http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a13810730/navies-team-up-argentina-san-juan/?src=nl&mag=pop&list=nl_pnl_news&date=112117
Video of the weather conditions and the Royal Navy’s Submarine Parachute Assistance Group (SPAG) at link above.
Article on the Royal Navy’s Submarine Parachute Assistance Group (SPAG) here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10648941/Elite-Navy-rescue-team-always-on-call-to-help-submariners.html
World Navies Are Teaming Up to Find a Missing Submarine - Kyle Mizokami - Nov 20, 2017
The Argentine submarine ARA San Juan hasn’t been heard from in five days.
Navies worldwide are scrambling to assist Argentina in locating a submarine overdue since last Wednesday. The ARA San Juan, an aging diesel electric attack submarine, was last heard from on November 15th. In response, the navies of the world—including Argentina’s wartime adversary, the UK's Royal Navy—are mounting an international rescue effort.
The submarine was sailing from a base in the southern Tierra Del Fuego region of Argentina to its home port at Mar de Plata near the capital Buenos Aires. Shortly before it went missing, the captain reported a failure of the boat’s batteries as well as a second message with contents that have not been revealed. The submarine was supposed to arrive on Sunday, and its last known location was 267 miles off the coast of Argentina in the Gulf de San Jorge. Rescue efforts are concentrating within 186 square miles of the last known point of contact.
The Argentine Navy and Air Force quickly mounted a search effort, and a NASA P-3 Orion research aircraft already in the area joined in, along with a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. A second Poseidon was dispatched to Argentina this weekend, and Argentina’s neighbors Brazil and Chile are also contributing ships and aircraft to the effort.
Poor weather is reportedly hampering the search, with rescue ships dealing with swells as large as two story buildings. A series of seven satellite telephone calls were originally thought to have been made by the San Juan but were later debunked. Today, November 20th, U.S. Navy officials told CNN that a series of banging noises that sounded like tools being struck against a ship hull were detected. The search is is now being narrowed down to a 35 square mile area within the original search area.
Despite antagonism between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the former’s possession of the Falkland Islands and the 1982 Falklands War, the UK immediately offered to send the nearby ice patrol ship, HMS Protector. The offer was accepted. The Royal Navy is also sending the elite Submarine Parachute Assistance Group, a team of airborne-qualified rescue specialists on six hour standby to assist in submarine emergencies, to link up with Protector.
Over the weekend, Three U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III and one U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy aircraft transported a Submarine Rescue Chamber (SRC) and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) from Miramar, California to Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. Crucially, San Juan was built with the ability to mate with U.S. Navy deep sea rescue submersibles in emergencies thanks to a hatch standard the U.S. has encouraged other navies to adopt for decades for just this sort of situation. This should make it possible, if the submarine is located, for a ship carrying the Submarine Rescue Chamber to link up with and start offloading sailors from the stricken submarine. First developed during World War II and still used today, the SRC can rescue up to six sailors at a time at depths of up to 850 feet.
The U.S. Navy is sending a second rescue system, the Pressurized Rescue Module, early this week. The PRM is capable of offloading up to 16 trapped submariners at depths of up to 2,200 feet. Disabled submarines rarely land on the ocean floor on a totally level surface, and the PRM is capable, according to USNI News, of mating to submarines at 45 degree angles in both pitch and roll.
The U.S. Navy’s Underwater Rescue Command prepares a Submarine Rescue Chamber for air transport to Argentina, November 18, 2017.
The ROVs sent to Argentina consist of a Bluefin 12D (Deep) UUV and three Iver 580 UUVs from Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Squadron 1, based in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. According to a U.S. Southern Command press release, “both types are capable of deploying quickly and searching wide areas of the ocean using Side Scan Sonar, a system that is used to efficiently create an image of large areas of the sea floor. The Bluefin 12D is capable of conducting search operations at 3 knots (3.5 mph) at a maximum depth of almost 5,000 feet for 30 hours, while the Iver 580s can operate at a depth of 325 feet, traveling at 2.5 knots (2.8 mph) for up to 14 hours.”
The incident highlights the risks smaller navies are exposed to by operating submarines without an explicit submarine rescue capability. Only the largest navies, typically those who have endured tragedies in the past, maintain the sailors and equipment to get trapped submariners out of their boats.
