Her Captain’s Voice

Having overcome the vexing issue of sourcing material for the landing gear of the indigenous naval variant of the Light Combat Aircraft(LCA) Tejas, the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) has slated the inaugural flight for late 2009.

The procurement of the material for the landing gear of the naval variant, which is being designed to withstand G-forces of up to 4.5G, had hit a hurdle when the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the aircraft maker was unable to secure it from the global market. However with two Indian companies — Mishra Dhatu Nigam and Bharat Forge — delivering the required material, the landing gear is being designed and manufactured at the HAL, Nasik.
Similar to PV-5

Officials at the ADA told The Hindu that the naval fighter aircraft — a twin-seater variant with the nomenclature NP1 (naval prototype one) — would look similar to PV-5 (prototype vehicle five) of the LCA being developed for the Indian Air Force (IAF). But the similarities are only external: the naval aircraft will structurally be equipped to cater for higher landing loads and the tail arrestor hook landing system. The naval aircraft will also be powered by a more powerful engine compared to the LCA currently flying or being built for the IAF.

The LCA naval variant, which is to be used by the Navy in an air defence role from its carriers, will jockey for space on the deck with the MiG-29Ks that India is buying from Russia. It will be a replacement for the British-made Sea Harrier jump jets currently used by the Navy. The Navy has already placed intent to procure 40 aircraft.

Explaining the need for a more powerful engine, officials said the environment in which the naval variant would operate was much more challenging. With only 200 metres of deck length available for a take-off, and even more crucially during landing, when the aircraft has to decelerate from speeds of 250 km per hour to zero in just 90 metres, the Navy wants an engine of much higher thrust than the LCA’s present power plant — the General Electric’s GE F404. Two engines — the GE F414 and the European consortium Eurojet’s EJ 200 — are being evaluated by the ADA, the IAF and the Navy, as a more powerful option for both, future versions of the land-based LCA and the naval variant.

Another key challenge for the naval variant’s design is the fact that while the land-based LCAs are designed for a vertical rate of descent of 3 metres per second, the naval variant will be designed for a descent of 7.5 metres a second.

Source: The Hindu

as every media talks about it now.

Almost 75% of the world media talked about the Heroic adventures of Indian Navy in the pirate-infested waters off somalia coast, which has successfully completed three missions in less than two weeks.

The first one was saving a Saudi and Indian Merchant ships from pirate attacks and the next and most criticised one was sinking a (so-called) “pirate mother ship” after an assault-threat came from the latter.

Indian Navy has claimed that it has fired the ship with armed pirates on-board and seized an abandoned fast-attack boat while the other was flew away in the dark. Two days after the action, the Indian Navy has released some photos of ground-zero; the burning pirate-ship.

“The Indian Navy’s stand is very clear. We were first fired upon and then we fired back in self-defence. The vessel was laden with a large quantity of ammunition as shown by the pictures (of the incident),” Sinha told.”Gun-totting pirates threatened to blow us up in international waters. So, this is an involvement in an act of piracy and we acted in self-defence,” he added.

But yesterday, six days after the incident a thai shipping company claimed that the Indian Navy mistakenly shot one of its deep-water fishing trawl and added they lost 14 sailors. They claimed that one of the crew member was found dead and one was rescued where as others are still not found.

But still Indian Navy is maintaining that it had sinked an armed vessel which thwarted an assault over the frigate. The crew of the frigate said that they have seen armed pirates roaming over the deck of the ship.

This situation clearly embarrased the Indian Navy men who was praised earlier this week and criticised later for the same issue.

Few questions that can be raised:

• Why do the fishing trawl is armed with gun-men and rocket launchers?
• Why do a fishing trawl needs two fast attack boats in tow?
• Why didn’t the fishing trawl stopped for investigation when asked?

To answer all these questions, the thai ship owner later said that the fishing trawl was attacked by the pirates and hijacked by them. And the trawl was under the control of pirates when questioned by the Indian ship.

But still we have some questions:

• How come a huge fireball seen after an explosion in a fishing trawl which has nothing but fishing equipments on-board? (Indian Navy claims this is due to the stored explosives in the ship)
• What in the world the need for these pirates capable of hijacking the world’s largest container ship would ever capture a small fishing trawl which has nothing but fishing equipments?

Here is a recent statement(warning!!!) from the Russian Sevmash shipyard director Nikolai Kalistratov through RIA Novasti to India.

It was said last week that Vikramadithya will be delayed until 2012 for sure as its construction works are still pending. In december later this year, Launching of Vikramadithya is scheduled. After the launch she will be moored to a dock for further refit and construction. Today the chief of Sevmash Shipyard told the Russian News agency RIA Novasti, that the ship will be completed in 2010 and its aircrafts will be tested in barrents sea in 2011 and delivery to Indian Navy will be in 2012. All this will happen only if India accepts to pay the additional $2 billion US dollars. Otherwise the ship will be transferred to Russian Navy.

“If India does not pay up, we will keep the aircraft carrier,” he said.

He further added that almost 49% of Vikramadithya was completed.

But here in India, recommendations of Ministry of Defense to pay additional $1.2 billion US dollars for Russia has been denied by the Finance ministry for the second time. As the heat goes on, a doubt of delay of Gorky has been changed to a different one.

Will Vikramadithya ever comes to India or will stay as Admiral Gorshkov????

And finally a report has come from an Investigator. The report says, its not the fire-fighting system, but a crew member who activated it without permission. (An expected result: Better to blame a poor seaman than a costly submarine system) The report further adds that the crew member was detained and will likely get seven years of lock-up.

Check here in RIA Novosti.

Following the investigation reports, a Russian official again denied the lease of Nerpa to India as INS chakra. How long will it take for the light???

