuvred it around under the ice with the net before bringing it back to the hole with the anything they had caught.” Despite their prowess at harvesting fish in a manner that won them the grudging respect of the police, the spokesman added that the value of the torpedo-like submarine probably exceeded the value of the fish.

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. It doesn’t take a boatload of brains to be a crook.

Click on the photo for Reuters Pictures view of the stuck submarine

The Royal Navy hastened to assemble an official inquiry Friday evening to explore why Britain’s newest nuclear submarine, H.M.S. Astute, ran aground while undergoing sea trials off the coast of northwest Scotland on Friday morning and remained stuck on a bank of sand and shingle for nearly 10 hours before a tug pulled it free at nightfall. A spokesman for the Royal Navy said divers would be deployed to check concerns that the submarine’s rudder had been damaged.

The episode was particularly embarrassing for the navy because the vessel, one of the most technologically advanced submarines in the world, was designed for maximum stealth and use in such delicate operations as delivering special forces troops secretly and eavesdropping off the coasts of hostile nations. Its design features and propulsion mechanisms are considered top secret, naval experts said, but both were on display during the grounding.

Earlier efforts by tugboats to free the $2 billion vessel failed, prompting officials to wait until the evening tide to refloat it. Their decision left the 8,000-ton submarine, as long as a football field and equipped to carry Tomahawk cruise missiles, sitting motionless in full view of people on the shoreline throughout the day.

Local residents quoted by the BBC said the submarine appeared to be tilting slightly as it sat about a mile off the coast of the Isle of Skye, close to the bridge that links the island to the Scottish mainland at the Kyle of Lochalsh, 150 miles northwest of Glasgow.

They certainly had a great view of the Black Cuillin. I just hope they didn’t screw up one of the most idyllic spots on this whole bloody planet. The Misty Isle is heaven on Earth – though I have spent as long as 3 weeks in a tent waiting for the rain to stop.

Russian design from the 1930′s

Guillemots and gannets do it. Cormorants and kingfishers do it. Even the tiny insect-eating dipper does it. And if a plan by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) succeeds, a remarkable airplane may one day do it too: plunge beneath the waves to stalk its prey, before re-emerging to fly home.

The DARPA plan…calls for a stealthy aircraft that can fly low over the sea until it nears its target, which could be an enemy ship, or a coastal site such as a port. It will then alight on the water and transform itself into a submarine that will cruise under water to within striking distance, all without alerting defences…

The challenges are huge, not least because planes and submarines are normally poles apart. Aircraft must be as light as possible to minimise the engine power they need to get airborne. Submarines are heavyweights with massive hulls strong enough to resist crushing forces from the surrounding water. Aircraft use lift from their wings to stay aloft, while submarines operate like underwater balloons, adjusting their buoyancy to sink or rise. So how can engineers balance the conflicting demands? Could a craft be designed to dive into the sea like a gannet? And how will it be propelled – is a jet engine the best solution, both above and below the waves?

According to Norman Polmar, former adviser on naval strategy and technology to the US government, the starting point must be to find a way to make an aircraft that can sink in water. “Submarines cannot fly,” he says, “but seaplanes can submerge…”

“What the Americans want sounds incredibly ambitious,” says UK Royal Navy commander Jonty Powis, head of NATO’s submarine rescue service. “If they achieve half of what they want from this machine they will be doing well.” Others are more optimistic, especially in the light of advances in engineering and materials science since the last attempt – notably in lightweight carbon fibre composites and energy-dense batteries.

RTFA. Learn how much time, effort and money can be spent on designing something useful in 1945 – at the latest.

Tough enough trying to move bodies like the Pentagon to modern Fourth Generation warfare. Giving them sandbox time to play with more archaic concepts only encouraging looking backwards at useless tactics.

The Netherlands has agreed to a Nato request to deploy a submarine off the coast of Somalia to combat piracy…

It will be used for reconnaissance in the vast area from the Gulf of Aden deep into the Indian Ocean where Somali pirates have been hijacking commercial vessels for ransom…

The EU has an anti-piracy mission in the same region, Navfor, which is also tasked with protecting World Food Programme ships carrying food aid to Somalia.

Pirates have in the past succeeded in collecting multi-million-dollar ransoms and the head of the Navfor says there has been an upsurge in attacks recently after a period of relative calm…

With warships patrolling along the Somali coast, the pirates have started to operate further away and have even staged some attacks across the Indian Ocean, closer to India than Somalia.

Efforts to fight piracy are complicated by the lack of a functioning central government in Somalia and the lack of an international legal system for people accused of piracy. It is up to individual governments to put suspected pirates on trial if they are captured.

Last week a Dutch court sentenced five Somali men to five years in prison for attacking a Dutch Antilles-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden last year, in the first such case to come to trial in Europe.

I know they wouldn’t waste anything as expensive as a torpedo on gangbangers like this; but, I’m confident that what passes for small arms on a modern submarine will be used – if needed.

These clowns are dumb enough to attack a military vessel every now and then. I wonder if anyone ever told them about submarines?

The Unity cable is part of another Google underseas consortium

In little more than a decade, Google has conquered the technology industry and become one of the world’s most powerful companies. Its latest undertaking, however, may be one of its most ambitious: a giant undersea cable that will significantly speed up internet access around the globe.

