StarDestroyer.Net BBS

http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20021118IE1

Foreign - Monday 18.11.2002

Finnish activist boards British nuclear submarine undetected

Finnish peace activist Elisa Silvennoinen, together with
Swede Petter Joelson, broke into a British nuclear submarine, the HMS Vanguard , at the Devonport base in Plymouth, England late on Friday night.

Both activists have been arrested and questioned by the police. The pair are due to appear before magistrates on Monday, charged with criminal damage.

Both activists have admitted committing the offence, and would have been free to leave the police station soon thereafter, but they chose to remain until the court hearing. The two belong to the campaign group Trident Ploughshares, which opposes Britain's Trident nuclear submarines.

The aim of the activists was to prove how easy it is to board a nuclear submarine, making them vulnerable to terrorists. According to Trident Ploughshares, the duo was able to enter the base quite easily, needing only to damage a perimeter fence. The Devonport Naval Base is the base for seven nuclear submarines.

After boarding the submarine, Silvennoinen and Joelson waited for a moment, then triggered the fire alarm. Their arrest was made without incident, and the submarine suffered no damage.

What the hell are the Brits doing?!?

Thats pretty embarassing. I bet someone's career is gonna be ended by that incident.

Luckily if its in a UK port then the missile would be removed or at least de MIRV'ed. Heads are going to roll for this one, in the RN anyway.

How the hell is security so damn lax? It's not like it's a fucking a fishing boat.

Now see finally the Russians can say "this is the kind of bullshit that doesn't happen on OUR submarines!"

Probably because all the active duty Russian boomers are stationed in the middle of nowhere and trespassers are SHOT

How the hell is security so damn lax? It's not like it's a fucking a fishing boat.

Security is one of those lessons that has to be learned over and over.

Vympel wrote:Now see finally the Russians can say "this is the kind of bullshit that doesn't happen on OUR submarines!"

Probably because all the active duty Russian boomers are stationed in the middle of nowhere and trespassers are SHOT

More like because the there decks are awash at 40 degree angles from the leaking ballast tanks and all the hatches have rusted shut. And the radioactively leaking from the reactors that blackens the paint of nearby vessels.

Sea Skimmer wrote:
More like because the there decks are awash at 40 degree angles from the leaking ballast tanks and all the hatches have rusted shut. And the radioactively leaking from the reactors that blackens the paint of nearby vessels.

ACTIVE DUTY boomers.

That is soooo embaressing for the Brits...

Time for everyone to point and laugh at Britain!

[Nelson]Ha, ha![/Nelson]

The reason Russian subs aren't getting stolen is because nobody wants a Russian sub.

neoolong wrote:The reason Russian subs aren't getting stolen is because nobody wants a Russian sub.

Speak for yourself mate. I'll take a Project 941 Typhoon, with 20 missiles capable of deliverying 200 warheads thank you very much.

Now if only I had somewhere to put it ...

A lone nutcase gets aboard an SSBN. Now what's he going to do with it?

Steal the boat? Can't run a sub alone and the nutcase will run out of bullets before the sub runs out of crew.

Launch a missile? Not without the crew's cooperation. And on a Trident boat, not without the launch codes.

Steal a warhead? They're too heavy to lift and rather difficult to get out of the tubes.

With the doomsday scenarios out of the way, about the best a lone nutcase could hope to do is damage the sub or sink it in port.


Bottom line: letting a nutcase get onto an SSBN is an embarassment but is hardly the kind of thing that could lead to an end-of-the-world incident.

Enlightenment wrote: Bottom line: letting a nutcase get onto an SSBN is an embarassment but is hardly the kind of thing that could lead to an end-of-the-world incident.

You fail to see the implications. The fact that a bunch of fucknuts got onto
an SSBN is very disturbing. There is a reason the US Navy has never released
photos of the engineering sections of it's nuke boats and when old control
panels are put on display at the Smithsonian, they have gauges moved
around or even removed entirely.....

What if those kooks had a big damn bomb with them? Multi-billion dollar SSBN lost.

MKSheppard wrote:You fail to see the implications. The fact that a bunch of fucknuts got onto
an SSBN is very disturbing. There is a reason the US Navy has never released
photos of the engineering sections of it's nuke boats and when old control
panels are put on display at the Smithsonian, they have gauges moved
around or even removed entirely.....

Probably because they fear something similar could happen even to the USN.Before laughing to the british it would be better ask yourself how much thick is the security around YOUR bases.By the way britsh activists have been studying how to do precisely that for years.I stumbled on their site a few moths ago.

From the report it sounds like they cut a hole in the fence- doesn't exactly take years to figure that out.

Well, to a degree, most military bases are not *that* secure, unless you have something worth keeping secure there...

Then you hide it out of the way.

An SSBN base getting infiltrated by well-armed, stealthy terrorists/ enemy commandos with the purposes of sabotage I can understand. A pair of nuclear weapons protesters? Nope. Like jeez was NOONE looking?

Vympel wrote:From the report it sounds like they cut a hole in the fence- doesn't exactly take years to figure that out.

Before that you have to figure out the disposition of the security (or lack of) etc.They apparently have studied that for quite a long time.

Admiral Piett wrote:

Vympel wrote:From the report it sounds like they cut a hole in the fence- doesn't exactly take years to figure that out.

Before that you have to figure out the disposition of the security (or lack of) etc.They apparently have studied that for quite a long time.

As well could any hell bent criminally minded person/extremist.

The problem was noone was watching. It doesn't matter how they did it, it's that they did it. Like for cripes sakes any half-way competent military base should have a security system that isn't totally braindead (a competent shift system for example). Was noone LOOKING at the damn sub? Obviously they weren't. If that SSBN had a bomb set off in its torpedo comparments would anyone be making excuses? Heads should, and will, roll, for good reason.

Vympel wrote:The problem was noone was watching. It doesn't matter how they did it, it's that they did it. Like for cripes sakes any half-way competent military base should have a security system that isn't totally braindead (a competent shift system for example). Was noone LOOKING at the damn sub? Obviously they weren't. If that SSBN had a bomb set off in its torpedo comparments would anyone be making excuses? Heads should, and will, roll, for good reason.

The intentions showed in the site were actually to sabotage the submarine
damaging non nuclear related systems.I would not be surprised if this has not happened in the USA only because no one has tried,yet.

Admiral Piett wrote: The intentions showed in the site were actually to sabotage the submarine
damaging non nuclear related systems.I would not be surprised if this has not happened in the USA only because no one has tried,yet.

It's possible that it could happen in the US/France/USSR every other country with nuke boats. In all those situations the base security would be equally culpable. A comparison between base security would be interesting.