US Navy Nuclear Submarine Crashes Through 3 Feet of Polar Ice

One of the incredible things about a submarine is that it brings together a lot of science and engineering into one package that’s able to accomplish a pretty incredible breadth of duties. Sure, on the surface you might just look at it as a vehicle that’s able to make its way along the water in addition to surviving underwater as it dips beneath the surface to go undetected. However, along with these basic functions, there a lot of peripheral duties that you need to think about that a bystander probably wouldn’t think about.

In this one, we get the check out “U.S. Navy nuclear submarines USS Hartford (SSN 768) and USS Connecticut (SSN 22) surfacing in the Arctic Ocean for Ice Exercise (ICEX).” According to AiirSource Military, what we’re seeing pictured here “During ICEX, Navy submarines would conduct Arctic transits in which they would surface and break the ice (usually 60-90 cm or 2–3 feet thick), collect data, and run other training exercises to gain experience working in the Arctic.” Just imagine what it takes to be able to punch through ice that is that thick! To give you a little bit of perspective, that’s at least twice as thick as ice that would be able to support a car, if not more!

If you follow along in the video below, you’ll be able to watch the training exercise as it shows off this impressive demonstration of brute force and ultimate strength beneath the frozen surface. Seeing something like this gives you an all new appreciation for the submarines that are out there lurking beneath the surface of the water.

It’s crazy to think that something that could be so big and so massive with such a heavy punch could potentially make its way under the water without being detected, housing a whole group of people onboard!