Lewis Page discovers that the latest minisub for the US Navy’s SEAL teams is actually made in Britain:
A groundbreaking new miniature submarine in use by the US Navy’s secretive, elite frogman-commando special operations force was actually designed and built in old Blighty, the Reg can reveal.
We reported first on the S301 mini-sub two weeks ago, noting from federal documents that the famous US Navy SEALs had leased a demonstration model for “doctrinal, operational, and organizational purposes”. This was followed up last week by the Honolulu Advertiser, which had spoken to Submergence Group, the American firm listed by the US government as provider of the S301.
It emerged that the S301 — now in trials with the SEALs in Hawaii — had cost just $10m to develop, which contrasted especially well with the $885m+ spent on the ill-fated Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS).
The ASDS, from US defence behemoth Northrop Grumman, had been intended to supersede the SEALs’ current Mark 8 Mod 1 minisubs, which are carried in a “Dry Deck Shelter” (DDS) airlock docking bay fitted to a full-sized US Navy nuclear submarine — either a normal attack boat or an Ohio-class dedicated Stingray-style special-ops mothership. The Ohios, nuclear missile subs retired from their old job under arms-reduction treaties, have space aboard for a large force of SEALs and pack a powerful armament of conventional-warhead cruise missiles for precision shore bombardment.
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Strategy Page reports on increased activity around China’s maritime periphery:
Recently, the Taiwanese Navy detected an unidentified submarine outside one of its major naval bases. Ships and helicopters pursued the contact, but the suspected submarine left the area. A Chinese boat was suspected, mainly because for the last decade, Chinese subs have increasingly been showing up close to Japan and South Korea as well.
[. . .]
Chinese Song class diesel electric and Han class nuclear powered boats have been detected and tracked with increasing frequency over the last few years. In that time, one of each of these was spotted stalking the American carrier USS George Washington, as it headed to South Korea for a visit.
China is rapidly acquiring advanced submarine building capabilities, and providing money (for fuel and spare parts) to send its subs to sea more often. Moreover, new classes of boats are constantly appearing. The new Type 39A, or Yuan class, looks just like the Russian Kilo class. In the late 1990s, the Chinese began ordering Russian Kilo class subs, then one of the latest diesel-electric design available. Russia was selling new Kilos for about $200 million each, which is about half the price other Western nations sell similar boats for. The Kilos weigh 2,300 tons (surface displacement), have six torpedo tubes and a crew of 57. They are quiet, and can travel about 700 kilometers under water at a quiet speed of about five kilometers an hour. Kilos carry 18 torpedoes or SS-N-27 anti-ship missiles (with a range of 300 kilometers and launched underwater from the torpedo tubes.) The combination of quietness and cruise missiles makes Kilo very dangerous to American carriers. North Korea and Iran have also bought Kilos.
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BBC News reports on a recent discovery by the Australian descendent of the only survivor of the sinking:
The wreck of a British naval submarine lost for more than 90 years has been found in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Estonia.
HMS E18 – with its complement of three officers and 28 ratings – went out on patrol in May 1916 and was never seen again.
The submarine was one of a handful sent to the Baltic during World War I by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to disrupt German shipments of iron ore from Sweden and support the Russian navy.
E18 left its base in the Russian port of Reval – now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia – on the evening of 25 May 1916 and headed west.
The following day she was reported to have engaged and torpedoed a German ship.
A few days later, possibly 2 June, she is believed to have struck a German mine and sunk with all hands.
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