Latest news with #submarine
Times of Oman
5 hours ago
- Business
- Times of Oman
India's First Dual-Coast Submarine Manufacturing: Mazagon Dock, Hindustan Shipyard to sign historic pact
New Delhi: In a landmark development for the domestic defence sector, state-run shipbuilders Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd (MDL) and Hindustan Shipyard Ltd (HSL) are poised to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly build submarines—establishing the country's first-ever dual-coast submarine production capability. The collaboration marks a strategic push under the Narendra Modi government's Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative to ramp up indigenous defence manufacturing and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers. It will significantly enhance the country's capacity to produce advanced submarines for the Indian Navy. Mumbai-based MDL has a proven track record of building both Shishumar-class and the more recent Scorpene-class submarines under technology partnerships. It is currently in the fray for the Rs 45,000-crore Project 75(I) submarine tender, in collaboration with German submarine maker TKMS. HSL, headquartered in Visakhapatnam on the east coast, has the unique distinction of being the only Indian shipyard to have completed a full-scale submarine modernisation—the complex refit of INS Sindhukirti. It continues to handle major refits and overhauls for the Navy's underwater fleet. This dual-yard initiative fulfills a long-standing strategic vision dating back to 1999, which called for establishing a submarine-building facility on the east coast to complement the west coast's capabilities. The Indian Navy has projected a requirement for at least 24 submarines to counter increasing maritime threats and assert dominance in the Indo-Pacific. Given the complexity and long timelines associated with submarine construction, the MDL-HSL partnership will be crucial in accelerating delivery schedules, ensuring production continuity, and mitigating risks associated with single-yard dependence. Operation Sindoor—an extensive underwater surveillance and deterrence exercise conducted by the Navy—has highlighted the critical role of submarines in safeguarding India's maritime interests. The dual-coast manufacturing strategy is expected to significantly enhance India's underwater combat readiness and aligns with its broader ambition to emerge as a dominant Blue Water Navy with reach across the Indo-Pacific region. With this move, India takes a decisive step toward creating a robust, self-reliant ecosystem in underwater warfare platforms, securing not just its coastlines but also its strategic maritime interests far beyond.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Haunting Deep-Sea Footage Reveals U.S. Submarine Lost During WWI
On December 17, 1917, the U.S. Navy submarine USS F-1, crashed off the coast of San Diego. Now, more than a century later, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) have collected the first high-definition visuals of the wreckage. During a series of seven dives conducted earlier this year, researchers employed the crewed underwater vehicle Alvin and autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry, both based on the WHOI research ship Atlantis, to snap close-ups of the sunken submarine. Since 1917, F-1 has been resting approximately 1,300 feet (400 meters) underwater. A Navy underwater vehicle located it by accident in the 1970s, but this expedition is the first to capture detailed images of the lost sub. The F-1 was built in 1901 and launched in 1911. The crash occurred during a training mission, during which the F-1 collided with another submarine, sinking in mere seconds. Nineteen crew members lost their lives, but five escaped and survived. By the time of the 1917 crash, the U.S. had been at war with the Central powers for seven months. 'Advanced ocean technology and simple teamwork played a big part in delivering these new images,' Bruce Strickrott, manager of the Alvin Group at WHOI and the sub's senior pilot who helped lead the expedition, said in a statement. 'Once we identified the wreck and determined it was safe to dive, we were able to capture never-before-seen perspectives of the sub.' The team used multi-beam sonar systems on Atlantis and Sentry to produce maps of the F-1 and surrounding areas. Then, high-resolution cameras on Alvin picked up photos and videos of the wreck. The researchers stitched these images together to create detailed 3D photogrammetric models. The images showed that the F-1 is lying on the seafloor on its starboard (right) side, facing northwest, and is 'remarkably intact,' Strickrott told Live Science. The researchers left the war grave site untouched, however, 'to preserve its condition and be respectful of its legacy,' Bradley Krueger, an underwater archaeologist for the Naval History and Heritage Command who participated in some of the dives, told Live Science. During the series of dives, the researchers also surveyed a Navy torpedo bomber training aircraft that crashed nearby in 1950. The dives were part of a training and engineering mission to provide the Alvin pilots with experience controlling the submersible and employing deep-sea imaging technologies. The research was conducted as a collaboration between the U.S. National Science Foundation, University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System and the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research and Naval History and Heritage Command. After the dives, the researchers held a remembrance ceremony aboard the Atlantis, ringing a bell 19 times, once for each of the F-1's crew members who died in the crash. 'As a U.S. Navy veteran, it was a profound honor to visit the wreck of the F-1 with our ONR and NHHC colleagues aboard Alvin,' Strickrott said in a statement.
