Ekaterinburg and Bryansk submarines are in dry dock

Two Project 667BDRM submarines - Ekaterinburg and Bryansk - were moved to a dry dock in June 2012. Ekaterinburg arrived in Severodvinsk to begin an overhaul after the December 2011 fire on 22 June 2012. Bryansk was photographed in the PD-50 dry dock at the end of June 2012.

The repairs of the Ekaterinburg submarine are expected to take two years. For Bryansk, the stay in the dry dock will probably be much shorter - it underwent a five-year overhaul in 2002-2007 and returned to service in 2008.

This leaves only two out of six Project 667BDRM submarines fully operational - Tula and Karelia. Verkhoturie is not expected to return to service before the fall of 2012, Novomoskovsk is undergoing sea trials and will not be back in service until much later this year (here are some interesting photos of Novomoskovsk with some kind of a test structure returning from sea on 26 June 2012.

So much for the plan to resume regular patrols of strategic submarines in June.