Although the risk of a submarine sinking is statistically low, there have been approximately 170 recorded submarine peacetime accidents in the 120 years since submarines first appeared permanently in naval forces. During the last ten years 8 accidents have been reported where lives have been lost.

    In the event of a submarine accident the problems facing the rescuers are immense. The Kursk disaster in August 2000 highlighted the crucial need for international co-operation and brought about many changes within the submarine rescue community world-wide. As a result, the Sorbet Royal series of submarine escape and rescue exercises run by NATO, and held every three years in the Baltic and Mediterranean alternatively, are designed to be the most complex and demanding known.

    From the early days of submarine rescue to the recent accident involving a fire onboard the Canadian Submarine Chicoutimi, rescuers have had to make a series of life and death decisions in a very short and highly critical period of time. As the Chicoutimi accident demonstrated, submarine accidents can happen on the surface as well as submerged. The aim of exercise Sorbet Royal 05 is to test international rescue services to the limit in order to generate lessons and principles that can be applied to any submarine disaster that may occur to any nation anywhere in the world.

    The culminating scenario for exercise Sorbet Royal 05 is that a nuclear submarine has sunk with a large number of survivors onboard. There will be up to 80 pressurised casualties, far exceeding the numbers in any previous exercise and they will exceed the capacity of the rescue systems and submersibles thus creating intractable problems for the rescue and medical teams