Washington. October 12. INTERFAX - The Pentagon disagreed on Tuesday with China's assumption that the American side is allegedly hiding information about the incident with the nuclear submarine USS Connecticut.
"We have a strange way of hiding information: after all, we ourselves published a press release about what happened," he joked at a briefing, responding to a journalist's request to comment on China's claims.
Earlier, the Hong Kong portal iNews reported that the USS Connecticut, which was damaged on October 2 during a mission in the South China Sea, most likely collided with an unknown Chinese underwater object.
According to him, after the incident, the satellite recorded the submarine in a surface position on October 3, about 77 km from Yongxing Island, part of the Paracel Archipelago, in the South China Sea. The island was controlled by the PRC in 1974. Vietnam claims ownership of the island. There is a Chinese submarine base and a military airfield on the island.
According to the US Navy, as a result of the collision that occurred in international waters in the waters of the South China Sea, 11 of the 130 crew members were injured. They received non-life-threatening injuries.
As indicated by the US Navy, after the incident, "the submarine is in a safe, stable condition." It was also stressed that its nuclear installation was not damaged.
After the incident, the submarine was forced to go to Guam in a surface position.
The US military does not report what exactly the submarine collided with. According to sources in the US Navy, we are not talking about a collision with another submarine, ship or aggressive actions of another country. The Navy noted that according to topographic data, there was also no collision with underwater terrain.
According to the latest data from the US military, the submarine could have collided with a sunken ship or a container that fell into the sea from a cargo ship.
The USS Connecticut with a displacement of 7.5 thousand tons is a multi-purpose nuclear submarine of the fourth generation of the Seawolf type. Its missile armament is up to 50 Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles, which are launched from torpedo tubes. In addition to combat missions, it also performs reconnaissance functions.
