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Russian Navy Hopes to Lift Stranded Sub
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 6, 2005; 2:12 PM

MOSCOW. Aug. 6 -- The Russian Navy has looped cable around a stranded mini-submarine entangled in an underwater antenna system and is hoping to raise both the snared vessel and the material in which it is trapped closer to the surface so that U.S. and British undersea vehicles being raced to the scene have a better chance of freeing it completely, officials said.The 40-foot submarine with a crew of seven and a dwindling air supply is caught in the cables of an antenna system at a depth of around 600 feet. Officials said the antenna is part of Russia's coastal monitoring system and is anchored with a weight of 60 tons.

The navy apparently hopes to jack both the submarine and the entangling cables to a depth of around 165 feet where the U.S. and British remote-controlled vessels will have much better visibility to cut the cables, officials said. They also hope some of the material holding down the submarine will break off in the process of raising it, officials said.

The British vehicle is expected to reach the waters above the stricken craft around 4 p.m. EDT Saturday, with the Americans following a short time later. It may then take the unmanned rescue vehicles several hours to reach and cut through the cables trapping the submarine.

The Western vehicles, called Super Scorpios, are being transported to the area on Russian ships after they were flown into an airport in Russia's Far East earlier Saturday. The United States has also brought in another undersea vehicle, a Deep Drone 8000, as well as a private diving team whose potential deployment will be decided when they reach and assess the site, U.S. officials said.

There is still no certainty that the Russians will be able to raise the mini-sub at all; attempts to drag it have already failed. And if the American and British teams are forced to use their equipment on the sea-floor their task will be much harder because of poor visibility on the cloudy and rocky surface, defense analysts said.

At a depth of 165 feet, however, the Russians, employing divers, might be able to reach the vessel themselves before any international assistance arrives.

"They are desperate to get it out before the Westerners come," said Pavel Felgengauer, a defense analyst in Moscow. "If the Americans and British do the job, it will be mighty embarrassing."

Russian officials continued to assert that the sailors have enough air to survive through the time needed to mount an operation. But they have offered a series of conflicting calculations during the past 24 hours on how much time the trapped men have."By our estimations, we have another 24 hours, and this includes tomorrow's daylight hours and what remains of today's," Fyodorov said on Rossiya television on Saturday, revising up by 24 hours the amount of time estimated at one point on Friday.

"Naturally, we want to pull it from that depths right now, just dive down and lift it up. But so far there is no such possibility," said Fyodorov, noting that the crew reported that they are okay in the cold, dark vessel where power has been switched off to preserve energy and oxygen.

And the shifting information made available to the public has begun to engender some cynicism among the Russian public who were outraged by the lies and secrecy that surrounded the sinking of a nuclear submarine, the Kursk, five years ago. (cont. at link below)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/06/AR2005080600433.html
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