Nuclear & Hunter-Killer Submarine Training Base To Be Built In Scotland

Staff, Russian Times
2 March 2017 

A new £4.3 million (US$5.3 million) submarine training base will be built on the Clyde River in Scotland to prepare the next generation of nuclear and hunter-killer submarines, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) has announced. 
The base will be used to prepare submariners for warfare duties from 2022 and HMNB Clyde will house the entire Royal Navy submersible fleet by 2020.
In a statement, Defense Secretary Michael Fallon insisted the move, which is part of a broader expansion of the base, would be of direct benefit to the Scottish economy.
The MoD said the number of employees at the base would rise from 6,800 to 8,200 over the next few years. They will be tasked with supporting current and future boats, including the forthcoming Dreadnaught nuclear-armed submarines.
The head of the submarine service, Rear Admiral John Weale, said the new “single integrated operating base” would make “significant improvements to the work-life balance of our 5,000 submariners.”
“By putting our boats and training in one place, our submariners can put down roots in Scotland knowing that they are no longer required to commute from one end of the country to another.”
The investment is also likely aimed at defusing the risk of another independence vote in Scotland in the wake of the Brexit vote and considerable opposition to having nuclear arms on Scottish soil.
As recently as Tuesday, Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon warned that unless Scotland could reach a special accord with the EU over Brexit a second referendum would appear “legitimate, almost necessary.”

India Test-Fires Anti-Ship Missile From Submarine In Arabian Sea

Staff, Pakistan Today
2 March 2017 

India on Thursday test-fired an anti-ship missile for the first time from an indigenously built Kalvari class submarine, Times of India has reported.
Indian Navy described the launch as a significant milestone in enhancing its “sub-surface” warfare prowess.
The weapon was fired from the submarine, the first of India’s six Scorpene-class submarines which are being built under the Project 75, and it “successfully hit” a surface target during the trial in the Arabian Sea.
All the six diesel-electric attack submarines will be equipped with the anti-ship missile, which has a proven record in combat, the defence ministry said.
These missiles will provide the vessels the ability to neutralise surface threats at extended ranges.
“The missile successfully hit a surface target at an extended range during the trial firing. This missile launch is a significant milestone, not only for the Kalvari, which is the first in a series of Scorpene class submarines being built in India, but also in enhancing the Indian Navy’s sub-surface warfare capability,” the ministry said. The submarines, designed by French naval defence and energy company DCNS, are being built by Mazagon Dock Limited in Mumbai.

Navy, General Dynamics Near Finish Line On Columbia Submarine Design Contract

The program is estimated to cost $100 billion.

Marc Selinger, Defense Daily
1 March 2017 

The U.S. Navy and General Dynamics [GD] Electric Boat may soon wrap up negotiations on the detail design contract for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, an industry official said March 1.
"We expect to continue [the negotiations] for the next month or so and get to the point where we reach an agreement," said William Lennon, Electric Boat's Columbia program vice president.
The multi-billion-dollar, multi-year contract will cover completing the design of the Ohio-class submarine's replacement. The program received Pentagon approval in early January to shift from its preliminary design phase to detail design.
Electric Boat is Columbia's prime contractor and Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] Newport News Shipbuilding has a secondary role.
President Donald Trump said in January that he wants to slash the cost of new submarines, and Lennon told Defense Daily that the $100 billion Columbia program is already heeding that message. For example, to create money-saving efficiencies, it is looking for opportunities to partner with the Virginia-class attack submarine program to make multi-year orders for common materials.
Lennon said Electric Boat, which builds the Virginia with Newport News, is also working with the Navy to study how to keep attack-submarine production at two vessels per year while the Columbia program is building one submarine annually. The study, or integrated enterprise plan, is looking at what the facility, resource and vendor base needs would be.
Electric Boat is also exploring whether it could start building more Columbia parts early to keep the program on track. Suppliers are already fabricating 42 missile tubes for the program, which expects to place 14 more tubes under contract soon.
The program aims to receive advance procurement funding in fiscal 2019 so it can start building the lead submarine in 2021.

