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In 2010, China’s first—and only, so far—Qing-class submarine sailed out to sea following nearly six years of construction. Displacing 6,628 tons submerged and measuring exactly the length of a football field at one hundred yards long (ninety-two meters), it is by most accounts the largest diesel submarine ever built. Unlike the vast majority of diesel submarines, the Type 032 can fire not only long-range cruise missiles, but submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with the capacity to send a nuclear warhead across the ocean. Beijing prefers to keep its cards close to the chest, leading to speculation about the Type 032—is it...

NEW DELHI: The sinking of PNS Ghazi during the Indo-Pak war of 1971 has long been an unsolved mystery. With Karan Johar sharing the first poster of his movie, The Ghazi attack (India’s first war-at-sea film that is based on the mysterious sinking of PNS Ghazi) the other day, the debate on what caused the blast on board the Pakistani vessel has been renewed, reports foreign media. On December 5, 1971, a few local fishermen visited India’s Eastern Naval Command with pieces of wreckage and reported the presence of a large oil slick in the area. As a result of...

BEIJING --- The website of Taiwan's China Times reported on November 29 that with the increase of national strength, protecting overseas interests has become the strategic core of the Chinese mainland. According to a Pakistan naval personnel, the PLA Navy will deploy submarines in south Pakistan’s Gwadar Port so as to protect the ports and trade shipping lines in this region. China may also build a military base in Gwadar Port to provide maintenance support for the PLA naval fleet operating in the Indian Ocean and provide support for the PLA Navy to conduct missions and tasks in the future....

A news report on Chinese state television provided a rare look inside one of the submarines of the Chinese Navy. The Kilo-class submarine was purchased from Russia during the 1990s and is the tip of Beijing's spear in its disputes with neighbors. The People's Republic of China bought twelve 636-class submarines in the 1990s and early 2000s. The submarines, known as the "Kilo" class to NATO, were originally designed by the Soviet Union to operate in Cold War European coastal waters. After the fall of the USSR and the end of the Warsaw Pact, the 636 class became a useful...

Aboard the Vigilant -- “There is a chance to spend 24 hours aboard an SSBN, are you available?” When I receive the message from the French Navy, I don’t even take the time to think about it. A chance to spend a day inside a nuclear ballistic missile submarine? “Yes, of course,” I answer right away. I get giddy just thinking about it. A chance to see from the inside one of the most secret places in the French military. What will it be like aboard this metal monster as it carries its nuclear warhead load 350 meters below the...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Navy on Friday said it had prevented Indian Navy submarine from entering Pakistani territorial waters on Monday, November 14. “In order to divert attention from the indigenous freedom movement in Indian Occupied Kashmir, India has persistently embarked upon a series of provocative actions against Pakistan,” a press statement issued by Pakistan Navy said. “The Indian Navy, in order to fulfill its nefarious designs, was deploying submarines. The Pakistan Navy, alert and using its extreme skill, prevented Indian submarine from entering Pakistani waters,” it said. “The unsuspecting submarine was detected and localised south of Pakistani coast on Nov 14,”...

Just as The War Zone predicted, reports are surfacing that Russia’s large naval flotilla, led by the carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, has already had a confrontation with a NATO submarine. Russia’s Ministry of Defense says that two destroyers chased away a Dutch attack submarine that was operating in the armada’s midst. The Russian task force had arrived off Syrian shores just two days ago. The Kremlin claims the submarine, which is thought to have been a Dutch Walrus class diesel electric boat, maneuvered dangerously close to the Russian naval group’s operating area off the coast of Syria. The Russian Ministry of...

The new sonar device developed by Rafael improves the Dolphin submarines' detection and fighting capabilities. A new sonar system developed by the Israel navy and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. significantly improves the detection capabilities of Israel's fleet of Dolphin submarines. Development of the new sonar took three years, and it has been installed on the navy's submarines for the past two years. Another submarine, the INS Rahav, was added to Israel's fleet at the beginning of the year, bringing its total to five submarines. German company HDW supplied the vessel. A sixth submarine will be supplied to Israel in...

Main picture: NK Pro A new modern-style corvette with low-observable radar characteristics has been spotted in North Korea’s northeastern port of Najin in Rason, high-resolution photos obtained exclusively by NK Pro have revealed. Two sets of photos taken during different periods in 2016 show a heavily armed, 77-meter long vessel with radar cross-section (RCS) reducing features docked adjacent to a helicopter-capable but minimally armed support ship. Equipped with two Kumsong-3 anti-ship cruise missile launchers, a short-range surface-to-air missile system, torpedo launchers and rotary canons, the reduced-RCS corvette also includes capacity for large caliber naval cannon, the NK Pro analysis reveals....

Israel is seeking to buy three more advanced submarines from Germany at a combined price of $1.3 billion, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday. The planned purchase aims to replace within the next decade the oldest vessels in its existing Dolphin fleet, which began entering service in 1999, the Maariv daily reported. Contacted by AFP, the Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report. Israel already has five of the state-of-the-art German submarines, with a sixth due for delivery in 2017. Foreign military sources and governments say the Dolphins can be equipped with missiles armed with nuclear warheads. They believe Israel...

