Warzone: the submarine that sank in China had an unusual hybrid installation
Details have been revealed about a Chinese nuclear submarine that is believed to have sank in May or June at a shipyard near the city of Wuhan.
Approvedthat it had a hybrid propulsion system and was the first submarine of its class in China. The data also signals that China is working on new solutions for its fast-growing submarine fleet.
The boat may be the first of its kind in China
Initially, the sunken boat was identified as one of the 039A series submarines. It is the first Chinese submarine to feature an air-independent propulsion (AIP) system, which significantly increases the time it can remain underwater and makes it more difficult to detect than traditional conventionally powered boats.
However, she was later identified as a Type 041 Zhou class boat. It can have both conventional propulsion and a small nuclear installation, using both. She was described as a nuclear attack submarine, or SSN (US classification), a type of boat that was not previously known.
It is believed to have been built at the Wuchang Shipyard, which is located on the relatively shallow Yangtze River near Wuhan. The shipyard is part of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC).
The power plant could have been copied from a Soviet project
To confirm the version of the new type of boat, previous data from China are provided. Back in 2017, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA) Rear Admiral Zhao Dengping announced plans to develop a low-power, low-pressure nuclear reactor—small enough to be used as an auxiliary engine for conventional submarines.
Chinese military affairs analyst Rick Fisher pointed out that such a power plant is similar to the Soviet one. project 651E, made in the 1980s by the Lazurit design bureau and tested on a Project 651 Juliet class conventional cruise missile submarine. The boat was also the only one of its kind – combining a standard diesel-electric installation with a nuclear one.
The Chinese boat was supposed to receive advanced weapons and electronics. And the nuclear reactor in it could be used to recharge lithium-ion batteries or when a higher level of performance or longer range is required.
It is unknown whether this boat was already intended for mass production or whether it was created to test new systems. “Whatever the plans for the Type 041 project, the fact that the first of these boats sank, according to US Department of Defense officials, calls into question the status of the program and the possibility of its salvage,” concluded the author of The War Zone.
The submarine could have nuclear fuel
The fact that China’s newest nuclear submarine sank back in May-June became known at the end of September. At the moment, it is unknown whether she was transporting nuclear fuel at the time of the sinking, but The Wall Street Journal journalists who wrote about the situation do not deny this. It is noted that, most likely, no one took water samples after the emergency, since there were no signs indicating this. In addition, there is no information about possible casualties and consequences.
The submarine was at the pier on the Yangtze River – there it was being equipped before going to sea. Satellite images indicate that the submarine was lifted from the bottom in early June – then large floating cranes were noticed near the scene of the emergency.
The Chinese authorities tried to hide this fact, which the US Department of Defense called unsurprising. “In addition to obvious questions about training standards and the quality of equipment, the incident raises deeper questions about the PLA’s internal accountability and oversight of China’s defense industry, which has long been plagued by corruption,” a Pentagon source told the newspaper.
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