MPA - Breaking Defence

Question: Has any P-8 Crew actually detected and tracked a Russian Diesel-electric or Nuclear Russian Submarine, anywhere in the world? (Red.)

Loading the prssurized chute in a RNoAF P-3B  with a sonobuoy 1973 - Photo: Per Gram

WASHINGTON The Navy says it is running short of critical submarine-detecting sonobuoys, thanks to stepped-up submarine activity by Russia in the Mediterranean and around Europe.

As a result, the service has asked Congress to reprogram $20 million to buy more of the detection devices in an Omnibus funding package the Pentagon sent to Congress earlier this month. The Omnibus says the air-dropped buoys — which can detect diesel submarines and transmit their location in real time back to monitoring units — are in critically short supply after experiencing “unexpected high anti-submarine warfare operational tempo in 2017 [which] resulted in unexpected high expenditure rate of all type/model/series.”

The ask comes as American and European allies are sounding the alarm over higher levels of Russian submarine traffic both in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Russian subs have fired missiles at targets in Syria on several occasions, part of Moscow’s scorched-earth campaign to back Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s bloody war on civilians and rebels who have broken from the regime.

There have been multiple reports of U.S., British and Russian subs playing cat and mouse games in the Med over the past several years, and the request clearly underscores how seriously U.S. commanders in the region are taking the new Russian patrols, which skirt the shorelines both of northern and southern Europe.

Earlier this month, ships, aircraft, and personnel from 10 NATO countries practiced hunting stealthy submarines off Norway’s coast during Exercise Dynamic Mongoose, which wrapped up just days before this week’s NATO summit, a sign of how seriously NATO is taking Russian advancements in undersea warfare.