Bharat Rakshak

Nuclear sub catches fire at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

Top Photo
Smoke rises from a Portsmouth Naval Shipyard dry dock Wednesday night.Elizabeth Dinan photo
By Joey Cresta
jcresta@seacoastonline.com
May 23, 2012

KITTERY, Maine — Multiple firefighters were injured while battling a fire aboard the USS Miami nuclear-powered attack submarine Wednesday evening at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, according to a shipyard and public safety officials.

Firefighters were initially called to the Shipyard just before 6 p.m. for a report of a fire on a ship in dry dock. Fire crews encountered heavy smoke and fire, and two firefighters were taken from the scene with injuries, the officials said, adding two more firefighters were later taken from the scene for treatment.

Shipyard public affairs specialist Gary Hildreth said the fire is located in the forward compartment of the ship and all nonessential personnel were ordered to evacuate.

The submarine's reactor was not operating at the time the fire started and was not affected by the blaze, shipyard spokeswoman Bridget Church said.

Church said state, local and federal authorities have been alerted to the situation. She could not say just before 9 p.m. whether the fire was still burning.

One of the injured firefighters was treated and released at the shipyard, officials said. The other three injured firefighters were taken to a local medical facility, and all three were treated and released, officials said.

Kittery Police Chief Paul Callaghan said the Police Department has not received any requests from the shipyard to evacuate residents living in the area. He said the fire aboard the USS Miami is not posing a danger to the general public.

Callaghan said Kittery firefighters are on standby at the shipyard's fire station.

The USS Miami (SSN 755) and her crew of 13 officers and 120 enlisted personnel arrived at the Navy Yard on March 1 to undergo maintenance work and system upgrades.

It is the third vessel named for the city of Miami and the fifth so-called improved Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarine, according to the Navy. The Miami was commissioned June 30, 1990, and its home port is Groton, Conn.

The submarine's commanding officer is Commander Roger E. Meyer, who assumed command on Sept. 20, 2010. The Miami's host community is Sanford.

As of 7:30 p.m., black smoke visible from Prescott Park in Portsmouth, N.H., continued to billow from the dry dock. A Portsmouth fire truck was on standby at Peirce Island.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

MOSCOW, May 28 (Itar-Tass) —— The Russian Defence Ministry has signed contracts with Sevmash and Rubin for five Project 955A upgraded Borei A submarines, United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) spokesman Alexei Kravchenko said on Monday, May 28.

Two contracts have been signed under the state defence order for 2012: one with the Sevmash shipyard to build five serial upgraded Borei class submarines and with the Rubin Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering for R&D for these submarines.

Borei-class submarines are designed by Rubin. They are armed with Bulava ICBMs. The submarines are 170 metres long, 13.5 metres wide, their collapse depth 450 metres and they have a crew 107 sailors.

According to USC President Roman Trotsenko, “This event [the signing of the contracts] is important for all domestic shipbuilders and workers of more than a thousand enterprises involved in the cooperation... as a result of the talks a compromise was reached and a mutually acceptable pricing formula was agreed to, which makes it possible to ensure the implementation of important contracts for national defence capability and to keep the shipbuilding industry busy until 2020.”

According to the Navy’s Main Staff, serial Project 955A Borei-class submarines will carry 20, not 16, Bulava ICBMs starting from the fourth submarine Svyatitel Nikolai.

Borei-class submarines are designed by the St. Petersburg-based Naval Design Bureau Rubin. Each submarine can be armed with 12 ICBMs with MIRVs. They will also have an escape capsule for all crewmembers. A Borei-class submarine is 170 metres long and 13.5 meters wide, it can sink to a depth of 450 metres and has a crew of 17 sailors.

The Borei claims to be a state-of-the-art submarine, featuring characteristics superior to any submarine currently in service, such as the ability to cruise silently and be less detectable to sonar. Advances include a compact and integrated hydrodynamically efficient hull for reduced broadband noise and the first ever use of pump-jet propulsion on a Russian nuclear submarine.

The submarine will be armed with Bulava missiles. The Bulava carries the NATO reporting name SS-NX-30 and has been assigned the GRAU index 3M30. In international treaties, the common designation RSM-56 is used.

The first Borei-class nuclear-powered submarine Yury Dolgoruky will join the Navy in the summer of 2012.

