It is rumored that the device could distinguish her teeth at a range of 90 miles.
Posted on 04/19/2006 8:44:57 AM PDT by inkling
PARIS (AFP) - The French navy made a red-faced admission that it had lost a multi-million dollar sonar navigation device after its cable ripped in stormy waters.
Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie confirmed a report in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, and said an investigation had been launched into how the three-million-euro (3.7-million-dollars) device was mislaid.
"An inquiry is underway to determine whether a technical or a human error is at the origin of this problem," she told reporters.
Le Canard Enchaine reported that the captain of the De Grasse frigate, decided against his lieutenants' advice to try out the 10-tonne sonar in rough seas, during an exercise in the southwestern Gulf of Gascony on March 24.
The top-of-the-range device -- one of the most sophisticated in the world, capable of detecting an enemy submarine at a distance of 150 kilometres (90 miles) -- was part of a 50-million-dollar underwater combat system.
Come on, how can you take seriously a country with a Defense Minister named Michele?
alternate headline? French Sonar Dish Surrenders itself to the Sea.
HA HA!
Headline should have been: SONAR LOSES FRENCH NAVY AT SEA.
They probably sold it to Iran. I mean, what whould the French need a Sonar for? Their policy is surrender first.
The captain's nickname wouldn't be "Old Yellow Stain" would it? (obscure "Caine Mutiny" reference.)
Even their towed arrays surrender at the first sign of danger.
Ah, it's no big deal. To find such a large item in the sea, all they need is a large sonar that... whoops... never mind.
The French Navy always loses.
Karl Rove musta stolen it. Take that, Chirac!
As fun as it is laughing at French military, sure sounds like the socialist labor that built the cable didn't do the job right. What the heck is the use of it if you can't use it in rough seas ?
The French have a Navy? I guess that's just in case they have to surrender at sea?
Good luck firing them.
Not to worry, Inspector Clouseau is on the case.
Perhaps he was searching for the prop that fell of their state-of-the-art aircraft carrier a few years back.
I had the same thought.
What better way to hide a sale of this technology than to say " we lost it at sea."
I don't trust the French any further than I can throw one of their Sonars into the sea.
La merde se produit.
Speaking an an old Oceanographer: If you put something over the side at sea, be prepared to loose it.
Actually, sonars don't function too well in rough seas (even when their cable doesn't part) because of the higher level of background acoustic noise from waves crashing, etc. The captain will be retiring very soon....
Why do Ze French have glass-bottomed boats?
So they can see their navy.
Ah, but the strawberries! That's, that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, and with, with geometric logic, that, that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox did exist. And I would have produced that key if they hadn't pulled the Caine out of action. I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officer.
And so — voila! —Minister of Defense.
Yes, and doesn't the cable just love to enfold them.
Surrender monkeys lose another round in the war games.
Did they use hemp? I hear there is nothing hemp can't do.
Priceless. lol
Can't be any worse that the nookniks at NASA putting the mirrors on backwards on the multi-billion dollar Hubble when it was first launched years ago. Then it took at least a year or better to launch a fix-it shuttle at another multi-billion cost. Yep, dummies appear at all levels of inefficient governments.
Thats Chief Inspector
Probably the propeller from the Charles de Gaulle severed the cable as it sank to the ocean floor.
I wouldn't be too hard on the French for this. The US Navy has had multimillion dollar aircraft roll off elevator platforms when cables weren't correctly used. Ouch.
They didn't put the mirrors on backwards. they ground the lens for the wrong focal length (think down, not up).
LOL!
Sacre Bleu!
It's actually pretty easy to lose a towed array if you deploy it in adverse sea conditions. That's why they have winches.
(slightly edited)
The flight software installed on the spacecraft correctly computed the velocity change and transmitted it to earth. The ground software, however, was originally written for the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) mission, and the MGS flight software did not compute nor transmit velocity change information. The ground software, then, discarded the transmitted velocity change and recomputed it. Since the Mars Climate orbiter used a differently-sized thruster than Mars Global Surveyor, an update to the thruster equation in the ground software was necessary. The conversion factor from pound-seconds to newton-seconds was buried in the original equation and not immediately identifiable, and so it was not included in the updated equation. Thus, the ground software reported calculated "impulse bits" which were a factor of 4.45 too large (1 pound force = 4.45 newtons). Subsequent processing of the calculated impulse bit values from the AMD file by the navigation software underestimated the effect of the thruster firings on the spacecraft trajectory by this factor.
They were probably trying to find the propeller that fell off their aircraft carrier.
Anyone remember the Charles DeGaulle losing a prop on its maiden voyage?
Thanks for the clarification. I remembered it was something to do with the mirrors but I didn't recall exactly what.
Speaking as one who has been thru many hurricanes, If you put something over the side in a storm, and expect it to stay connected, you are an idiot!.........Sacre Bleu! Ze rope! She is broke!.........
Bet it took billions from to start to finish to correct the problem, huh?
LOL yup. "We've ground several mirrors to the same specification for Keyhole satellites...whoops."
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