The Californian search engine is part of a consortium that confirmed its plans to install the new Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC), the centrepiece of a $400 million project that will create the highest capacity system ever built.

Google is undertaking the scheme with a number of Asian telecommunications companies, including Japan’s KDDI and India’s Reliance Globalcom. The agreement to build the submarine cable was first proposed three years ago, but negotiations finally came to a close on Wednesday as officials signed what they promised was a groundbreaking deal…

When it opens for business in 2012, the SJC will run 3,000 miles from Singapore to Japan – with branches reaching out to Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand and Guam. In total, it will consist of more than 5,000 miles of cable, sunk deep under the seabed…

The SJC is set to break records by allowing up to 17 terabits of data to be sent every second – the equivalent of around 250m telephone lines, and large enough to allow the contents of every single book in the British Library to be transferred 20 times per second.

And as if that was not enough, the line is also upgradeable and could eventually run as fast as 23Tbps – space for another 88m phone lines.

It’s no surprise to me to see Google ready and willing to invest in a communications project like this. It’s what corporations should be prepared to invest in – to offer leadership in technology.

Now, uh, how many of your local newspapers covered this story, eh.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Two US navy vessels have collided in the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, lightly injuring 15 sailors, the US navy said. A nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Hartford, and amphibious transporter the USS New Orleans collided early on Friday, the US Navy Fifth Fleet said.

The incident is being investigated and damage to both ships is being evaluated, a navy statement said.

The New Orleans’ fuel tank was ruptured in the crash, causing a spill of 25,000 gallons of diesel.

No injuries were reported aboard the New Orleans, according to the statement from the Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain.

The atomic propulsion system of the submarine was not damaged by the incident, the statement said.

The US Fifth Fleet…patrols an area of about 7.5 million square miles of sea in the Middle East and eastern Africa. You’d think with that much room they could keep from running into each other.

Of course, by the time the weekend talk shows roll around, Rush and the RNC will have figured out some way to blame Iran, China and Obama – not necessarily in that order.

Daylife/AP Photo by Robert F. Bukaty

The U.S. navy has signed a contract worth some 14 billion U.S. dollars with General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman to build eight new Virginia-class submarines.

In a statement, General Dynamics said its Electric Boat unit and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, a unit of Northrop Grumman, will start building the submarines next year.

These submarines are capable of speeds in excess of 25 knots (46 km per hour) and can dive to a minimum depth of 244 meters, while carrying Mark 48 advanced capability torpedoes, Tomahawk land attack missiles and unmanned underwater vehicles.

Well, whoop-de-fracking-doo! The cities all over America have to cut back on everything from education budgets to support for their police departments – but, one of Bush’s farewells to the American taxpayer is guaranteeing that we can fight World War 3 from a position of hardware supremacy.

A robotic submarine searched beneath the Mediterranean on Sunday for damaged communications cables, two days after Web and telephone access was knocked out for much of the Middle East.

Telecommunication providers from Cairo to Dubai continued Sunday to scramble to reroute voice and data traffic through potentially costly detours in Asia and North America after the lines running under the Mediterranean Sea were damaged Friday.

Internet access was largely knocked out for two days in at least six countries that were affected — Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Yemen.

It is the second time this year that trans-Mediterranean cables to Europe have been severed. The earlier cut, in late January, was apparently caused by a ship’s anchor.

The crew released a robotic submarine named “Hector” to search for two of the three damaged cables, which are owned by a consortium that includes the Paris-based telecommunications giant. Once found, the cable ends will be pulled to the surface and repaired on deck — a process that could take several days.

“We have to fix the cable fiber by fiber, and it’s a very huge cable,” Aymard said. He said the company hopes to have the first line fixed by Thursday.

Ouch. There is no easy way to do this, folks. Hope you stay current!

Akula-class submarine in a snowy harbour

At least 20 people have died in an incident involving the failure of a fire extinguishing system on a Russian nuclear submarine.

Russian Pacific Fleet spokesman Igor Dygalo said both sailors and shipyard workers died in the incident, which occurred during sea trials. He said the submarine itself had not been damaged and there had been no radiation leaks.

The submarine, whose name and class have not been revealed, has been ordered to suspend sea trials and return to port in the far eastern Primorye territory, Capt Dygalo said.

There were 208 people on board at the time, 81 of whom were servicemen.

A shipyard source told the RIA Novosti news agency the vessel was the K-152 Nerpa, an Akula-class submarine, but this cannot be independently confirmed.

RIA said the trials were in the Japanese Sea and that the Nerpa was due to be leased to the Indian navy.

Think inclusion of the word “nuclear” in the headline increased the number of folks reading this article? You betcha.

I always felt like I was inside a floating coffin in a submarine. It’s been almost thirty years since the last time and I still recall that feeling.

The Mexican navy says it has seized nearly six tonnes of cocaine found inside a 10m-long (31ft) makeshift submarine in the Pacific Ocean.

A naval spokesman said they had known about such submarines but this was the first time they had seen one. US intelligence helped in the operation.

The submarine had been carrying its cargo from Colombia towards the coast of Mexico when it was intercepted on Wednesday. It took the navy two days to tow it to shore.

Vice-Admiral Cisneros said, “This is going to force us to intensify our aerial surveillance, because the freeboard (distance from the deck to the water) of this sub is not detected by radars or any type of electronic detection device.”

Uh, like when it’s underwater. Eh?