Crew member caused tragedy on Russian nuclear sub – investigators

MOSCOW, November 13 (RIA Novosti) – A crew member activated without permission a fire safety system on board the Russian nuclear submarine Nerpa, causing the deaths of 20 people, investigators said on Thursday.

“Military investigators have determined the person who activated, without permission and any particular reason, a fire safety system on board the submarine. He is a sailor from the crew, and he has already confessed,” Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the investigation at the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

Criminal charges have already been brought against the crew member, and he faces up to seven years in jail.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20081113/118280454.html

Makes sense, given that the system was supposed to be manually activated and no one is silly enough to make something that is manually activated to activate itself.

Who needs contractors ? At last a little good news to redeem the sullied reputation of the Royal Navy. Pirates killed in firefight ………

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5141745.ece

An excellent picture as well

Now if they could just go a bit further…..burn the boat, put the crew back onto dry land. Go back and forth up and down the coast bombarding any known shore bases of the pirate groups.

But if an SSK is doing 4 knots , it may require more energy to do this task with pumpjet , but it will be more silent than a prop at same speed.

My point is just adding a pumjet will not make a sub silent , pumjet is just one of the many in the matrix.

A modern Akula 2 like Nerpa or Gepard might have achieved the near 4th gen capability barring some systems like use of pumpjet propulsion or spherical sonar.

But then you had questioned the whole basis if Russia could achieve such acoustic silencing which can be at par or better than the west.

I have never came across literature on capability of West ( not the US ) which will mean Brits and France in the area of acoustic silencing

Do Brits or French SSN have achieved a capability which can match a USN Improved LA class SSN ?

Never said the Russians didn’t know what they were doing, was merely trying to point out that while the Akula II’s have had some upgrades, they are still essentially a 1980’s design.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Trafalgar’s were roughly equivilent to the Improve LA’s. Not sure about the French as their Rubis class were their first attempt at a nuclear submarine.

If you are not updated with Russian submarine development the change came with Victor 3 SSN in early 80’s ( before this the Russian subs were noisy , but they scored on speed , depth and automation ) , it just got better with Akula 1 and with Akula 2 it surpassed the 688I , it took a decade between Victor 3 and Akula 2 ( 1995 ) to achieve this incredible feat.

They didnt have funds to make new subs , but back then they did spend their money on R&D to keep up with technology , hence now you see improved variant of Akula 2 , Lada , modernised Delta 4 , Borei and so on.

Any way the belief is among the naval professional and intell in the west as mentioned by Norman Polmar in his book , plus others like Rising Tide , so its a opinion of those who are in business.

You have not presented any evidence otherwise to prove that it is not the case , except you own make believe statement of quoting accidents.

The pump jet boats are quieter then the boats with the normal propellers. Do any of the Russian subs have pump jets yet? Akula 2 might be quieter then the LA class, but unless its got pump jet (which i’m not sure about) its probably not quieter then the later Trafalgar’s, Astute, Virginia and Sea Wolf class boats.

I wonder if the US would have considered leasing a Los Angles Class SSN to India???

Umm, no?

Only nations i would see any chance of either the UK or USA selling Nuclear Subs to would be Canada or Australia.

You accept that it is not warfare. Why do you insist that an activity that is not warfare requires a special exemption from the rules of war? It is already exempt, by virtue of not being war. Why is this such a difficult concept for you?

As far as international laws go, there are plenty of them which relate to piracy, & they all concur that it is not warfare, & that pirates can be treated as criminals, although (due to the non-national nature of their crime), in a special class. We do not need to look at the 19th century. The laws & understandings in force then have been superceded.

BTW, piracy has been suppressed pretty effectively in much of the world, without any pointless exemptions to irrelevant conventions. It is a phenomenon afflicting areas with weak law enforcement. Look at the Straits of Malacca. It is geographically ideal for pirates (much better than the Gulf of Aden), has an ancient tradition of piracy, & has suffered in recent years from weak Indonesian law enforcement, & lack of co-ordination between littoral states. As a result, piracy was flourishing there, until Indonesia accepted assistance, & the littoral states took positive action to improve co-operation. Piracy has been reduced dramatically, with attacks dropping from 38 in 2004 to only 7 in 2007. That was done by treating pirates as criminals, BTW. Nobody seems to have considered for a moment that the 1949 GC applied to the pirates. Pirate attacks were also greatly reduced in Indonesian waters other than the straits (94 to 43) & the Americas (45 to 21), & down worldwide. The main increases were off Nigeria (28 to 42), Somalia (2 to 31 – and increasing again this year), & Bangladesh (17 to 25).

(All figures International Maritime Bureau, reported in The Economist)

There’s a common thread to all this. Effective law enforcement measures succeed in suppressing piracy. Success has been achieved without exemptions to the 1949 GC. International coalitions have been successful. Despite what you believe, the USA has been successful (in the Caribbean, in co-operation with other nations) in reducing piracy without recourse to the resolution you ask for.

The areas where piracy has increased lack effective law enforcement, due to the weakness of littoral states.

An exemption to the EU law regarding handing criminals over to states where they might receive the death penalty may be nice, since it would deal with the problem of captured pirates possibly being able to apply for asylum in an EU country.

Wow. didn’t know that and i live about 10 miles away.

I could be wrong but that was the story as i understood it.

To bad………considering the distance RAN Submarines operate from base. A SSN like the Astute would be perfect.:diablo:

Probably, replacement for the Collins class will probably be a design derived from the current design with much more advanced technology inside of it. New batteries, new electric motors. The recent advances in those technology should narrow the gap considerably between SSK/SSG’s and SSN’s.