russian propagandists have decided to admit that russia has not drawn proper conclusions from the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster that occurred 24 years ago, on August 12, 2000.
It is known that, based on the experience of this disaster, russia planned to build a sufficiently large fleet of rescue vessels in case of new accidents or submarine disasters on the high seas, but this plan was never implemented.
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According to the plan, the construction of six large rescue vessels of 21300 Dolphin project was envisaged by 2025. All of them were supposed to join the fleet in 2016-2020.
One of the features of this project is the presence of a deep-submergence rescue vehicledesigned to rescue people from sunken submarines. This is a direct reference to the traumatic experience of the Kursk disaster, when sailors who survived a large-scale explosion on board could not be rescued because russian navy did not have proper rescue equipment.
In addition, the rescue vessels design of 21300 Dolphin project also provides the possibility of placement a significant number of people who can be rescued from sunken submarines.
It is known that the 21300 Dolphin project has a hull length of 97.8 meters, displacement of 5310 tons, and its autonomous operation in the high seas is up to 30 days. The crew consists of 96 people. It also can place up to 120 people from salvaged submarines. It has a diesel-electric propulsion system with auxiliary motors to thrust for search and rescue operations.
In terms of armament and equipment, it has the GVK-450 deep-water diving system with the Bester-1 submersible, 12 Igla portable anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as two DP-65 remotely-controlled naval grenade launcher systems.
The problem is that russians have managed to build only one rescue vessel out of six planned for all the fleets of russian Navy. It was built for the Pacific Fleet and called Igor Belousov. It was laid in 2005, launched in 2012 and handed over to the customer in 2015.
Earlier Defense Express reported about the UK Defense Intelligence analysis of the attack on Sevastopol and the Rostov-na-Donu submarine.
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