[PSUBS-MAILIST] Vanguard class sub (UK) unintended depth excursion

[Daniel Lance via Personal_Submersibles]

Sean ,
I think a good recommendation for Psubs is to not conduct dive operations
in water depths greater then the safe operating depth of whatever craft is
being operated at that particular time ?

On Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 10:12 AM Sean T. Stevenson via Personal_Submersibles <
personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

> Just read an article about an incident with a British Vanguard Class
> submarine that had an incident where it went far too deep, apparently as a
> result of faulty instrumentation. Engineers became aware of the sub's depth
> when they observed some backup depth instrument(s) and rectified the
> situation before it became a castastrophe.
>
> Just wanted to prompt some discussion here, because PSubs don't
> necessarily employ robust backup systems, and at minimum, we should
> endeavour to ensure that all critical instrumentation is periodically
> calibrated to some reference standard to ensure accuracy, and also
> periodically verified in order to have some mechanism in place to detect
> malfunctioning instruments.
>
> Backup instrumentation is a great method to achieve the latter (instrument
> verification), but comparing the primary and backup instruments needs to be
> part of SOPs. Where backups don't exist, some means of functional
> verification should at least be employed, if not per dive, then perhaps per
> trip?
>
> This was a military sub that was almost lost because of an easily
> avoidable problem.
>
> FWIW.
>
> Sean
>
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