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

[via Personal_Submersibles]

It's interesting that they "observed" some backup depth instruments:  Seems that any depth instruments would have some type of alarm system (audible and/or strobe) to say, "Hey, buddy..."  Perhaps it did, and the report just wasn't being that specific.
Jim T.
In a message dated 11/20/2023 11:27:51 AM Central Standard Time, personal_submersibles at psubs.org writes: 
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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