Four days after the disaster, few Russian media managed to get some information from the survivors of Nerpa Diaster.

“I was lying down resting after being on watch. Suddenly the freon gas started coming down right above me. It was like a drug. I lost consciousness,”

“We all had gas masks but maybe some people didn’t manage to put them on in time,”

“There was an alarm… I was immediately knocked out.”

“We were lucky. We were very lucky. First of all, it happened in the evening and not at night. There would have been more dead at night,”

Click here for more of survivors’ stories from Spacewar.

Cigarette smoking injurious to health. Here it refers to the personal health. How come it kills 20 other people sleeping nearby and injures 21 more?

Check out the update in times of India for an expert analysis of Nerpa disaster, saying that it could have happened due to cigarette smoking that automatically activated the fire-fighting system.

More expert predictions to come…..

The Indian Navy today morning claimed that one of its warships patrolling off Gulf of Aden foils an hijack attempt on an Indian Merchant vessel.

According to the Indian Navy, an unidentified warship which is patrolling near the Pirate-infested waters of Gulf of Aden has received an SOS around 10.30am today from an Indian flagged merchant vessel MV Jag Arnav. The Navy ship has launched an armed helicopter with marine commandos on-board to the merchant ship. The helicopter attacked the pirates by firing on them which aborted the hijack mission and flee away. The warship escorted the merchant vessel to safety.

Said the Indian Navy to IANS today.

More from PIB.

Two days after the Nerpa Disaster, the investigations of the cause which has cost 20 lives is going on. An Ex-submariner of US Navy who is an “Old-Salt” blogs what could have happened likely on-board Nerpa, more technicaly.

He explains every possibilities of so-called fire-fighting malfunctions and also raises some weird questions for the public and as well as to the Investigation team to answer.

Check out here.

It was Sunday the 9/11 of Russia and also for International maritime Industries and shipyards. 20 people on-board the Un-identified Russian Submarine was killed along with 21 more injured. It is the second such incident in the recent decade following the Kursk explosion in 2000 which costs 118 lives . Sad thing in both accidents is, both are happened in Russian Submarines.

Eventhough the Russian top-brass didn’t identified the name of the vessel, it was said from the sources that the mishap occured in the Nerpa, the Akula-2 class Nuclear-powered attack submarine which was on its first sea-trials in the Japan sea. (Wiki page of the Nerpa was updated recently on this accident). RIA Novasti of Russia also suspects the same.

“The tragedy, the worst since the sinking of the Kursk in 2000, occurred late on Saturday while the Nerpa nuclear-powered submarine was undergoing sea trials in the Sea of Japan.” – RIA Novasti

There were 208 people on-board the Sub, which is three times more than the sub’s actual crew capacity. Most of the people were employees of Amur-shipyard, in which the Nerpa was constructed. It can be assumed as, since the Sub was in first sea trials after a long-term docking, there were lot of shipyard employees looking after its performance. Out of 20 people died, 17 of them are these shipyard employees and 3 are regular submariners of Russian-Navy.

Since there are more number of people(nearly three times) there may be a shortage of emergency breathing equipments.

“It is possible that some of the people lingered (putting on their breathing apparatus) or they did not have the apparatus at all,” Ruslan Pukhov, director of military think tank the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technology, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.     -Reuters

It was said that the reason for the accident is “Unsanctioned Activation” of Fire-control mechanism which emits Freon foam to control the Class-B fire accidents.

“Every Russian submarine has three types of fire fighting systems. Portable extinguishers which use water and chemicals to douse small fires and need no breathing apparatus for operation, a fixed VPL system which uses water and chemicals for medium fires which has hoses in every compartment but needs no breathing apparatus for operation.

Aqueous Film Forming Foam or AFFF system used to combat Class B fires on submarines by providing a barrier between the burning substance and oxygen uses a deadly Freon mixture which kills instantly. This is released only when the compartment is fully engulfed in fire. It is released after the compartment is vacated and sealed. The chemical is then released from an adjacent compartment to completely smother the fire. The crew can enter the compartment, wearing breathing apparatus, only after the fire is doused and the compartment ventilated for a few hours.” – India Today

The freon gas which eliminated the oxygen supply and likely to kill 20 people and injured 21 more due to suffocation.

There is a detective agency involved in gruelling up the accident and said it is a pure accident.

“The ship has the latest fire-extinguishing system, a computer-activated alarm” Khabarovsk province Governor Viktor Ishayev said. “According to the investigation, there is no evidence that a person was involved in the system’s operation.” – RIA Novasti

The Nerpa was initially reported by both Indian and Russian Media as it will be leased for India for 10 years under the name INS Chakra. But both the governments recently denied the deal after the visit of Russian Defense minister to India.(Nobody knows what happened) But it was said that India has supported the Nerpa construction by providing 650million when Russia was about to stop the project under financial bottle-neck. Recently Indian Navy also sent some of its Navy men to get trained in this Sub. This further confirmed the lease.

There was a fear initially that there could be some Indian men also among the dead. But Russia later disclosed the list of 20-dead which includes no Indians.

Now its Indian turn to react on this issue. Will Indian Government get the cursed vessel for its Navy? Or will the lease be dropped as it was told by both the governments?

Whatever comes in the future, its time for us to pray for the 20 innocent soul died in the accident. Let us pray things dont happen anymore.

Here is the video-clip of Russian Press talk on the Accident.

Here is the video-clip of Akula Submarine on the move.

Here is the video-clip of Nerpa returning to the port.

Photo: Wikipedia

A cartoon strip for a tea-time laugh (worth think about it too)

Found somewhere in the Web, Thanks to the unknown cartoonist.