Posted on 03/14/2013 12:03:22 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
India in talks with Russia on lease of second nuclear submarine
India is in talks with Russia for the lease of a second nuclear submarine, said a senior official in the Russian defence industry.
India is ready to finance the completion of a partly constructed nuclear submarine which sits at the Amur Shipbuilding Plant in the Russian Far East, the Russian government news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed “highly-placed” source in the defence industry.
The submarine belongs to the same Project 971 as the Nerpa submarine which India leased from Russia in 2011 for 10 years at a cost of $970 million. It was commissioned as INS Chakra in April 2012.
“India has expressed interest in having the second submarine of this project completed,” the Russian official said. “The strong hull of the submarine is fully ready and carefully kept in a slipway at the Amur Shipyard.”
The official said an inter-government agreement for the resumption of the submarine construction is “in the works”.
“As was the case with the first submarine, the second one would be up for lease, not sale,” he said.
Russia had agreed to lease two nuclear submarines to India under a package deal for the retrofit of the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier, but four years ago Russia’s top defence export official suggested that Moscow could lease “several” nuclear submarines to India.
“There is a real possibility of leasing to India for 10 years several of our nuclear powered multi-role submarines of Project 971 ‘Shchuka-B’ class,” Director of Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSVTS) Mikhail Dmitriyev said in December 2008, shortly after the delivery of the Nerpa submarine was postponed following an accidental discharge of poisonous fire-fighting gas aboard the vessel that killed 20 seamen during sea trials.
However, Russia today has only one unfinished Project 971 submarine, Irbis, which was mothballed due to lack of funds at the Amur Shipyard in the 1990s when it was 42-percent ready.
If they encounter technical difficulties, will the call center be in Idaho???
Peggy will answer.
Will the Indian Navy post a review on Jane's?
"Solidly built, but lacks many amenities of USN models.."
US models aren’t available due to nonproliferation issues. Russians has no right no supply India with strategic weapons as well but they do it for decades using ‘lease’ and other over similar schemes.
I thought proliferation laws only apply to nukes and missile tech. Don’t see why subs would be included esp considering both US and Russia plan to sell 5th gen planes which can be considered as strategic as nuke-subs. Unless there’s some law about exporting nuke-powered assets I don’t know about?
It has a reactor fueled with some 20 pounds of plutonium and India is not a participant of nonproliferation agreements so for that reason legally able to sell plutonium to everyone.
For that reason India is a client to avoid for a participant which Russia is.
Also 5-gen aircraft no matter how good it is is not an asset in a class of nuclear sub.
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