Smoke on INS Sindhuratna; 2 Navy officers missing

The incident happened off the Mumbai coast on the kilo-class submarine while it was on a routine training exercise.

Minor smoke was detected on Indian Navy Submarine Sindhuratna on Wednesday in the early morning hours. Five sailors have sustained minor injuries, Navy sources said.

News agency PTI says two officials were unaccounted for. "They might have been left in the cabin or at some other place as various cabins and compartments are isolated as part of the emergency measures," said a Navy officer to PTI.

The incident happened off the Mumbai coast around 150 Nautical miles on the kilo class submarine while it was on its routine training exercise.

The exact cause and the origin of the fire is yet to be ascertained. Sources claim that there is no grave damage caused to the submarine. As soon as the crew raised an alarm , a Navy helicopter and a Fast Attack craft were sent by the Navy.

"The smoke was detected around 6 am on the submarine by the crew. As soon as the Navy Operation Centre learnt about the mishap, Navy helicopters and a Fast Attack aircraft were pressed into service. The men who inhaled smoke because of the enclosed compartments were airlifted to INS base Ashwini and are recuperating at the Navy hospital ," Navy spokesperson told The Hindu.

"The submarine is afloat and no damage has been reported. The Navy crew is on board and the damage is being ascertained," the spokesperson added.

According to sources, the kilo class submarine was carrying no ammunition since it was still in testing mode and was yet to be placed under operation. Another submarine will also be pressed into service to render assistance , sources said.

Following the incident the submarine will be tested for its sea worthiness.

This is the third incident concerning a kiloclass submarine in the recent past. Last year 18 crew members died after a major fire broke out on INS Sindhurakshak.

India’s SSBN Shows Itself

A new satellite image appears to show part of India’s new SSBN partly concealed at the Visakhapatnam naval base on the Indian east coast (17°42’38.06″N, 83°16’4.90″E).

Could it be? It is not entirely clear, but a new satellite image might be showing part of India’s first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, the Arihant.

The image, taken by GeoEye’s satellite on March 18, 2012, and made available on Google Earth, shows what appears to be the conning tower (or sail) of a submarine in a gap of covers intended to conceal it deep inside the Visakhapatnam (Vizag) Naval Base on the Indian east coast.

The image appears to show a gangway leading from the pier with service buildings and a large crane to the submarine hull just behind the conning tower. The outlines of what appear to be two horizontal diving planes extending from either side of the conning tower can also be seen on the grainy image.

The Arihant was launched in 2009 from the shipyard on the other side of the harbor and moved under an initial cover. An image released by the Indian government in 2010 appears to show the submarine inside the initial cover.

The new cover, made up of what appears to be 13-meter floating modules that can be assembled to fit the length of the submarine, similarly to what Russia is using at its submarine shipyard in Severodvinsk, first appeared in 2010. Images from 2011 show the modules in various configurations but without the submarine inside.

The movement of the Arihant from the initial cover building to the module covers next to the service facilities and large crane indicates that the submarine has entered a new phase of fitting out. The initial cover building appeared empty in April 2012 when the Indian Navy show-cased its new Russia-supplied Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine: the Chakra.

It is thought that the Arihant is equipped with less than a dozen launch tubes behind the conning tower for short/medium-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Before it can become fully operational, however, the Arihant will have to undergo extensive refitting and sea-trials that may last through 2013. It is expected that India might be building several SSBNs.

Like the other nuclear weapon states, India continues to modernize its nuclear forces, despite pledges to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.

How the USSR revealed its eye in the sky to the Indian Army ((Baljit Singh is a retired Lieutenant General of the Indian Army.)

The Indian AWACS, which is a hybrid manufactured by Israel and mounted on a Russian platform, at the Hindon airbase.

India got a taste of the Russian sense of humour when it made a bid to acquire the Soviet Union’s version of the AWACS

In these times of acrimony and scams, it was a pleasant diversion to read that to our existing fleet of three Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, which keep an eye in the sky over our borders, we will shortly add three more (The Hindu, September 21, 2012). Air Chief Marshal N.A.K. Browne has said that by 2025, this inventory will comprise in all five AWACS and 10 AEW&CS (Airborne Early Warning & Control System); the latter with totally indigenously designed and manufactured electronic sensors and in the event the leanest and meanest machines of its class!

So at last, after 40 long years of striving, the Indian armed forces will have arguably the most potent battlefield, force-multiplier capability conceived and manufactured post-World War II.

