“Underwater hooliganism cannot be ruled out”
A dangerous incident occurred in the South China Sea. During the dive, a nuclear-powered nuclear high-speed attack submarine Seawolf USS Connecticut (SSN 22) collided with an unknown object. 11 sailors suffered a severe blow. CNN reported, referring to the US Navy. The clash occurred last week. The MC asked a naval expert to assess the degree of danger of the situation.
Photo: AP
According to American media, the submarine remains deep. The submarine's nuclear power plant was not damaged. US sailors are now trying to figure out what underwater object they have encountered in the area, which has become increasingly dangerous recently due to the intrusion of many countries' interests here.
“MK” asked a military expert, the captain of the 1st position in the reserve of Vladimir Gundarov, to comment on this mysterious “underwater accident”.
– The Americans have completed the game “cat and mouse”, – said the expert. – The new incident indicates a deterioration of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region. The creation of a new military-strategic alliance, AUKUS, could worsen relations between the United States, its allies and China. This collision is probably due to the fact that two submarines – the American and the Chinese – were watching each other. At some point, the hydroacoustic contact was lost. One of the boats lost the other and began maneuvering dangerously to restore contact. At this point, there was most likely a collision.
However, underwater hooliganism cannot be ruled out, when the commander of a submarine simply decided to show who the master was here and began to do dangerous maneuvers. In any case, it is precisely because of dangerous maneuvering. And because we're talking about an American “sea wolf” crashing while changing the depth of underwater diving, he's the culprit in the underwater accident.
The expert reminded that for Americans, what happened in the South China Sea with their SSN 22 is not the first such incident. In February 2001, the American submarine “Greenville” near the Hawaiian Islands (this area is considered by American submarines as their test site) accidentally sank a Japanese trawler – the training ship Ehime Maru. It belonged to a specialized fishing high school and then had 13 students, two teachers and 20 crew members. Then, for some reason, the commander of the American submarine decided to make an emergency exit. The submarine rushed at full speed, leaping out of the water like a giant whale and overturning a Japanese training vessel. “Ehime-maru” sank at a depth of about 550 meters. Ten minutes later, the ship's automatic device sent an emergency signal.
“Of course, various things were happening in our fleet,” said Vladimir Gundarov. – In the 80's and 90's there were collisions between our nuclear submarines several times. On October 3, 1986, the strategic missile submarine K-219 sank after an explosion in its 6th missile silo. There is a presumption that this was due to a collision with a US nuclear submarine watching it.
Since 2000, especially after the tragedy with Kursk, we have been behaving more carefully underwater.