Beijing, Oct 16 (PTI) Chinas first nuclear-powered submarine has been decommissioned after more than 40 years of military service, state media said today. After undergoing a thorough denuclearisation process, the submarine was towed to a wharf belonging to the Chinese Navy Museum in Qingdao, a port city in east Chinas Shandong province yesterday where it will be a public exhibit, state- run Xinhua news agency reported. The submarines release from military service and the safe, thorough and reliable handling of related nuclear waste, nuclear reactor and other devices showed Chinas life-cycle maintenance ability, ranging from a nuclear submarines production, operation,...

Hulls of the new £31billion Trident submarines will be built with steel provided by a FRENCH firm. BAe Systems, building the subs in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, opted for a French supplier after signing a contract with the UK government. The deal, which The Mirror reports will be worth tens of millions, came after a plan between two British firms to make a joint bid for the work flopped. The Defence Secretary announced work on the new nuclear deterrent will begin today as the first pictures of £31billion Trident submarines were unveiled. Sir Michael Fallon said he will officially mark the start...

The commander of Israel Navy Ship Eilat, a Sa’ar-5 class Israeli missile boat, was extremely displeased. For some time, INS Rahav, the navy’s latest Dolphin-2 class submarine, had been cruising in the waters beneath him, at fairly close quarters. The sub occasionally lunged up and trained its periscope on the missile boat. Observers on the boat, whose task is to spot such potential threats, hadn’t noticed the periscope’s tip, which is the size of a fist, on the surface. The sub was practicing intelligence gathering, using the missile boat and its surroundings as targets; it wasn’t spotted even when sailors...

After years of prevarication, the U.S. government is reported to have finally agreed to sell Mark-48 (Mk-48) heavyweight torpedoes to Taiwan. Made by Raytheon Corp, the Mk-48 Advanced Capability (ADCAP) torpedo can be used against a variety of targets in deep-water and littoral environments. The torpedoes will be outfitted onto Taiwan’s two combat-ready Hai Lung-class (“Sea Dragon”) attack submarines. “Software-based guidance and control enables autonomous operation, ‘fire and forget’ tactics, simultaneous multiple target engagement and close-in attack,” the manufacturer states on its website. It can also be controlled via wire link. Acquired from the Netherlands in the 1980s, the Hai...

OTTAWA — The navy’s submarine fleet will have to be retired in the next decade unless the federal government opts to spend billions to upgrade the ships, according to Defence Department documents. The documents show the first submarine, HMCS Victoria, is scheduled to reach its end of service life in 2022. The other three vessels will follow until the last, HMCS Windsor, retires in 2027. The documents, released to the Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act, peg the cost of extending the lives of the submarines at between $1.5 billion and $3 billion, depending on how long the...

India is unlikely to give French naval contractor DCNS a proposed order for three new submarines, in addition to the six it is already building in the country, following the leak of secret data about its capabilities, Indian defence officials said. Details of the Scorpene submarine were published in the Australian newspaper last month, triggering concerns that it had become vulnerable even before it was ready to enter service. DCNS had offered to build three more submarines to help India replace its ageing Soviet-era fleet, and had held talks over the past year, two Indian sources said. That offer will...

<p>The French shipbuilder at the centre of a global submarine data leak scandal is threatening legal action today to prevent further publication of the information contained in 22,400 secret documents obtained by The Australian.</p>

The Pakistan Navy will receive the first of eight conventional attack submarines on order from China in 2022, with the initial batch of four expected to be delivered by the end of 2023. The remaining four, which will be produced in Pakistan by Karachi Shipyard & Engineering Works (KSEW), will be in the hands of the Pakistan Navy by 2028. The information was conveyed to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Defence by the Chief Project Director of Pakistan’s next-generation submarine program (The News International). Comment and Analysis This briefing to the National Assembly provides official confirmation that the Pakistan...

Indian Navy seems to have suffered a huge setback after more than 22,000 pages of secret data related to the six Scorpene-class submarines being made by the French company DCNS in India was leaked, “The Australian” newspaper reported. The leaked data gives away the entire secret combat and performance capabilities of these submarines, and will completely negate their operational usefulness if China and Pakistan get access to the same. India is currently building six Scorpene-class submarines, named Project 75, in partnership with the French company DCNS under a $3.5-billion deal signed in 2005. These submarines are being built at Mazagon...

DURING war games played off the coast of Florida last year, a nuclear-powered French attack submarine, Saphir, eluded America’s sub-hunting aircraft and vessels with enough stealth to sink (fictitiously) a newly overhauled American aircraft-carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, and most of her escort. An account of the drill on a French defence-ministry website was promptly deleted, but too late for it to go unnoticed. Nor was this French victory a fluke. In 2006, in what was very far from being a war game, a Chinese diesel-electric submarine surfaced near Okinawa within torpedo range of another American carrier, Kitty Hawk, without having been...