Whats most frightening about this story is how folks react to it - reading the comments is definitely not one way to maintain faith in humanity. The unadulterated hatred which some feel is their right to express is just .. astounding ..
That would be damage control doing their thing. First response to leaking is defamation and denigration - make the source look like a complete and utter tool, like an idiot, like someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
I for one can vouch that much of what he's said harks true, from the horror stories a friend who serves on these boats has told over the years - apparently being a submariner mostly comprises wading around in (occasionally electrified) sewage with a headache, waiting for something to catch fire or break.
Not really given it mostly quotes directly from the "article" and makes basic errors - I'm sure Chief Petty Officers would like to think they are "senior officers" but that doesn't make it so. He leaked this to all the national papers and they are pretty much all running it on the human interest angle, not the nuclear safety angle, which should tell you a lot about this "story".
I agree that is doesn't add much if you read UK media. For the majority of the world, which doesn't, I thought it gave some useful context: the sailor is "on the run", the MOD are downplaying his claims, the SNP reaction, etc.
Are there any other examples of British whistleblowers who broke the Official Secrets Act and were pardoned?
I can't imagine that David Cameron is going to pardon this and 'make a mockery' of both the British Navy and the OSA.
This is not my opinion I hasten to add, but the British government tends to be pretty militant when it cones to this kind of thing. The OSA is treated as 'sacrosanct'.
The ex-MI5 officer David Shayler had a similar situation, when he released the information about the state sponsored assassination attempt on Libya's Gadaffi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler
At the trial Shayler represented himself, claiming that
the Official Secrets Act was incompatible with the Human
Rights Act and that it was not a crime to report a crime
although these arguments were dismissed by the court with
the latter being ruled irrelevant. Shayler's defence
attempted to argue that there were no other avenues to
pursue his concerns with the service and its performance.
The judge ruled that while this was true it was irrelevant.
The judge instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict
and that the House of Lords had ruled in another case that
a defendant could not argue that he had revealed information
in the public interest. After more than three hours of
deliberation the jury found him guilty.
In November 2002 he was sentenced to 6 months in prison,
of which he served three weeks in Belmarsh prison and just
under five weeks in Ford Open Prison, with the four months
served on remand in France being taken into consideration.
Sailors spin dits (that's "tell stories" to mere mortals), especially to baby sailors. There are plenty of "we thought we were going to die" stories about submarines, yet for some reason the RN doesn't actually lose them. Perhaps it is because highly experienced personnel, whose lives are equally on the line, know more than someone doing a 3 month training patrol.
AB McNeilly went onboard with the intent of "whistleblowing" - the effect of this can be seen in the biased way he reports on the concept of trainees being onboard. People have to be trained on submarines, the V boats are excellent platforms to do it, and the people he was "distracting" are a) used to it and b) would have no compunction about telling a trainee to go away if things got busy.
Finally - you don't need to smuggle a bomb on board to sink a submarine, any member of the crew can do it, in just the same way that you could sink a surface ship without explosives.
2. William McNeilly is not preceded by other whistleblowers from the same field,
3. William McNeilly is a whistleblower who intended to blow the whistle,
4. William McNeilly does not have good writing skills,
5. William McNeilly cannot prove that the world will end.
You need to carefully investigate your own motivations behind these criticisms.
According to this logic, the only legitimate whistleblowers are those who have been in their industry for 15+ years, have the writing skills of a well-versed journalist, and have blown the whistle after a series of other whistleblowers (with the above qualifications, of course) from the same industry.
This is piss poor (or convenient, your choice) criteria to dismiss whistleblower revelations. It is however an excellent way of reframing the issue by focusing on the whistleblower rather than the issue itself, effectively avoiding the debate on the revelations and their implications.
My advice is that you watch Citizenfour, in which a lengthy scene describes whistleblowers' and journalists' valid anxieties and experience with shills, commentators, and the public, all of whom are more interested, for a multiplicity of reasons, in delegitimizing a whistleblower's persona rather than the content of the leaks s/he provided.
Always nice when a newly registered account pops up talking of shills and Citizenfour. I didn't mention 2, 4 or 5 at all in my post which undermines you a tad.
The point is that a "top of class" trainee is making basic factual errors (65m as the "safe depth" for a submarine) and accepting every second hand story he heard as the gospel truth. Anyone who has spent any time in any military will tell you that service personnel, especially those cut off from the world for 3 months, like to tell exciting stories which get embellished with the retelling.
Submariners, even more so than the rest of the Navy, are "all in the same ship" when it comes to safety. Incidents like the fire on HMS TIRELESS which killed two submariners are drilled into young personnel as examples of the dangers involved. I'd prefer to side with the rest of the crew, all far more experienced, over a trainee conducting his own crusade.
As for the concept of material defects - nuclear submarines are probably the most complicated machines in the world, operating in a hostile environment, things break all the time. Patio11 is still fixing bugs in Bingo Card Creator, I think we can accept that there might be problems on a submarine, that's why they embark engineers.
> Always nice when a newly registered account pops up talking of shills and Citizenfour.
A habit of yours, I see. For all you know, I'm a pink pony who devours dickbutts and pukes rainbows; deal with it.
Now go back to the original text, which you can find here[1], and see if you can bring yourself to talk about the content. You can do it; we believe in you.
The mass of the submarine increases due to pumping water into the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine remains proportional to the mass, and varies a tiny amount according to depth (deeper = heavier). The net downward force upon it increases, due to reduced upward force from buoyancy, which is dependent upon density, which is proportional to gas pressure.
The author was correct, but for the wrong reasons.
The weight of the submarine increased due to the additional mass of water in the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine increased due to the increase in Earth's gravitation at points nearer the center of mass. The apparent weight increased due to a reduction in buoyancy.
