The COVID-19 coronavirus is starting to have a major impact on navies of the world, as ship crews worldwide are testing positive for the virus. In other cases, ships exposed to a virus carrier have been locked down under quarantine.
On the flip side, a former nuclear submarine commander with the French Navy says the country’s strategic nuclear submarine crews are probably unaware the pandemic is taking place.
Since the viruses’ detection in December 2019, the COVID-19 virus has quickly spread across the globe, with 826,222 infections recorded worldwide. It’s hard to imagine a place now where the pandemic never happened, and where people are unaware it is taking place. Thanks to nuclear weapons, that place does exist: aboard nuclear-missile carrying submarines carrying out their patrols worldwide.
Retired French Navy admiral Dominique Salles, who commanded his country’s four nuclear missile submarines in the 2000s, said that French crews currently on patrol would be completely unaware of the viruses’ spread. The ships typically spend 60-70 days at a stretch and are kept uninformed of such events in order to keep them focused on the nuclear deterrence mission.
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It’s unclear whether or not U.S. nuclear missile submarine crews are similarly uninformed of the pandemic. The U.S. Navy operates fourteen Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, with eight or nine normally at sea and four or five on “hard alert,” which means they are on station and ready to fulfill their mission. Ohio-class subs typically spend 70 days at a time at sea.
Read more: yahoo
