SSK St. Petersburg Finishes Repair

16.05.2012 Non-nuclear submarine St. Petersburg will complete post-repair trials at Admiralteyskie Verfi shipyard within the next month. After transfer to Northern Fleet, the sub will pass complicated trial program in deep-sea zones of Barents Sea, a source in the shipyard told Central Navy Portal.

JSC Admiralteyskie Verfi has quite long backlog of orders for Kilo-class diesel electric submarines, which are different variants of Project 636 Varshavyanka built both for Russian and foreign customers.

Construction of Project 677 Lada non-nuclear submarines was suspended. The question is SSK Kronshtadt laid down in the summer of 2005 and SSK Sevastopol keel-laid in the fall of 2006, as well as Amur project for export.

The reasons for suspension were serious design defects of the project which required considerable alterations. As was told by a source from Russian Navy Main HQ in the fall of 2011, construction program of Project 677 non-nuclear submarines was shut down due to numerous defects. Former Navy Commander-in-Chief ADM Vysotsky confirmed that decision in Feb 2012. Later on, he confuted denial of procurement saying he had meant only lead sub St. Petersburg.

Despite formal commission of SSK St. Petersburg into Russian Navy in May 2010, de facto the sub was non-operational being used as experimental platform for testing of different equipment. Last autumn the submarine was laid up for another repair at Admiralteyskie Verfi shipyard, and was put afloat in Apr 2012.

It is planned to finish mooring trials till mid-June and prepare the sub for the transfer to Northern Fleet. SSK St. Petersburg will spend several months in deep waters testing sonar system and other equipment, and perform missile and torpedo firing trials. Only upon summarizing results of the trials, it will be decided as of the future for the project. Being members of United Shipbuilding Corporation, Rubin Design Bureau and Admiralteyskie Verfi shipyard are working on project modernization and, among other variants, will offer air-independent powerplant.

To equip Black Sea Fleet with submarines, Admiralteyskie Verfi builds six subs under modernized project 06363. Lead submarine – SSK Novorossiysk – was laid down in the summer of 2010. The second sub – SSK Rostov-na-Donu – was laid down in Nov 2011. The third submarine is supposed to be laid down in 1.5-2 months. According to unverified reports, she will be named Stavropol. The shipyard works on large export contract on six submarines for Vietnamese Navy. Two of them have been already launched.

Apart from submarines, Admiralteyskie Verfi builds Project 21300 rescue ship Igor Belousov and titanium-hulled deep-sea submersible Bester for Russian Navy.