"Rossiiskaya Gazeta": "Modernised subs rejoin the Navy"
Zvezdochka shipyard modernises strategic missile submarine Karelia
While shipbuilders are working to smooth over the few remaining problems before the submarine Nerpa starts sea trials in the Far East, the K-18 strategic submarine Karelia, which has recently been repaired and modernised, is running the trials in the White Sea.
The Karelia is the fifth ballistic missile submarine of the Russian nuclear forces that has been overhauled at the Zvezdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk. The other modernised Project 667BDRM/Delta IV class boats are the Verkhoturye, the Yekaterinburg, the Tula and the Bryansk, which were built in the late 1980s or early 1990s by the Sevmash shipyard.
The K-18 submarine Karelia was commissioned in 1989 and dispatched to the Northern Fleet. It completed a mission to the North Pole in 1994 to hoist the Russian and the Navy's St Andrew flags there. In April 2000, Vladimir Putin made his first trip in a submarine and many newspapers and magazines later published his photograph in a submariner's uniform. The boat was subsequently nicknamed "President Putin's favourite vessel."
The Karelia was removed from the dry dock in November 2008 but installation and work-up continued on it for a year more.
About a hundred tactical and technical improvements have been made to the submarine, lowering its noise and enhancing its ability to detect enemy boats and its survivability and nuclear safety, according to the Zvezdochka shipyard,.
The submarine has also been armed with new RSM-54 Sineva intercontinental ballistic missiles (NATO codename SS-N-23 Skiff) designed by the Makeyev research centre and supplied to the Navy in July 2007.
Specialists say that the Project 667BDRM/Delta IV class submarines are one of the best products of the St Petersburg-based Rubin bureau and outstanding designer Sergei Kovalev. The boats of this class have a huge potential for modernisation, which ensures a long service life and high performance.
It is expected that the Karelia will serve for ten years longer following repairs and modernisation. It is to be deployed at its home base, the Gadzhiyevo Garrison on the Kola Peninsula, in late December.
A propos...
These days the Zvezdochka shipyard is receiving messages of greeting on its anniversary from all over the country. Since 1954, it has repaired and modernised many warships, including 84 nuclear and 35 other submarines, and 87 surface ships. In March 2007, the shipyard was transformed into the Zvezdochka Ship Repair Centre by presidential decree. It comprises ship repair plants located on the White, Barents, Caspian, Azov and Black seas.
