More Submarine Orders in the Pacific

With Russian exports to China drying up, a new market for submarines is a good thing during tough economic times. This is unlikely to be well received in China.

Admiralty Shipyards in St. Petersburg will build six Kilo class diesel-electric submarines for delivery to Vietnam, the Russian business daily Kommersant said on Monday.

The paper quoted company general director Vladimir Aleksandrov as saying that Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport would soon sign a contract with a foreign state, and that Admiralty Shipyards had been chosen to fulfill this contract.

Sources in Rosoboronexport later confirmed that Russia and Vietnam had been negotiating a $1.8 billion deal on the delivery of six Kilo-class submarines to the Vietnamese navy for about a year.

Admiralty Shipyards is currently building two Kilo class submarines for Algeria to be delivered in 2009 and 2010.

When you begin to think about all of the nations operating submarines in the Pacific, it becomes quite clear why moving the Virginia class program to 2 boats a year is an important priority for the Navy. Nations currently ordering, building, fielding, or preparing to build modern submarines in the Pacific include Russia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Australia.

If we include the rest of Asia, the list would include India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and potentially Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the near future.

More than any other 21st century technology, the US Navy needs something akin to an underwater superiority system; which I think would be a networked technology that is not only effective in detecting and neutralizing very quiet submarines, but also doesn't kill sea life which will get the environmental lobby off the Navy's back.