The end of naval cooperation between Russia and India may come as a result of the current situation with the Russian nuclear submarine.
The contract of the Russian military with the Indian on the leasing of the last nuclear submarine "Nerpa" may finally "hack to death" the prospects for further cooperation in this area due to problems in Russian shipbuilding.
At the end of October, the rented nuclear submarine of project 971I "Nerpa" is to be received by the Indian naval forces.
Russian and Indian sailors will spend 15 days at sea. And it will take about seven days to eliminate comments. The official broadcast of "Nerpa" is to take place by November 24.
The named terms were agreed upon and finally approved by the high officials of both countries, who met in the Russian capital in early October. The Indian boat, as voiced by the Indian military, was named "Chakra". The emblem of the boat has already been cast, which on the appointed day will be installed on the wheelhouse of the boat. It will not do without a coconut - according to local traditions, it will be smashed by the wife of the commander of the "Chakra", the so-called "mother" of the boat.
However, the Indian side has serious concerns about the reliability of the torpedoes and missile torpedoes deployed on the Nerpa, which often do not “see” the target. So at the beginning of June, the boat showed itself not from the best side. Now its reliability is only about 35%, while under the Soviet Union it is 95-97%.
According to people in the know, the Indian Navy officials are significantly bogged down in this contract, so even if they wanted to, they could no longer refuse it. In addition, a lot of money has been spent on the preparation of the Chakra base in India, which is already completely ready. The Nerpa program has been dragging on for three years.
- The Indians no longer want a repetition of such problematic situations associated with our ships, - explained the interlocutor of the publication. - Yes, and our shipbuilders understand that such contracts can be forgotten.
The fact that the Amur Shipyard (it was there that the Nerpa was built) refuses to build nuclear submarines, was recently announced at a special press conference by the head of the USC Roman Trotsenko. Among the main reasons for the refusal, he named the presence of shallow water on the route to the landfill in the Sea of Japan.
Meanwhile, India has now built its own nuclear submarine "Arihant", which is equipped with ballistic missiles. The Chakra should become a training platform for her.
In total, within the framework of this project, it is planned to build five submarines. Two facilities are still under construction, and the first, the main ship, began sailing in 2009.
Under the Nerpa contract, the Indian Navy will use it for 10 years, which will result in a tidy sum of $ 650 million. The Indian military should have received the Nerpa nuclear submarine back in 2008. But during the tests, the automatic fire extinguishing system was unauthorizedly turned on, 20 people died. Therefore, the timing of its transfer to the Indian Navy was postponed.
The Russian nuclear submarine "Nerpa" - according to the NATO classification "Shark", also has the name "Pike-B" - from the third generation of submarines. Well armed. The characteristics of the Granat cruise missiles are impressive, which hit a target with a range of up to three thousand kilometers; there are also torpedoes and torpedo missiles.
Develops a speed of up to 30 knots, dives to a depth of 600 m, a displacement of over 12 thousand tons. It can stay under water for up to 100 days, crew members - 73 people. Within the framework of this project, since 1984, a total of 15 submarines have left the stocks.
The submarine "Chakra" India received a three-year lease back in 1988, during the Soviet era. Alexander Terenov, at that time the captain of the 1st rank, was in charge of the Russian specialists. The lease term ended in 1991 and was never renewed, which ran counter to the plans of the Indian military.