The AWACS had caught the fancy of the world first in the early 1970s, when the re-structured Egyptian armed forces had launched the Yom Kippur offensive against Israel and achieved complete tactical and strategic surprise. The seemingly impregnable Bar-Lev defence line along the East Bank of the Suez Canal was breached decisively, and the invincible Israelis were almost routed. This was the moment when the AWACS made its maiden combat appearance to shore up the beleaguered Israelis in the Sinai desert. And the tide of battle was thereafter so decisively reversed that but for international pressure, the Israelis were within a whisker of capturing Cairo! All the post-war analyses were unanimous that all other factors apart, the application of AWACS had contributed decisively to the ultimate outcome of that war. Little wonder then that armed forces the world over were willing to pay any price to acquire these machines. But the Americans would not part with them. The Russians were desperate to close the gap with this military technology advancement made by the Americans but it was not till the 1980s that they inducted into service their first generation AWACS.

It was natural therefore that when in 1986 General K. Sunderji visited the Soviet Union, as it was then, as a state guest, that he would request his hosts for a look at the AWACS. The idea was to either buy a few of these aircraft outright or obtain them on lease on the lines of the nuclear-powered submarine. When the subject was broached with the Russian Defence Minister during the meeting in a glittering hall at the Kremlin, the Soviets used innocence and guile to convince us that they had never heard of AWACS, let alone possess them. At this stage I slipped a sketch of the American AWACS, photocopied from the Jane’s Weapon Systems, to Gen. Sunderji.

That was the beginning of a serious proposition being turned into a hilarious game of bluff. The Defence Minister said with a straight face that in the spirit of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, would we let them have the photocopy of the technical profile of the American AWACS. After a lengthy duel of mischievous wordplay, Gen. Sunderji agreed to part with the photocopy on the assurance of the Minister that it would remain a guarded secret! And that India would have the first AWACS produced in the Soviet Union.

Our weeklong visit ended at Tashkent. The penultimate day was taken up watching displays and demonstrations of training simulators of a whole range of weapons and automotives. On the last day, we were to relax watching an exclusive performance by the Bolshoi Ballet Company followed by the Uzbek folk dancers. Before we retired to our rooms, our liaison officer, a two-star general, mentioned that he had arranged a farewell picnic-breakfast the following morning. The picnic site was the 500-hectare State Lemon Farm about 60 km from Tashkent. Try as we might, there was no fathoming the reasons for this unscheduled picnic. And on one pretext or other our host would open yet another bottle of vintage wine, prolonging the breakfast till at last there was heard the approaching drone of an aircraft.

As the aircraft made low and deliberate, repeated passes over us, our host turned to Gen. Sunderji and said, “Sir, doesn’t this resemble the photocopy of the American AWACS you showed us? Had you mentioned that you wanted to see our ASDACS (Acquisition and Strike Directing Aircraft System) we would have gladly flown you in it, all the way back to New Delhi!”

Gen. Sunderji laughed, reached out to a bottle of champagne on the table and raised a toast to the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. But what we now have is neither AWACS nor the ASDACS but a hybrid comprising the American Phalcon radar manufactured by the Israelis and mounted by them on Russian IL-76 aircraft provided by us. Such are the games which the superpowers play with their client states.

Nag series trials for 18 days from Tuesday

A series of trials of anti-tank Nag missile, with focus on the performance of a modified Namica (Nag Missile Carrier) in harsh desert conditions, will be conducted in the Mahajan Field Firing Range in Rajasthan between July 24 and August 10.

The induction of the third generation missile that has a ‘top attack and fire-and-forget’ capability and four-km range was delayed, with the Army seeking several changes in the specially-designed Namica, which can hold 12 missiles, with eight of them in ready-to-fire mode.

As many as eight missiles would be fired during the trials from two reconfigured Namica vehicles, both developed by Larsen & Toubro and Bharat Electronics Limited, according to DRDO sources involved in the project.

The weight of a reconfigured Namica has been reduced from 16.5 tonnes to 15 tonnes to improve its mobility and amphibious performance. Another important feature is its buoyancy, which is now equivalent to a BMP-2, an infantry fighting vehicle.

This time around, high-end, stabilised Electro-Optical Systems (EOS) have replaced the fixed ones. While one of them is meant for target acquisition by the gunner, the other system will function dedicatedly to provide an independent “panoramic sight” for the surveillance of the crew commander. Earlier, there was only a single fixed sight for the gunner.

To enable the user to adopt the “hunter-killer approach,” an additional sight has been provided for the crew commander to guide the gunner in firing in quick succession. “When the gunner is engaged in firing at the first target, the commander will locate the second target and give a cue to the gunner. The commander is the hunter and the gunner is the killer,” the sources said.

The mobility trials for Namica would be conducted for a range of 1,000 km in three or four stages. For the first time, Nag would be fired with a higher resolution seeker to demonstrate the lock-on-before-launch capability for a range exceeding four km.