Russian Submarines

I am not be an expert regarding naval history and especially not Russian naval history but the current story regarding the Russian mini-submarine being stranded deserves some attention. For a quick recap the basic premise is that on Thursday a Russian AS-28 mini-submarine got stuck in a fishing net in water 600 feet deep during a military exercise off the Kamchatka peninsula. At this time their is obviously a limited amount of oxygen for the 7 sailors caught aboard and they are trying to drag the sub to shallower water so that they could then perform a rescue operation of some sort.

The first thing I thought of once this was first announced was the previous Russian submarine disaster 5 years ago (almost exactly) when the Kursk nuclear submarine had a internal explosion while underwater and the lives of 118 seamen were lost. I cannot believe that 5 years has since passed and I also cannot believe that no other nuclear submarines have be lost in this time period. It makes me think that either the safety measures on these subs are so high or that a lot more shit is going on and not getting reported especially at 60 leagues under the sea.

Since 1950 the Russians have built an estimated 254 nuclear powered submarines spanning 4-5 different classes and have officially de-commisioned roughly 170 of these since 1998. It seems really suprising to me that only 2 major accidents have since been reported since the USSR broke up. In addition, the US has built an even larger fleet of nuclear submarines over that same period and only two have sunk since 1950. The two reported ones are the USS Thresher which was lost on 4/10/63 and the USS Scorpion which was lost on 5/27/68. Their has also been a few small recent incidents (ie. USS San Francisco, 1950) but nothing like what the Russian Navy has experienced lately.

At the end of the day these are clearly very safe but I have to think that a bunch more have been lost since the beginning of the nuclear sub age began. Not too much of a point on this one but it is still really fascinating to me.