what i learned from this:
"Le Triomphant" serait plus endommagé qu'annoncé - Europe - Le Monde.fr
is (a) these submarines were frolicking about together in the context of manoevers, which for reasons obscure the uk spokesmodel cited in the earlier article had decided to be coy about. this reduces puzzlement over the bigness of the ocean as such by providing some other framework for thinking about proximity and frolicking in the way that fully armed nuclear submarines will, apparently, frolic, much in the way that flipper once did on television except with nuclear weapons on board and a nuclear reactor too.
i also learned that the french sub was pretty heavily fucked up by the encounter, much more than had previously been admitted.
i also learned that the french sub is one of two of this generation of submarines, but will for quite some time be the lonely, sad nuclear submarine with nuclear weapons on board and a nuclear powered engine as well that will not be able to go out and frolick with its other fully-armed nuclear submarine buddies.
poor lonely and sad fully armed nuclear submarine.