The Yuri Dolgoruky was the first strategic missile submarine to be launched in seventeen years since the end of the Soviet era. It was the first Russian (rather than Soviet) vessel. Currently, there are two more Borei class submarines under construction, named Alexander Nevsky and Vladimir Monomakh. The planned contingent of twelve strategic submarines is expected to be commissioned within the next decade (five “Project 955” are planned for purchase until 2015).

The Defence Ministry said earlier that it planned to build at least eight new Borei-class submarines that should become the main naval component core of Russia's strategic nuclear forces.

SINGAPORE — A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. navy’s China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic “railguns” right out of a sci-fi movie.

But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.

The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers — but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.

Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.

But cost overruns and technical delays have left many defense experts wondering if the whole endeavor was too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.

They point to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement program in Defense Department history.

“Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it,” said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington. “Buying hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can’t do the job, or worse can’t survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible.”

But the destroyers’ $3.1 billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $7 billion each when research and development is added in, nearly sank it in Congress. Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut to 24, then seven.

Now, just three are in the works.

“Costs spiraled — surprise, surprise — and the program basically fell in on itself,” said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

une 4, 2012

Report: Israel fitting nuclear missiles on German-built subs

In this May 5, 2008 file picture a Dolphin-class Israeli submarine and missile ships sail down the coast during a military demonstration in Tel Aviv. Dolphin-class submarines are capable of carrying nuclear-tipped missiles.
(Credit: AP Photo/TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL)

(CBS News) Israel is arming submarines ordered from a German shipbuilder with nuclear weapons, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday.

According to the magazine's Spiegel's investigative report, submarines built by the shipyard HDW in the northern German city of Kiel are being outfitted by Israel with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

Three submarines have been delivered to Israel, with three more under contract for delivery by 2017, and the purchase of more being considered.

Despite official government statements in the past disavowing knowledge of Israel's deployment of nuclear weapons on the submarines, former high-ranking officials from Germany's Defense Ministry have told the magazine that they had always assumed Israel would outfit the submarines with nuclear defense capabilities.

Israel Deploys Nuclear Weapons on German-Built Submarines (Der Spiegel: English)

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Der Spiegel that Germans should be "proud" that through these defense measures they have helped ensure the preservation of the state of Israel "for many years."

Israeli does not comment officially on its nuclear military program.

The German government had helped underwrite the sale of the first three submarines delivered - subsidizing half the cost of one and the entire cost of two others.

Berlin is financing one-third of the cost of the sixth submarine, or about 135 million euros ($168 million). Chancellor Angela Merkel has placed conditions on delivery, however, including that Tel Aviv allow the completion of a Gaza Strip sewage treatment plant (partly financed with German funds) and end the expansion of settlements. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met none of the terms.

Steffen Seibert, a spokesperson for Merkel, told Der Spiegel that all submarines had been delivered unarmed, and that the government "will not speculate on subsequent arming."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told Agence France-Presse, "I can confirm that we have German submarines. It's no secret. As for the rest, I am not in a position to talk about their capacity."

A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the US Navy's China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.

But at more than $US3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.

Falkland Islands: Britain 'would lose' if Argentina decides to invade now
Rear-Admiral Sir John Forster Woodward - who in 1982 gave the order to sink the General Belgrano - regrets not making more of how the Falklands war was won.


...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... e-now.html

...

[*]1,200 x troops - British Army regiment w/ air-defenses
[*]1 x FFG/DDG
[*]1 x SSN
[*]4 x EF Typhoons w/ 1 x AAR
[*]2 x Sea Kings + 1 x C-130

The 360-foot USS Miami burned May 24. At least seven people, two crew members and five firefighters, suffered minor injuries in the fire on the sub while it was in dry dock at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

The Navy said the fire apparently started in a vacuum cleaner on the boat to clean areas where repairs were being done.

Navy officials issued the preliminary cost estimate of $400 million to repair the nuclear submarine -- if it can be fixed at all, the Maine newspaper said.

Some good pictures of French Le Triomphant and Le Terrible class SSBN , She certainly looks very pretty for an SSBN

http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... iompfs.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... terr10.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... riblem.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... phnefg.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... age2wj.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... 24sfpu.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... 24pfcw.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... hantsn.jpg
http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 ... 062599.jpg

It looks like a bigger version of the Scorpene SSK.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GThSYOwrWTk/T ... marine.jpg

Rory Medcalf, director of the international security programme at the Lowy Institute, said it was surprising to see the Chinese using naval vessels to patrol the disputed area.

"This raises lots of questions … They have been relying primarily on civilian forces," he said. "That does mean sooner or later we will see confrontational incidents involving naval vessels rather than civilian agencies.