LBCI
3 days ago
- Business
- LBCI
US pushes security ally Australia to spend more on defense
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked security ally Australia to increase its defense spending in a meeting with Defense Minister Richard Marles on Friday in Singapore. The defense chiefs also discussed the need to increase U.S. submarine production rates to meet AUKUS targets significantly. The defense ministers meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier security forum, is only the second between the security allies since the Trump Administration took office. Hegseth had "respectfully" said Australia should increase defense spending, Marles said in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television interview after the meeting. Reuters
Reuters
5 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
UAW members at General Dynamics' Electric Boat vote to ratify new contract
May 28 (Reuters) - Union members at General Dynamics' (GD.N), opens new tab Electric Boat submarine-making unit have voted to ratify a new contract, the United Auto Workers said on Wednesday. The union, representing over 2,400 marine drafters at Electric Boat, said 85% voted in favor of the ratification of the new five-year agreement which secures a 30% wage increase over the life of the contract and an improved wage progression. In total, members will see a cumulative $115,000-per-member increase in total compensation during the agreement, UAW said. The ratification comes over a month after members authorized a strike, demanding cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) to keep up with inflation. Electric Boat is a part of the defense contractor's marine systems segment, which assembles nuclear-powered submarines for the U.S. Navy.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster review – the enraging tale of how five people died in an underwater deathtrap
'What was that bang?' Implosion, BBC2's documentary about the doomed commercial submarine Titan and its owner and pilot Stockton Rush, has footage shot on 18 June 2023 at the very instant when, on a sightseeing trip 3,800m below the surface of the Atlantic, Titan suffered a fatal rupture and the five people inside it died. There were no cameras on the sea floor and any pictures taken by Titan's occupants were destroyed along with it, but there is film that contains what we now know to be audio of the craft's last moment. Rush's wife, Wendy, is aboard the mission's support ship, in radio contact, when she hears a noise. At that point, Wendy Rush looks more confused than alarmed. A contributor to the film likens the sound to a door slamming, but it's less dramatic than that: it's more of a muffled thud, which was ambiguous enough for it not to be assumed immediately that Rush and his passengers were dead. Instead, the unknown fate of Titan topped global news reports for four days, until debris was finally found. That clip of Wendy Rush is eerily low-key but, as Implosion tells it, the story of Titan is one that suits an unspectacular, perversely almost anticlimactic ending, because it's a tale of hubris and negligence that isn't coloured with much complexity. It's all the more sad and enraging that five people lost their lives in a tragedy that, in retrospect, was bound to happen. Implosion searches for a grander narrative, but it doesn't seem to be there. Having sketched the life of Stockton Rush, a wealthy man who dreamed as a youth of going into space before he noticed more accessible 'cool stuff' way down below the ocean, the programme documents some of the warning signs he ignored as he planned prestigious expeditions to view the wreckage of the Titanic. Rush, who felt the relevant regulation and certification processes were an unnecessary fuss, favoured carbon fibre as the material from which his tiny submarine's hull would be made, an unusual choice because it is known to behave erratically under extreme pressure: its layers can separate, a process known as delamination. Numerous contributors who were involved in Titan's test dives recall that those rehearsals were marred by passengers raising safety concerns. We are able to read extracts from one expert's series of warning emails that were ignored; another alleges she spoke up in person, only to be told she lacked 'an explorer mindset'. There is footage of Stockton Rush reassuring interested parties that it is normal for submarines to make scary noises as water pressure changes and metals contract; the programme's interviewees disagree, and we see evidence that a cracking sound heard on one of the last missions should have been interpreted as a harbinger of delamination. So we have the how: a man took four others to the bottom of the sea in a submarine that was clearly unsafe. What Implosion struggles with is the why. It never quite gets to the bottom of how aware Rush was that Titan was a deathtrap. Did his self-image as an intrepid adventurer, the incentive of the six-figure sums he was charging his passengers, or the potential shame of abandoning the project actually stop him from seeing the obvious, or did he just not want to acknowledge it? One contributor asserts that Rush must have known that a dive would end in disaster before too long, which amounts to alleging that this was a criminal act by a man with a death wish. But a conclusively evidenced answer refuses to reveal itself. There is talk of 'ego' and 'arrogance', and of a family who were 'upper crust' with 'access to uber-elites'. The history of boundary-pushing exploration is indeed strewn with fascinating stories of privileged men who were brought up to believe they couldn't fail, or who had some desperate emptiness inside them that made them lose their fear of death. But, especially because the money Rush was earning muddies the picture, we don't know if he fits this narrative. It seems unlikely that much clarity will be provided by the US Coast Guard's ongoing inquiry: Implosion has acquired film from inside the hearings, but if the producers assumed this exclusive access would automatically make their documentary illuminating, they were mistaken. Nor does the programme give much insight into the people who willingly joined Rush on Titan's final voyage. The only representative of the loved ones is Christine Dawood, whose husband, Shahzada, and 19-year-old son Suleman were both aboard. She speaks with noble dignity about a loss that seems to be deepened by the knowledge that she won't ever be told why she had to suffer it. 'We all know who the culprit is,' she says. '[It] does not change anything, does it?' Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster aired on BBC Two and is available on iPlayer.
