Missing sub - Argentina says it may have received signals

[Khafee]

Missing ARA San Juan suffered battery short circuit
November 29, 2017

The missing Argentinian submarine had reportedly sent a notice of a battery short circuit before it went silent.

Reuters has cited an Argentinian Navy’s spokesman who said this week that the short circuit had been caused by water ingress in the ARA San Juan submarine’s snorkel.

According to Argentinian media, following the short circuit report, the submarine had been instructed to return to base. It went missing on the way home on November 15, off the coast of Argentina, spurring a massive search and rescue operation.

To remind, the country’s navy confirmed last week that an explosion occurred near the position where the missing submarine was at the time of the incident.

The confirmation followed reports of a “hydroacoustic anomaly” detected by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization’s (CTBTO) hydroacoustic station located in the Crozet Islands.

Search and rescue operations for the submarine and its 44 crew members are continuing in the South Atlantic. The search operations are focused on the area were the aforementioned anomaly was detected, according to a statement issued by the navy’s communication department.

Several ships and planes from different countries, including the recently added ship Sophie Siem and the world’s largest aircraft Antonov, are involved in the search.

In addition, other areas are also being inspected but still without positive results.
On November 27, Oscar Aguad, the Defense Minister of Argentina, stressed that “our only concern is to find the vessel and provide more information to families and the rest of the community who are shocked by this event.”

https://navaltoday.com/2017/11/29/missing-ara-san-juan-suffered-battery-short-circuit/

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Argentina no longer looking for survivors from missing sub
By: Luis Andres Henao,
The Associated Press
01.12.2017

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina’s Navy said Thursday it is no longer looking for survivors among the 44 sailors aboard a submarine missing for 15 days, though a multinational operation will continue searching for the vessel.

Hopes of finding survivors had already dimmed because experts said the crew had only enough oxygen to last 7 to 10 days if the sub remained intact under the sea. The Navy also had said an explosion was detected near the time and place where the ARA San Juan made its last contact with shore Nov. 15.

The San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric TR-1700 class submarine, was commissioned in the 1980s and was most recently refitted in 2014.

Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said the rescue mission had “extended for more than twice what is estimated for a rescue.”
“We’ve had 28 ships, nine aircraft, 4,000 people involved, 18 countries supporting,” he told reporters. “Despite the magnitude of these efforts, we’ve been unable to find the submarine.”

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2017/12/01/argentina-no-longer-looking-for-survivors-from-missing-sub/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DFN DNR 12.01.17&utm_term=Editorial - Daily News Roundup

 

[Lieutenant]

No remnants were found for the sub and no floating objects? That is weird. Im not quite sure how deep the sub was underwater but if it was not then I assume with my very limited knowledge that the crew will be able to escape through the hatch!

 

[Khafee]

No remnants were found for the sub and no floating objects? That is weird. Im not quite sure how deep the sub was underwater but if it was not then I assume with my very limited knowledge that the crew will be able to escape through the hatch!

I remember a Russian Sub, which had the same fate. No one escaped. No debris, No clues, until months later.

 

[Lieutenant]

I remember a Russian Sub, which had the same fate. No one escaped. No debris, No clues, until months later.

Has the crew survived?

 

[Khafee]

Has the crew survived?

No they were found inside the sub. No survivors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_(K-141)

 

[Khafee]

Russian experts continue searching for Argentina’s San Juan submarine
December 07, 2017
The Russian Navy’s Yantar oceanographic research vessel has arrived in the search zone to join the operation

MOSCOW, TASS/. Russian Navy experts have resumed their search for Argentina’s missing San Juan submarine after weather conditions improved, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
"In particular, the Pantera Plus unmanned submersible, which is being transported on board the Islas Malvinas vessel of the Argentine Navy, descended to the ocean floor three times, reaching depths of 840, 940 and 960 meters. The work will continue," the source said.