"Secondly, it raises concerns about the quality of seamanship. If this had been a near-run with a ship from another country, it could have ended badly, with political implications."

TEHRAN - The Christian Science Monitor on Thursday quoted retired U.S. Navy Commander Christopher Harmer as saying that the United States has great difficulty tracking Iranian mini-submarines.

Iranian mini-submarines are “a huge problem for us,” said Harmer, who served as the director of Future Operations for the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet in Bahrain from 2008 to 2009.

Any submarine weighing less than 500 tons is generally regarded as a mini-submarine.

“They are a threat to us because they can disperse them throughout the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, and it’s extremely difficult for us to track them,” he stated, adding that as a result, they can lay “in wait to execute an ambush.”

The U.S. Navy is more accustomed to tracking large, Soviet-era nuclear-class submarines, something Iran knows well, Harmer added.

He stated, “Looking for small subs in shallow water is much more difficult, because the acoustics are so much more difficult -- smaller makes less noise.”

As a result, he added, the Iranian military “has prioritized these mini-subs and (has) gone into overdrive building them.”

Five years ago, Iran had “no mini-subs,” said Harmer, who is currently a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, adding that now Iran has 19 in service and is building an average of four per year, which is a “strategically significant” force.

Iran also has “significant special operations capability,” including “extensively” trained frogmen, Harmer stated.

According to U.S. military officials, while the diesel-electric powered Iranian mini-submarines have limited range, they have torpedo tubes and can quickly lay mines.

... The Royal Navy in WWII operated a number of Brogue class escort carriers ... and a good number of them had rather Indian names despite not serving in the RIN.

This is what I've come across so far;

HMS Ameer (D01), HMS Ranee (D03), HMS Rajah (D10), HMS Shah (D21), HMS Begum (D38), HMS Thane (D48), HMS Nabob (D77).

... The story goes that Japanese forces attempting to retreat across mangrove swamps were effectively surrounded and cut off in the swamp by the RN, RAF, Royal Marines and the 36th Indian Infantry Brigade.

... its alleged to be the greatest loss of life to crocodiles, *ever* - there have been (disputed) claims that as many as 400 Japanese troops ... were eaten alive by the enormous salt water crocs ...

A ``minor flood'' in one of our submarines says Defence
Date
July 25, 2012 - 6:40PM

The following is just to hand from the Department of Defence.
I post same with one question. Is there such a thing as a ``minor flood'' in a submarine?

On Wednesday 25 July (Australian Eastern Standard Time), while participating in Exercise RIMPAC, HMAS Farncomb suffered a minor flood in one of the submarine's machinery spaces.

At the time of the incident, the submarine was at periscope depth operating its diesel engines to charge the battery.

Standard pre-planned procedures were immediately executed and the situation was dealt with quickly.

The submarine surfaced as part of this normal response. The incident has been traced to a split in a hose on the submarine's weight compensation system.

No personnel were injured and Farncomb is currently returning to Pearl Harbour in Hawaii to replace the hose. An investigation is yet to commence.

There are number of hoses fitted to systems in the Collins class submarine that use the supply of sea water as part of their operation. Weight compensation is one such system, moving water in and out of the submarine to maintain neutral
buoyancy.

Following the failure of a sea water cooling hose in HMAS Dechaineux in 2003, there were immediate changes made to procedures and the development of equipment changes commenced.

One of these changes was automation of the closure of all hull valves should a
similar situation arise. This change has been installed in HMAS Farncomb.

Farncomb is currently on a 13000 nautical mile, five month deployment having departed her home base in Western Australia in May of this year.

The submarine has spent the last 15 days at sea participating in Exercise RIMPAC, which has included the recent successful firing of a Mk 48 torpedo to sink the 12,106 tonne former USNS Kilauea.

Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-new ... z21i0IEt2a

Some news about Mistral class (I assume) in Russian. I am unable to translate. Help!
http://news.mail.ru/politics/9712682/?frommail=1

"Indeed, we continue to work to ensure deployment of naval forces outside the Russian Federation. As part of this work at the international level, working on the creation of items of logistics in Cuba, the Seychelles and Vietnam," - said Chirkov.

MOSCOW, July 27 - RIA Novosti. Vietnam is ready to give Russia the opportunity to create a point of logistics (E & P) at the port of Cam Ranh, but does not intend to transfer to foreign countries its territory for military bases, said the radio station "Voice of Russia" the President of Vietnam Truong Tan Sang.