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Itaguaí, Brazil: In a vast hangar, Brazilian technicians work on the enormous cylindrical hulls of two submarines, but in a country buffeted by economic crisis and corruption the vessels already face stormy waters. The hangar at a naval facility in Itaguai, south of Rio de Janeiro, is 125 feet (38 meters) tall, an impressive structure where the future submarines, lying in separate sections, are being equipped before eventual assembly. In all, five submarines are planned, one of them nuclear-powered, with the first scheduled for launching in July 2018. The bid to transform Brazil's small submarine fleet was won by French...

Fielding a nuclear-tipped cruise missile that can be launched from a submarine will give Pakistan something it has wanted for years—a credible nuclear second strike deterrent. Earlier in the week the Pakistani Navy announced that they successfully test-fired just that for the first. Regardless of if the missile launch was as successful as Pakistan claims it was or not, more tests will follow and it’s likely just a matter of time before the missile becomes operational. Second strike capability means that even if a full-on surprise nuclear barrage were to knock out a country’s nuclear weapons capability, that country still...

South Korea started on Wednesday construction of a new 3,000-tonne submarine that could be equipped with ballistic missiles, local media reported. MOSCOW (Sputnik) — South Korea is expected to build the Chang Bogo-III batch 1 submarine, which would be the third vessel of this class in the national navy, as part of its plan to increase maritime capacities in the context of threats posed by the North, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), the country's arms procurement body. Hyundai Heavy Industries company was expected to build the 3,000-tonne vessel, which would be able to...

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...

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...

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...

<p>BANGKOK – Thailand’s navy will seek Cabinet approval to purchase its first submarines in 65 years, the country’s defense minister has said.</p> <p>Prawit Wongsuwan, who is also deputy prime minister, said Friday that the submarines will cost 36 billion baht ($1 billion) in total, with payments to be made over 10 years. He said the first of the Chinese-made Yuan class S26T submarines will be purchased out of the 2017 budget.</p>

It was the smallest of sounds, too soft for human ears but deemed loud enough to potentially doom an Australian submarine. Two weeks ago, behind closed doors in a shipyard in the German port of Kiel, the secrets behind Australia’s $150 billion submarine decision were finally revealed. It was a moment that left the Germans stunned. They were told for the first time that they had lost the bid because their proposed Aust­ralian submarine had an “un­acceptable’’ level of “radiated noise’’. In the world of submarines, noise equals potential detection and death, but when the Germans pressed the Australian officials...

The US State Department has approved a request by Egypt to purchase 20 Harpoon Block II encapsulated missiles for submarines as well as related equipment and training, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced in a statement. In addition to the Harpoon missiles, the proposed sale, worth approximately USD 143 million, includes two encapsulated harpoon certification training vehicles, technical assistance, personnel training and logistics support provided by the US. The missiles will be used by Egypt’s new Type 209 submarines, built by the German company ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, according to military intelligence and analysis website IHS Jane’s 30. “The proposed sale...

More bad news for Canada's problem-plagued submarine fleet: two of the boats will be out of commission for most of this year because of shoddy welding. HMCS Chicoutimi and its sister, HMCS Victoria, are stuck in their Vancouver Island port for months because several hundred welds can't be trusted to hold tight when the boats dive. "Numerous welds are located outside the boats' pressure hull, which will require docking to complete the review and effect repairs," says a briefing note for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act. "Both submarines will be alongside...

South Korea’s military on Tuesday held a ceremony to formally start the assembly of its first domestically developed submarine, slated to be deployed in the 2020s. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration said the keel laying ceremony -- which officially recognizes the start of a ship’s construction -- for batch 1 of Jangbogo-III submarine was held by its builder Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co. The steel cutting ceremony for the vessel was held in November 2014. Daewoo had also built the Navy’s 209-class Jangbogo-I and won a maintenance contract for the submarines, according to the company’s officials on Tuesday. Jangbogo-III,...