The San Juan is one of the older submarines in service worldwide. Built in Germany, it was handed over to Argentina in 1984 along with a sister ship, Santa Cruz. The submarines displaced 2,300 tons underwater fully equipped and are 214 feet long. Each is equipped with the SMA MM/BPS-704 surface search and navigation radar, an Atlas Electronik sonar suite and Thales passive sonar arrays, and six bow-mounted 533-millimeter torpedo tubes for wire-guided torpedoes. The boats have a crew of eight officers and 21 enlisted sailors, or can alternately sail with a crew of 12 and 30 embarked Argentine naval commandos.
http://fox5sandiego.com/2017/11/21/argentina-missing-sub-could-be-out-of-oxygen-soon/
Argentina: Missing sub could be out of oxygen soon - , UPDATED AT 08:35AM, NOVEMBER 21, 2017
ARGENTINA — An Argentine navy submarine that’s been missing for nearly a week may soon run out of oxygen if it hasn’t surfaced, the country’s navy says — a scenario giving urgency to a multinational search for the vessel and its 44-member crew off Argentina’s South Atlantic coast.
The navy lost contact with the ARA San Juan submarine on November 15, shortly after the vessel’s captain reported a failure in the battery system while the sub was submerged, the Argentine military has said.
Ships and aircraft from at least seven nations have been scouring parts of the South Atlantic for the sub. On Tuesday, three vessels will move to an expanded search area, Argentine navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said.
“The search area is two times the size of Buenos Aires,” Balbi said Tuesday.
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A day earlier, the spokesman said the search had entered a critical phase because the ARA San Juan crew’s oxygen could run out by Wednesday in one of the worst-case scenarios.
Under normal circumstances, the vessel has sufficient fuel, water, oil and oxygen to operate for weeks without external help, Balbi said, and the vessel could “snorkel” — or raise a tube to the surface — “to charge batteries and draw fresh air for the crew.” The oxygen situation also could be helped, even if the vessel bobs adrift on the surface with the hatch open.
But if the sub doesn’t surface, oxygen might last only seven days, Balbi said. The vessel was submerged when the navy last made contact with it, and Tuesday would mark the sixth full day of its disappearance.
“This phase of search and rescue is critical,” Balbi said Monday. “This is why we are deploying all resources with high-tech sensors. We welcome the help we have received to find them.”
‘Short-circuit’ reported before disappearance
The submarine was traveling from a base in far southern Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego archipelago to its home base in Mar del Plata, a city hundreds of miles to the northeast, when the Navy lost contact with it last week.
The sub’s last known location in the San Jorge Gulf, off southern Argentina’s Patagonia region, is nearly midway between the bases. The vessel had been due to arrive at its destination Sunday.
Shortly before the navy lost contact with the sub, the vessel’s captain reported it had experienced a “short circuit,” Argentine navy spokesman Gabriel Galeazzi said Monday.
The captain was told to “change course and return to Mar del Plata,” Galeazzi said.
This type of problem is considered routine, and the crew was reported safe, he added.
There was one more communication with the captain before the sub went missing, Galeazzi said. The navy did not give details of its content.
The San Juan is a German-built, 65-meter long (213-foot) TR-1700 submarine, powered by one electric and four diesel engines, the Argentine navy said.
Approximations of oxygen in the vessel are complicated, said William Craig Reed, a former US Navy diver and submariner.
“It’s dependent upon the last time they actually recharged their batteries, how long ago they refreshed the air, what’s inside the submarine,” Reed said.
Peter Layton, a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute at Australia’s Griffith University, offered a scenario similar to Balbi’s: If the vessel had sunk but was still intact, Layton said, the crew would have about a week to 10 days of oxygen.
If the hull is intact, it can withstand ocean depths up to about 600 meters, Layton said. If the vessel is resting on Argentina’s continental shelf, it is likely in waters shallower than this, but if it’s farther out into the Atlantic Ocean, it could be below its “crush depth” in which the hull buckles under pressure.
The search
Ships and aircraft from Argentina, the United States, Uruguay, Brazil and other nations have been searching for the sub on the surface and underwater.
Earlier hopes that searchers may have heard communication attempts by the crew have not panned out, the military said.
For instance, noises that had been detected Monday initially were thought to be a possible distress signal from the crew.
But later analysis determined the noises were not from the missing vessel but instead might have been from the ocean or marine life, Balbi said.
The Argentine navy on Saturday reported seven communication attempts that were initially believed to originate from the San Juan. But officials said Monday those calls had not come from the missing sub.