As the [...] TASS news agency reported on November 16, 2023, the General Staff of the Russian Navy proposed to dispose of the emergency nuclear submarine "Nerpa" of project 971U ("Pike-B"), which, being leased as part of the Indian Navy, was named Chakra II. This was reported to TASS in the military-industrial complex.
Indian nuclear multipurpose submarine S 72 Chakra (leased by the Russian side to the Indian Navy after completion of the former nuclear submarine K-152 "Nerpa" project 971I) in Visakhapatnam, 2015 (c) Reuters
"The Commander-in-chief of the Navy, for financial reasons, considers it inappropriate to repair and modernize the Seal, located at one of the shipyards near Vladivostok, and offers to dispose of it," the agency interlocutor said.
At the beginning of the summer of 2021, the Chakra-2, accompanied by ships of the Pacific Fleet, made a transition on the surface from India to Vladivostok.
According to reports, before that, in April 2020, a high-pressure air cylinder exploded on board the submarine, as a result of which both of its hulls were damaged. Electronic weapons and sonar equipment were also affected. After that, the submarine was returned from the lease ahead of schedule. The interlocutor of the agency noted that after the emergency, Indian specialists carried out repairs of both nuclear submarine hulls, after which she returned to Russia.
The Nerpa submarine was leased to the Indian Navy in April 2012 for a period of 10 years. The cost of the contract was about $2 billion.
On the part of bmpd, we recall that the nuclear multipurpose submarine K-152 "Nerpa" (factory number 518), originally laid down for the USSR Navy in 1989, was completed for India under a 2000 agreement with the Indian side at the Amur Shipbuilding Plant JSC in Komsomolsk-on-Amur according to a modified project 971I (project 09719, code "Irbis"), and was transferred to the Indian Navy on a long-term lease for a period of 10 years. The act on the transfer of the Seal to the Indian side was signed on December 30, 2011, and the transfer of the boat to the Indian crew took place on January 23, 2012 on the territory of the Vostok ship equipment plant in Bolshoy Kamen (a branch of Amur Shipbuilding Plant JSC). The official commissioning ceremony of the boat as S 72 Chakra (Chakra II) into the Indian Navy was performed in Visakhapatnam on April 4, 2012.
The boat was returned to the Russian side ahead of schedule and arrived in Vladivostok again in June 2021, although back in 2019 there were reports that the Russian and Indian sides were negotiating the possibility of extending the lease of the Seal by India for another five years. Since the return of the Nerpa, it has been at a standstill at the Far Eastern Zvezda Plant in Bolshoy Kamen, in April 2022, nuclear fuel was unloaded by boat.
In March 2019, a Russian-Indian agreement was signed in New Delhi on the transfer to India for a long-term lease of another nuclear multipurpose submarine of Project 971 from the presence of the Russian Navy, and the cost of the agreement is estimated at $ 3.3 billion. The boat under the conditional Indian designation Chakra III will be transferred after repairs and modernization and will join the Indian fleet presumably in 2025 under the same name Chakra as the other two nuclear submarines leased from the USSR and Russia. The lease term is not exactly known, but it will be at least 10 years.
The Russian Navy is experiencing serious problems with the repair of the Project 971 submarines. Of the 15 boats of this project, 10 units remain nominally in the Navy (along with the Seal), of which only three are running, four are in long-term repair, and three are on hold. During the entire operation of this type, it was possible to carry out an average repair of only one boat (K-157 "Boar"), completed in 2020. In light of this, the refusal to repair the "Seal" is not surprising.