The Pantera Plus submersible has already dived seven times, going to depths ranging from 125 to 970 meters in order to explore seabed anomalies. The device detected and identified a fishing trawler and a body of concrete.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said that the Russian Navy’s Yantar oceanographic research vessel had arrived in the search zone to join the operation.

Contact with the San Juan diesel-electric submarine, carrying 44 crew members, was lost on November 15. The Argentine Navy launched an intensive search and rescue operation on November 16. On November 30, the Argentine Navy declared that the rescue operation was over. However, the search for the submarine continues.


http://tass.com/defense/979525

 

[Khafee]

Russian specialists study two objects in area of search for lost Argentine sub
December 08, 2017
The Argentinian submarine The San Juan went missing in the middle of last month


BUENOS AIRES, /TASS/. Russian research ship The Yantar and Russian naval specialists on board the Argentinian naval ship Islas Malvinas are exploring two objects in the area where the submarine The San Juan went missing in the middle of last month, the Navy’s spokesman Enrique Balbi said on Friday.
"The Yantar is currently examining an object lying at a depth of 940 meters," he said. The search began on Thursday in bad weather.

Balbi said Islas Malvinas is now in a different area, where Russian specialists are trying to get an image of an object lying at a depth of 830 meters using a remote-controlled mini-submarine The Pantera Plus. The US ship The Atlantis, due to join the search today, will head for another object spotted at 770 meters below the surface ," he added.

On instructions from Russian President Vladimir Putin Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on November 23 dispatched search and rescue specialists, the Pantera Plus mini-submarine and the ship The Yantar to help with the search for the submarine. The Pantera Plus performed the first dive on December 3.

The diesel-electric submarine The San Juan, which left Ushuaia with 44 crew on board, went missing on November 15. The search for the submarine began on November 16. On November 30, the Argentine Navy declare it had curtailed the rescue operation.


http://tass.com/world/979986

 

[Khafee]

Argentine Navy head fired after ARA San Juan submarine disappearance
Argentina has fired the head of the country’s navy in what is the first known disciplinary action related to the vanishing of submarine ARA San Juan in November this year.
December 18, 2017

Argentine Navy Admiral Marcelo Eduardo Hipólito Srur was relieved by the country’s defense minister, a government spokesperson said on December 16.

The submarine and her crew of 44 were last heard of on November 15 when they reported a battery short circuit. The issue was resolved and the submarine was ordered to return to her base in Mar del Plata. The submarine went missing shortly thereafter.

The Argentine Navy on November 24 confirmed that a so-called “hydroacoustic anomaly” – recorded on November 15 around the time ARA San Juan last communicated – was determined to be an explosion aboard the submarine.

An international search and rescue mission for survivors ended on November 30 as the diesel-electric submarines of the type can only stay submerged for up to ten days before they run out of oxygen.

Search efforts with specialized deep ocean submersibles are still underway and the submarine is yet to be located.

ARA San Juan was a TR-1700-class diesel-electric submarine built by Germany’s Thyssen Nordseewerke and delivered to Argentina in 1985. The submarine returned to service in 2014 after several years of repairs.

https://navaltoday.com/2017/12/18/a...ra-san-juan-submarine-disappearance/?uid=1067

 

[Lieutenant]

RIP all I can say. They will probably be found dead in two months from now.

 

[Khafee]

RIP all I can say. They will probably be found dead in two months from now.

Right now, that is the best case scenario - that the bodies are found. If so it will altleast give some closure to the families. Otherwise this thought of "endless patrol' can be very disturbing for the loved ones.

 

[Khafee]

What makes Russia’s new spy ship Yantar special?
By Laurence Peter BBC News
03 January 2018

The Russian navy is very proud of its new spy ship, the Yantar, which is now doing Argentina a favour by helping to search for a missing submarine.

Argentina has given up trying to rescue the 44 crew aboard the ARA San Juan , which disappeared on 15 November. But it still wants to find the diesel-electric submarine.