Senator: The Submarine is America's 'Strategic, Decisive Edge'

Richard Burgess, Seapower Magazine
1 March 2017 

WASHINGTON – There was an air of optimism in a crowded room in the basement of the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill, where dozens of congressmen, staffers and defense industry executives gathered in a crowded room to hammer home the importance of the submarine to the U.S. Navy and the nation, and to the industrial base that builds them.
On March, 1 the Submarine Industrial Base Council (SIBC) held its annual Supplier Day, which gives the companies that build components for submarines the opportunity for their representatives to lobby their congressmen in person. Several senators and representatives of states where the components are built addressed the gathering in short speeches that sometimes gave the event the air of a pep rally.
The speakers, veterans of the Hill and new representatives, spoke of the contributions their states or districts make to building - or in one case retiring the reactors of - the Navy's submarines.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and in whose state major structures of submarines are assembled by 3,600 Electric
Boat employees, recalled that the Submarine Caucus was formed in 1991 to protect the Seawolf-class attack submarine and stressed the caucus's value today.
"The submarine is the strategic, decisive edge we have, technologically," Reed said. "The [Columbia-class ballistic-missile] submarine is the most critical part of the [nation's nuclear] triad."
"We are in a century of undersea warfare and cyber," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "That is our future."
The Navy's submarines, Blumenthal said, "make sure we will never have a fair fight."
Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., credited the SIBC with helping to get Congress to authorize the Columbia-class submarine, noting that "the Columbia class is in really good shape. That doesn't happen in a vacuum. Getting suppliers from all across the country is key to the success in getting members [of Congress] to pass the budget."
"Our submarine industrial base is critical to where the Navy needs to be," said Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee, noting that the current status of shipbuilding will help the Navy to grow its fleet.
"We have hot production lines with mature designs," Wittman said. "It is the submarine that is key to that Navy presence around the world."
Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., stressed the importance of training new shipyard workers and engineers to keep a "strong, highly skilled defense capacity" and expressed hope that federal funding would be applied to accomplish such training. She said that General Dynamics Electric Boat is hiring 2,000 workers in 2017, with 1,350 of them in the company's Groton, Conn., facility.

Prosecutors Open Criminal Investigation Into Submarines Affair

Raoul Wootlif, The Times of Israel
27 February 2017 

The State Attorney’s Office has opened a criminal investigation into the so-called submarines affair amid suspicions the prime minister’s personal lawyer tried to influence multi-million dollar naval deals, the Justice Ministry announced Monday. The statement said the decision to move from a preliminary inquiry to a full blown investigation was made by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit in light of the evidence and testimony gathered by police investigators over the past few months.   The case involves suspicions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal attorney David Shimron, acting also on behalf of the German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp, lobbied the Defense Ministry to purchase naval vessels — including new submarines for the Israel Navy as well as ships intended to protect the country’s maritime natural gas fields. According to suspicions, pushing through the NIS 6 billion ($1.5 billion) defense contract would net him a hefty fee, despite a possible conflicts of interest. Part of the agreement could also see ThyssenKrupp construct a lucrative shipyard in Israel, where the company would maintain the vessels. Netanyahu is not a suspect in the case, which the Justice Ministry emphasized in its statement on Monday.
The decision to open a formal criminal investigation was reportedly made after police received the testimony of former Israel Navy commander Maj. Gen. (res.) Ram Rothberg in early February. A Channel 2 report from earlier this month said Shimron, businessman Mickey Ganor and Maj. Gen. (res.) Eliezer Marom are all to be questioned under caution in the affair. In October of last year, Netanyahu announced in a cabinet meeting that Israel was in the process of negotiating the purchase of three new submarines for the navy, which currently maintains a fleet of five underwater vessels, with another slated to be delivered in coming years. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing in the multibillion-shekel deal for the submarines, saying that bolstering Israel’s long-term security needs was the “only consideration” behind the purchases. The new submarines were intended as replacements for the military’s older models and would reportedly be outfitted with nuclear strike capabilities.

Iran Says It Test-Fired Missile From Submarine

Staff, Times of Israel
27 February 2017

Amid tensions with the United States, Iran announced on Monday that it tested two missiles during a series of naval drills in the Persian Gulf. One was fired from a submarine, it said. Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said the Nasir missile, which he described as Iran’s latest submarine launched cruise missile, “successfully hit its target” during its test launch, the official IRNA news agency reported. Tasnim news agency said the Dehlaviyeh, a laserguided missile, had also been successfully tested. It was reported back in 2012 that Iran had based the Dehlaviyeh on a Russian anti-tank missile. The ranges of the two missiles were not given. The most recent Iranian missile firings follow the launches of a ballistic missile and cruise missile in late January — both of which are nuclear capable — with the former resulting in new US sanctions on a number of entities involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program and a warning from US President Donald Trump that the Islamic Republic had been “put on notice” and that “nothing is off the table” in terms of a military response to perceived Iranian provocations.
Cruise missiles — such as the Nasir fired in the most recent missile launches — are not covered by UN Resolution 2231, which was passed shortly after the nuclear deal with Iran was signed in July 2015 and calls on Tehran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.” Iran argues that its ballistic missile program is also not covered by the resolution because it does not have a nuclear weapons program. However, the test is likely to be viewed in Israel and the US as another aggressive maneuver by Tehran to expand its missile program. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, there has been a marked increase in tensions between the the US and Iran, with a number of senior Iranian military officials issuing pointed warnings to the US if it takes military action over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. AFP contributed to this report.

