In early September this year, one of the Chinese media resources published a captured video frame, which showed a non-nuclear (diesel-electric) submarine (NNS / diesel-electric submarine) of the Russian project 877EKM, but not simple, but elongated. About 15 meters longer than itself in normal state. Chinese lovers of everything military quickly took this frame into circulation and came to the conclusion that this boat is equipped in an embedded compartment with an air-independent additional power plant (VNEU, in the West they are called AIP) for maneuvering into position. A very popular topic for non-nuclear submarines in the world now, everyone is striving to get such boats, including the Russian Navy, although we have been working on this issue for a very long time, both on additional nuclear power plants and on electrochemical generators on fuel cells. But we are in no hurry with this technology, promising it only for the next generation of nuclear submarines. So people suggested that one of the two existing pr. 877EKM is also equipped with such a compartment with a Chinese-developed VNEU. The Chinese chose external combustion engines for VNEU, they are also Stirling engines - there are such engines on Swedish and Japanese submarines, obviously, there the Chinese "ripped off" technologies. It is unlikely that such work on inserting a compartment on our ship building, had they been carried out, would have been possible without the ship's developer, however.
This "Varshavyanka" with an insert.
But further confusion began with this boat. The Chinese official publication Naval & Merchant Ships in December 2018 published an image of this "Stretch Kilo" (as it was called). Only this image immediately raised suspicions that it was a fake, despite the fact that the publication is considered a reliable source. In particular, Mr. HI Sutton, a well-known researcher of underwater military topics (both submarines and underwater vehicles, towing means of saboteurs and divers of anti-sabotage forces, semi-submersible boats, rebreathers, etc.) and the author of not only his own blog and website on this topic, but also a number of reference books, suggested the following.
The length of Project 877EKM with an insert by the Chinese is designated as 88 m against 72, 6 for the original modification. But the compartment with a length of more than 15 m is much larger than any other compartment with VNEU in the world. So, the compartment developed in the Russian Federation for similar boats is no more than 9-10 m long, and the compartments for Stirling are either 8 m long for the Swedes, or 12, but on boats with a much smaller diameter of a strong hull than in our large Varshavyanka ". You can, of course, assume that the Chinese screwed up with the design of the compartment, and therefore it is so large, but the oddities are just beginning. In the cross-sectional image of the compartment with the VNEU, 9 frames are visible, and they are not shown correctly, not as on the two-hull "Varshavyanka" it should be - inside, and not outside, of a solid hull. The distance between the frames in this project is known - 60 cm, which means that the length of the drawn compartment comes out about 6 meters, and not 15 m. But God bless him, maybe only half was drawn, it is not so important. Or the Chinese, who drew this picture for the official publication, was from that very strange tribe that received the nickname "girls-designers". These strange creatures of both sexes can do anything - and depict an American tank instead of a T-90S on a huge exhibition poster at an exhibition in Nizhniy Tagil, and slap a Fritz in a steelhelm thrown with a "mallet" on a poster for Victory Day. And instead of American ships in the United States, depict ours. Maybe here someone from this tribe has worked? But such nonsense with numbers and images in the official publication raises even greater doubts.
Here is this image from the Chinese official publication
In addition, recently, no Varshavyanka with an inset has been found on the regularly published satellite images of commercial Earth remote sensing satellites from Chinese naval bases. First of all, it is not in Hainan, where boats of this type are mainly based. The Chinese value the boats of Project 877EKM, Project 636 and 636M, because even the Yuan-type submarines developed with our help are inferior in noise characteristics to our submarines (which, of course, is officially denied by the Chinese). In general, if it existed, it would certainly have been "lit up" somewhere. But there are no other photographs of her, no satellite images. Except for one photo, where the boat supposedly stands in the base, but … on it, from somewhere, the conning-tower horizontal rudders suddenly appeared. Which are not on our diesel-electric submarines, the exception is pr.677 / 06771 "Lada". And he was not on that original image of "Varshavyanka" with an insert. At the same time, in that photo on the boat, you can see the removed front horizontal rudders, which, of course, are on our "Varshavyankas". Conclusion - this supposedly shot was taken by some semi-literate schoolboy, student or someone else in China who does not know that there are no three pairs of horizontal rudders on modern boats. The victim of Photoshop is the original frame, from which this story began with the diesel-electric submarine pr.877EKM with VNEU. If such modernization was conceived in China, then no one has yet carried out it with these boats.
A boat with regrown new rudders and preserved for some reason old
In principle, the reader will say, the story is not worth a damn. You never know who took photos with not very straight hands - this is the 21st century, it's time to get used to fakes. But when fakes are replicated in official publications it is, of course, strange. Although it is understandable - nobody canceled disinformation, it just came out too clumsy and stupid. But it's not only that. Around the Chinese achievements, imaginary and real, there is a huge heap of such "information" of a junk nature, and replicated not only by crowds of Internet enthusiasts from the Middle Kingdom, but also by completely official media. Moreover, fakes are often combined with completely shameless advertising of their weapons and military equipment with completely "off-the-wall" characteristics. This was only recently observed, for example, at an exhibition in Zhuhai. There were many such examples. Of course, the arms business without advertising (and sometimes very shameless) is generally impossible, and almost everything and about a lot are lying or not saying anything. But when there is a lot of lies, they simply cease to believe in him at all. It is necessary to be more careful, dear Chinese friends.
Similar "information" is being spread about nuclear missile programs. Why, it's clear. In conditions, in general, when the real form of the Chinese nuclear missile forces is still clearly worse than the one that one wants to have and depict for potential opponents and so far main trading partners from across the ocean, one can try to cover up bottlenecks with a heap of inaccurate information. But disinformation must be clever, otherwise the enemy will not fall for it.