Australia Is Getting The Baddest Diesel Electric Submarines On The Planet And the US should buy them too. Here's why. was one of the biggest international defense contracts in recent memory. Australia’s Collins class submarine replacement program, also known as SEA1000, looked to procure 12 highly advanced diesel-electric multi-role submarines, each equipped with the latest in air independent propulsion (AIP) and quiet running technologies. These new foreign-designed submarines, which would be outfitted with American combat systems, would be fielded in the next decade and would serve into the latter half of the century. The program’s total cost is estimated just...

By the end of last year the French were convinced they had made a breakthrough in the race to win Australia’s $50 billion submarine contract. Over a series of meetings in Paris, L’Orient, Cherbourg and Adelaide, engineers from the French naval shipbuilder DCNS shared with Australian naval officers secret data on their submarine’s acoustic signature. The French Barracuda submarine, with its pump jet propulsion system, matches other conventional submarines’ noise emissions at very low cruising speeds under 5 knots. But the data showed that when the Barracuda accelerated, as any submarine must do when pursuing an enemy or evading an...

The U.S. Armed Forces operate a wide array of sophisticated weaponry, in many cases superior to anything else in the world. But while the new destroyers, carriers, or the F-22 might have no equal, the U.S. Armed Forces face a significant gap in their capabilities: the total lack of any conventional submarines. The United States hasn’t produced any conventional submarines since the Barbel-class in the late 1950s; every submarine class since then has been nuclear powered. This might have made sense in the context of the Cold War, where Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines had to be shadowed, but times...

It’s been said so often but never actually examined in great detail – the Future Submarine Program is strategic for Japan and Australia. In speaking to the submarine community, past and present, what comes through is that cooperation with Japan results in a Future Submarine that can approach the performances of Collins but only with a completely new design and one that will definitely not be regionally superior post 2030. This is alarming and requires pause for thought. The root-cause of this problem is that Japan does not have any technology that is, well, regionally superior. Indeed it is the...

There are no plans to discontinue the construction of Project 677 Lada-class diesel-electric submarines (SSK) yet, Deputy Navy Commander-in-Chief Vice Admiral Alexander Fedotenkov told journalists on Thursday. The second and third submarines, the Kronstadt and Velikiye Luki, will be delivered later than scheduled in 2019 but the Russian Navy says the class is much quiter compared to the Project 636 Kilo-class. Lada class Diesel Electric Submarine (SSK) Project 677 "The Navy will decide on how many Project 677 Lada submarines it needs based on the outcome of the operational evaluation of the Kronstadt and Velikiye Luki submarines. The termination of...

Arguably Israel’s most critical military capability is their small but very deadly submarine fleet. Beyond being able to stealthily spy on enemies, insert operatives onto foreign shores and wreak havoc on enemy ships on a whim, they represent Israel’s “second strike” nuclear deterrent. Now Israel has received its fifth such vessel, the Rahav. The importance of the INS Rahav, and Israel’s small but elite submarine force was underscored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the new submarine’s arrival ceremony: “Our submarine fleet serves as a deterrent to our enemies who seek our destruction.” He continued, “they need to know that...

The arrival of Israel’s fifth Dolphin-class submarine, and second new-generation air independent propulsion platform has doubled the navy’s long-range operational capabilities, a soon-to-be submarine commander told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. Lt.-Cmdr. M is a former deputy commander of the INS Tannin, Israel’s first air independent propulsion submarine, and is currently training in a submarine command course. Commenting on the arrival of the INS Rahav in Haifa’s submarine dock at Haifa naval base, he said: “Today is a historic day, and the completion of a long process. We have a fleet of submarines – something we’ve been dreaming about having...

While attention has been on the simmering tensions in the East and South China Seas letely, a small event took place in the East China Sea off the coast of Shanghai. Pakistan Navy (PN) guided missile frigate Shamsheer and fleet replenishment vessel Nasr drilled with a pair of PLA Navy Type-054A Jiangkai II frigates, Xuzhou and Yangzhou from December 31 to January 1. According to Chinese reports, the fast-paced, high-intensity exercise involved day and night maneuvers including joint escort, counter-piracy and live-firing. This constitutes a logical progression from the limited scope when this bilateral exercise first began in 2003 as...