Posted on 06/28/2006 12:06:24 AM PDT by HAL9000
NEW DELHI: Keeping as it does a watchful eye on the rapidly-modernising Chinese Navy, the Indian Navy has detected, tracked and photographed three spanking new Chinese submarines in the Mediterranean region.This is the second such instance of remarkable long-range maritime snooping by the Navy this year. Its TU-142M and IL-38 maritime surveillance aircraft had "spooked" a new Chinese destroyer off Yemen's Socotra Island, almost 2,300-km away from the Indian mainland, as was reported by TOI in February.
This time, four of its warships — destroyer INS Mysore, guided missile frigates INS Brahmaputra and INS Betwa and tanker INS Aditya — came across the three submarines being transported on board two carrier "mother" ships transversing through the Suez Canal and Red Sea earlier this month.
"These three Kilo-class submarines, armed with the latest Klub-S cruise missiles, are the last batch of the eight contracted by China from Russia in a $2-billion deal in 2002," said a top source.
"The helicopters aboard our warships clicked their photographs with remarkable clarity. The first five submarines were delivered by the end of 2005.
China, incidentally, had also procured four Kilo-class submarines from Russia in the mid-1990s," he added.
As part of India's policy of maritime diplomacy, the four western fleet warships are on an overseas deployment mission during which they will travel to Alexandria (Egypt), Haifa (Israel), Athens (Greece), Izmir (Turkey) and Tripoli (Libya).
By the way, the sub that sank yesterday was decommissioned.
Thanks for the post HAL9000.
Active ping.........
Kinda nice of GW to give them the coordinates of where to look.
yitbos
ping
ping
Are these the subs that are very quiet. So quiet they sound like the batteries in a flashlight?
The stuff of Patrick Robinson novels. The Kilos are super quiet deisels and being sold like hot cakes by the Ruskies.
Were they sent there to support their buddies, Iran? Not a wise move China!
Very quiet,but having very low underwater endurance of just around 24-30 hours.That's changing with the introduction of AIP technology.Modern Russian D/Es could go as much as 10 days while the latest German boats can do 20+ days.
Actually,it would have been very easy to pick up subs being transported via carrier vessels-you don't need a whole lot of intelligence for that.Besides,India probably has far greaterr intelligence assets in Russian shipbuilding facilities than American ones given their commercial ties & also the fact India,along with China is the largest export user of the Kilo class.
Never fear...the USS supersub Jimmy Carter is on duty and will detect any of these intruders.
I am proud of my grandson who serves aboard the Jimmy Carter!
India seems to be a better and better ally lately. Nice counter weight to China in the region and becoming more and more Democratic as time passes.
India has been democratic for all but 19 months of it's 59 year history.
Yemen is not in the Med
Quiet as flashlight batteries with propellers underwater.
Yemen is mentioned when talking about a Chinese destroyer,not these subs.
Yes - but I understand the article correctly, the Yemen sighting was a separate incident in February.
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