Enter the Yantar, officially an oceanographic research vessel, but actually bristling with surveillance equipment, and the mother ship for manned and unmanned deep-sea submersibles.

A Russian ROV - remotely operated underwater vehicle - is scouring the ocean floor off Argentina.

The disappearance of the ARA San Juan remains a mystery

But what else has the Yantar (Russian for "amber") been up to?

Targeting undersea cables
The Yantar's movements were apparently what prompted a warning last month from the UK military that Russia could disrupt or cut vital undersea communications cables.

The chief of the UK defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, said such a strike against internet and other communications cables could be "catastrophic".

Dozens of fibre-optic cables span the globe and Nato also has dedicated military cables on the ocean floor.

The Yantar is capable of tampering with them, says Igor Sutyagin, a London-based expert on the Russian military. But there is no evidence that it has done so.

"It's difficult to tap into optical fibres - it's just light inside, not electrical data," he told the BBC. "It would be easier just to cut the cable."

Mr Sutyagin noted that in the 1970s, during the Cold War, the US Navy had lost control of a Sosus undersea listening post for tracking submarines in the Atlantic. Sosus stands for "Sound Surveillance System".

The US military concluded that a Soviet submarine had cut the cables.

In the same period the US military, reports say, planted listening devices on Soviet undersea cables in the Sea of Okhotsk, where Soviet submarines were based.

A news report from the Russian parliament says the Yantar can do just such clandestine work, using deep-diving submersibles.

"The Yantar has equipment designed for deep-sea tracking, and devices that can connect to top-secret communications cables," said Parlamentskaya Gazeta (in Russian) last October.

Mr Sutyagin, of the Royal United Services Institute, says the Yantar belongs to Russia's Main Directorate of Underwater Research (GUGI in Russian), part of the defence ministry.

The 108m-long (354ft) vessel has a crew of 60 and went into service in 2015. It was built in the Baltic port of Kaliningrad, the first in a series called Project 22010. A second, called Almaz, will soon be on its way to the navy.

Russia already has several older spy ships. In April, one of them, the Liman, sank off the Turkish coast after being breached in a collision with a freighter . All its crew were rescued.

The Yantar can deploy the three-man submersibles Rus and Konsul, which can dive to about 6,000m (20,000ft).

Spying on the US
The Russian parliamentary report noted that in the summer of 2015 the Yantar had deployed near the US Kings Bay naval base in Georgia.

"According to Pentagon officials, the Russians were gathering intelligence on US submarines' equipment, including underwater sensors in the DoDIN network," the Russian report said.

Kings Bay is home to six US Trident ballistic missile submarines, each of them armed with 24 nuclear missiles, naval-technology website reports.

Mr Sutyagin said the US underwater sensors near Kings Bay would be interesting for the Russian military, which might wish to copy the US technology.

Pentagon concern about the Yantar's cable-cutting potential was reported by the Washington Times.

In late 2016 the Yantar was found to be loitering over undersea communications cables off the Syrian coast, including some links to Europe.

The ship's strange movements were tracked by a website called Covert Shores. The Yantar's frequent stops at points along a cable route suggested that a submersible was examining the sea floor, the report said.

Search and rescue
Besides the Argentina mission, the Yantar has been used previously for search and recovery.

The Russian parliamentary report said the ship had located two Russian fighter jets - a Su-33 and a MiG-29 - that crashed into the Mediterranean in 2016, during the Syria war.

The Yantar "recovered secret equipment from the planes in good time", the report said.

That could be secret radar or missile data, or the "identification, friend or foe" system, Mr Sutyagin said.

The disappearance of the Argentine submarine rekindled memories of Russia's Kursk submarine tragedy of 2000.

In 2000 a ship like the Yantar might have saved some Kursk sailors' lives and literally salvaged the Russian navy's reputation.

Mystery of ARA San Juan

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-42543712