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US Accelerates Upgrades for its Arsenal of Nuclear-Armed, Submarine-Launched Trident II D5s

Kris Osborn, Scout Warrior
27 February 2017

Nuclear-Armed Trident II D5 missiles rest in 44-foot long missile tubes built into ballistic missile submarines quietly patrolling the undersea domain - to ensure security and peace. The US Navy is accelerating upgrades to the nuclear warhead for its arsenal of Trident II D5 nuclear-armed submarine launched missiles -- massively destructive weapons designed to keep international peace by ensuring and undersea-fired second-strike ability in the event of a catastrophic nuclear first strike on the US. The Navy has been working on technical upgrades to the existing Trident II D5 in order to prevent obsolescence and ensure the missile system remains viable for the next several decades. The Navy has modified an existing deal with Charles Stark Draper Laboratory has to continue work on the missile's MK 6 guidance system, an agreement to continue specific work on the weapon's electronic modules. The modification awards $59 million to the firm, a DoD statement said. 
As part of the technical improvements to the missile, the Navy is upgrading what’s called the Mk-4 re-entry body, the part of the missile that houses a thermonuclear warhead. The life extension for the Mk-4 re-entry body includes efforts to replace components including the firing circuit, Navy officials explained. Navy and industry engineers have been modernizing the guidance system by replacing two key components due to obsolescence – the inertial measurement unit and the electronics assembly, developers said. The Navy is also working with the Air Force on refurbishing the Mk-5 re-entry body which will be ready by 2019, senior Navy officials said. Navy officials said the Mk-5 re-entry body has more yield than a Mk-4 re-entry body, adding that more detail on the differences was not publically available. The missile also has a larger structure called a release assembly which houses and releases the re-entry bodies, Navy officials said. There is an ongoing effort to

engineer a new release assembly that will work with either the Mk-4 or Mk-5 re-entry body. The Trident II D5, first fired in the 1990s, is an upgraded version of the 1970s-era Trident I nuclear weapon; the Trident II D5s were initially engineered to serve until 2027, however an ongoing series of upgrades are now working to extend its service life. The Navy is modernizing its arsenal of Trident II D5 nuclear missiles in order to ensure their service life can extend for 25 more years aboard the Navy’s nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet, service leaders said. The 44-foot long submarine-launched missiles have been serving on Ohio-class submarines for 25 years,service leaders explained.  The missiles are also being planned as the baseline weapon for the Ohio Replacement Program ballistic missile submarine, a platform slated to serve well into the 2080s, so the Navy wants to extend the service life of the Trident II D5 missiles to ensure mission success in future decades. Under the U.S.-Russia New START treaty signed in 2010, roughly 70-percent of the U.S.’ nuclear warheads will be deployed on submarines. Within the last several years, the Navy has acquired an additional 108 Trident II D 5 missiles in order to strengthen the inventory for testing and further technological development.


Trident II D5 Test Firing from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida several months ago, a specially configured non-armed “test” version of the missile was fired from the Navy’s USS Maryland. This was the 161st successful Trident II launch since design completion in 1989, industry officials said.  The missile was converted into a test configuration using a test missile kit produced by Lockheed Martin that contains range safety devices, tracking systems and flight telemetry instrumentation, a Lockheed statement said. The Trident II D5 missile is deployed aboard U.S. Navy Ohio-class submarines and Royal Navy Vanguard-class to deter nuclear aggression. The three-stage ballistic missile can travel a nominal range of 4,000 nautical miles and carry multiple independently targeted reentry bodies. The U.S. and UK are collaboratively working on a common missile compartment for their next generation SSBNs, or ballistic missile submarines. The 130,000-pound Trident II D5 missile can travel 20,000-feet per second, according to Navy figures. The missiles cost $30 million each. The "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" futher describes the weapon -- "The Trident D5s carry three types of warheads: the 100-kiloton W76/Mk-4, the 100-kiloton W761/Mk-4A, and the 455-kiloton W88/Mk-5 warhead, the highest-yield ballistic missile warhead in the U.S. arsenal."