But in no way can you increase the weight of something by squeezing it. (Aside from invented hypotheticals like two gas giant planets wrapped in unbreachable envelopes, lightly touching, without rotation.)
Is anyone here interested in the nuclear abolition movement?
Im in an international buddhist organization that is represented at the United Nations. As a software engineer, I'd love to meet other people who are interested in solving these problems.
Whichever org you're a part of, you're overstating its qualifications. The only NGOs "represented" at the United Nations[1] are the Red Cross/Crescent, IPU, IOC and Knights of Malta.
Being represented at the UN doesn't necessarily mean being an observer at the General Assembly, lots of NGOs have consultative status on ECOSOC, the UN Economics and Social Council.
I've just skimmed the document due to lack of time. But I haven't found anything truly earth-shattering.
People lose their ids, the pin system is not working, anyone can get in and release the nukes! Unless the submarine is crewed by monkeys, I don't expect anyone not in the navy avoiding detection for long. Humans are great pattern-matchers.
The rest of the issues... I get it. Things break. Submarines are hard. This is why they have multiple, redundant systems.
The more useful question would be: how well does it fare against the potential enemies? It could turn out that the potential opponents are much worse off.
But I wouldn't expect a single, young sailor to know the answer for that.
It's worth comparing this with the HMS ASTUTE shooting [1] when a sailor with a loaded weapon did decide to cause problems on board a submarine. That led to a major culture shift in the Royal Navy and a lot of soul searching.
25 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 63.0 ms ] threadI for one can vouch that much of what he's said harks true, from the horror stories a friend who serves on these boats has told over the years - apparently being a submariner mostly comprises wading around in (occasionally electrified) sewage with a headache, waiting for something to catch fire or break.
I can't imagine that David Cameron is going to pardon this and 'make a mockery' of both the British Navy and the OSA.
This is not my opinion I hasten to add, but the British government tends to be pretty militant when it cones to this kind of thing. The OSA is treated as 'sacrosanct'.
The ex-MI5 officer David Shayler had a similar situation, when he released the information about the state sponsored assassination attempt on Libya's Gadaffi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun
AB McNeilly went onboard with the intent of "whistleblowing" - the effect of this can be seen in the biased way he reports on the concept of trainees being onboard. People have to be trained on submarines, the V boats are excellent platforms to do it, and the people he was "distracting" are a) used to it and b) would have no compunction about telling a trainee to go away if things got busy.
Finally - you don't need to smuggle a bomb on board to sink a submarine, any member of the crew can do it, in just the same way that you could sink a surface ship without explosives.
1. William McNeilly is an inexperienced trainee,
2. William McNeilly is not preceded by other whistleblowers from the same field,
3. William McNeilly is a whistleblower who intended to blow the whistle,
4. William McNeilly does not have good writing skills,
5. William McNeilly cannot prove that the world will end.
You need to carefully investigate your own motivations behind these criticisms.
According to this logic, the only legitimate whistleblowers are those who have been in their industry for 15+ years, have the writing skills of a well-versed journalist, and have blown the whistle after a series of other whistleblowers (with the above qualifications, of course) from the same industry.
This is piss poor (or convenient, your choice) criteria to dismiss whistleblower revelations. It is however an excellent way of reframing the issue by focusing on the whistleblower rather than the issue itself, effectively avoiding the debate on the revelations and their implications.
My advice is that you watch Citizenfour, in which a lengthy scene describes whistleblowers' and journalists' valid anxieties and experience with shills, commentators, and the public, all of whom are more interested, for a multiplicity of reasons, in delegitimizing a whistleblower's persona rather than the content of the leaks s/he provided.
The point is that a "top of class" trainee is making basic factual errors (65m as the "safe depth" for a submarine) and accepting every second hand story he heard as the gospel truth. Anyone who has spent any time in any military will tell you that service personnel, especially those cut off from the world for 3 months, like to tell exciting stories which get embellished with the retelling.
Submariners, even more so than the rest of the Navy, are "all in the same ship" when it comes to safety. Incidents like the fire on HMS TIRELESS which killed two submariners are drilled into young personnel as examples of the dangers involved. I'd prefer to side with the rest of the crew, all far more experienced, over a trainee conducting his own crusade.
As for the concept of material defects - nuclear submarines are probably the most complicated machines in the world, operating in a hostile environment, things break all the time. Patio11 is still fixing bugs in Bingo Card Creator, I think we can accept that there might be problems on a submarine, that's why they embark engineers.
A habit of yours, I see. For all you know, I'm a pink pony who devours dickbutts and pukes rainbows; deal with it.
Now go back to the original text, which you can find here[1], and see if you can bring yourself to talk about the content. You can do it; we believe in you.
[1] https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/
How does that work? I thought pressure under water is the same from all directions.
The author was correct, but for the wrong reasons.
The weight of the submarine increased due to the additional mass of water in the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine increased due to the increase in Earth's gravitation at points nearer the center of mass. The apparent weight increased due to a reduction in buoyancy.
But in no way can you increase the weight of something by squeezing it. (Aside from invented hypotheticals like two gas giant planets wrapped in unbreachable envelopes, lightly touching, without rotation.)
Im in an international buddhist organization that is represented at the United Nations. As a software engineer, I'd love to meet other people who are interested in solving these problems.
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly...
People lose their ids, the pin system is not working, anyone can get in and release the nukes! Unless the submarine is crewed by monkeys, I don't expect anyone not in the navy avoiding detection for long. Humans are great pattern-matchers.
The rest of the issues... I get it. Things break. Submarines are hard. This is why they have multiple, redundant systems.
The more useful question would be: how well does it fare against the potential enemies? It could turn out that the potential opponents are much worse off.
But I wouldn't expect a single, young sailor to know the answer for that.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Astute_%28S119%29#2011_fata...