Did HMS Vanguard fall foul of France’s ultra secrecy in the nuclear sub collision with Le Triomphant?

It seems to be becoming increasingly well authenticated that a central cause of this collision is France’s non-membership of NATO’s military command structure. Nations belonging to this provide information on the movements of their submarines and are kept informed centrally of the relevant movements of the submarines of fellow member nations.

There are operating areas reserved for submarines from the UK, Norway, The Netherlands, Canada and America. If one wants to enter the other’s area of influence, they let them know and tell them what they’ll be doing there.  But nations outside the NATO command structure are obviously not privy to that information nor do they supply any information on their own movements.

France has traditionally been ultra-secretive of anything to do with its nuclear deterrent capacity, hence its choice to remain outside the NATO military command structure.

However, Britain and America too keep their information tight. They have the information on the movements of the submarines operated by fellow NATO command structure members but they do not supply information on the movements of their own.

So HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant would each have been blind-sided on the other’s movements and locations and each must have been running on invisibility capacity.

There’s an interesting article on the NATO element of the situation at Time World.

The photograph above of Brittany-based French nuclear submarine,Le Triomphant, is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.