Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Quatro
When they said the fire was in the engine room my first thoughts were, "Oh it must be a conventional submarine", but it in fact just a modified Oscar class nuclear submarine with a 100' section added in for her special underwater operations.
Catfish reported that she could dive to 6,000 meters ... I doubt that perhaps the mini sub she carried could dive that far.  |
No, i think the modified Oscar was not involved here, as far as i read from various sources it is a modified Delta III submarine BS-136 as 'mothership' (in this case the 'Orenburg', former K-129) and the "AS 12", "AS 31", "Losharik", "spy sub", "deepsea station", "research sub" (lol) or whatever the russian military calls it, is slung beneath it to hide it from satellite or aerial reconnaissance.
The Delta does not dive that deep, but the small parasite sub maybe can, if you look at the inner titanium ball construction. The Russians have already built extreme deep-diving tactical subs of much bigger sizes. No doubt this one is a very special and expensive sub. Question is if it ever dives again, when a battery fire has weakened the titanium hull of one or several ball compartments. Then add acid fumes.
This smaller sub can manipulate or cut undersea cables along with planting devices for listening, in this arctic mission it has been used to "prove" Russia's claims on certain resource-rich areas under water in the arctic; in this case to look for geological relations* of certain areas to the russian continental shelf. "Scientific Research", lmao.
(*What geological relations have to do with arbitrarily drawn political borders, or what this "proves" regarding territorial claims? Must be a special russian idea or secret. I call BS.
Like planting a flag underwater. Claiming colonies in the 21st century? Really?)
Regarding the lengthened Oscar class, seems it is designed to place bigger devices on the sea floor, like e.g. nuclear reactors to provide the power for transatlantioc cable listening stations, the russian equivalent of SOSUS, and something like that.