second hand US nuclear sub. for Romania???

How useful is a fleet of 1 sub and how can it justify the money spent ? I fail to see it..

Sorry about that rude Base remark Victor.A SSN would be utterly useless for us.For a country like ours an advanced SSK like the U 212 would be perfect.

And how useful is a fleet without a single sub in a sea where other fleets have subs?
For AlexC -- the terms of the deal arent available yet. What I meant to say about Basescu and his BS (ooops, make that Black Sea) strategy is that the americans "suggested" it to him, so they will definetly "listen" to him talk about it. And I personally see nothing bad in that strategy if Romania is the one to shape up its fleet and not just house a US fleet at Constanta.

Could these recently decommissioned or soon to be decom. SSNs be sold to Romania:

SSN 680
SSN 683
SSN 686

Some U 212 pictures











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Type 212 class attack submarine

Type 212 submarine in dock at HDW/Kiel
Class Overview
Class Type Attack Submarine
Class Name Type 212
Preceded By Type 209 submarine
Succeeded By Type 214 submarine
Ships of the Class: U31, U32, U33, U34, Salvatore Todaro, Sciré

The German Type 212A is an advanced design of non-nuclear submarine developed by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW). It features air-independent propulsion using nine 34-kilowatt Siemens hydrogen fuel cells, allowing the submarines to cruise under water for weeks without surfacing, silently, and with no exhaust heat. HDW is the first shipyard in the world to offer a fuel cell propulsion system ready for series production.

An initial order of four Type 212 submarines was placed by the German government in 1998. Because of significant updates to the design the designation was changed to Type 212A since then. They were built by the German Submarine Consortium at the shipyards of HDW and Thyssen Nordseewerke GmbH (TNSW) of Emden. Very similar to the way Airbus builds aircraft, different sections of the submarines were constructed at both sites at the same time and then half of them were shipped to the respective other yard so that both HDW and Thyssen Nordseewerke assembled two complete submarines each.

Salvatore Todaro, a Type 212A built by Fincantieri for the Marina Militare (Italian Navy), is scheduled to be commissioned in 2005, and her sister Sciré is under construction. Two more Italian Type 212s are planned.

Three Dolphin class submarines built for the Israeli Navy are of a similar design, but using conventional diesel-electric propulsion.

General characteristics
* Displacement: 1450 tons surfaced, 1830 tons submerged
* Length: 56 m
* Beam: 7 m
* Draft: 6 m
* Propulsion:
o 1 MTU 16V 396 diesel-engine, 3.12 MW
o 9 HDW/Siemens PEM fuel cells, 30-40 kW each (U31)
o 2 HDW/Siemens PEM fuel cells 120 kW (U32, U33, U34)
o 1 Siemens Permasyn electric motor, driving single seven-bladed skew-back propeller
* Speed: 20 knots (37 km/h) submerged
* Depth: over 250m (official), greater than 400 m (estimated)
* Range:
o 8,000 nautical miles (14,800 km) at 8 knots (15 km/h) surfaced,
o 420 nautical miles (780 km) at 8 knots (15 km/h) submerged
* Endurance: 3 weeks without snorkeling, 12 weeks overall
* Armament:
o 6 x 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes with 12 torpedoes
o 24 external naval mines (optional)
* Countermeasures:
o Torpedo defence system Tau, 4 launchers, 40 jammers/decoys
* Sensors:
o STN Atlas DBQS40 sonar suite:
+ TAS-3 passive low-frequency towed array sonar (deployed from sail)
+ FAS-3 passive Low-, and med-frequency hull-mounted flank array sonar
+ MOA 3070 mine detection sonar
o Periscopes:
+ Carl Zeiss SERO 14, with FLIR and optical rangefinder
+ Carl Zeiss SERO 15, with laser range-finder
o Kelvin Hughes Type 1007 I band navigation radar
o EADS FL 1800U ESM suite
* Complement: 27

I'l belive it when I see it Imperialist.SSNs would be useful for us only if we had to project power all over the globe, what would we do with a Los Angeles class sub in our puny Black Sea?The LA class is only usfeull in the ocean it's actually seriously impared in litoral warfare that's why the americans built the new Virginia class SSN which is optimised for litoral and blue watter warfare but that costs about 2 bilion!Seriously it doesn't make any sense at all.SSKs are for us.

And how useful is a fleet without a single sub in a sea where other fleets have subs?
For AlexC -- the terms of the deal arent available yet. What I meant to say about Basescu and his BS (ooops, make that Black Sea) strategy is that the americans "suggested" it to him, so they will definetly "listen" to him talk about it. And I personally see nothing bad in that strategy if Romania is the one to shape up its fleet and not just house a US fleet at Constanta.

Could these recently decommissioned or soon to be decom. SSNs be sold to Romania:

SSN 680
SSN 683
SSN 686

That would be Russia. Too big to tackle.Ukraine has only one operational submarine. The rest of the countries bordering Black Sea either don't have submarines either are in NATO. So Mytzu question is valid : why do we need a 'nucular' sub? Which brings again a valid point : there is money! Why not buy NEW aircrafts to replace the heavily ageing 21 fleet?

The Black Sea is not that puny for 1 sub when you come to think about it.
How many SSKs would Romania need in your view, and how much would that cost?

Such a submarine would be useless. But it would still be very cool to have one.

The point is that the LA is not suited for this kind of environment like the Black Sea it's optimum performance is in blue watter the Atlantic, Pacific, and anyway it's noise levels no longer cut it.On the other hand a Type 212A SSK with AIP(air independent propulsion, hydrogen fuel cells)is rumored to be as quiet or even quieter than the MUCH more expensive Virginia or Seawolf and that's why it price is ~650 million US$.Just one of them is able to sink allmost all of 30-th Surface Warships Division of the Black Sea Fleet without much trouble.BTW look at the Black Sea Fleet http://flot.sevastopol.info/eng/ship/today.htm Not impressive at all IMO easy prey for a U 212.

This is worse than I thought these aren't Los Angeles class these are Sturgeons commisioned in the 70's!I hope we don't buy this noisy junk.

It doesnt matter. Look at the Baltic. The Poles have 4 or more submarines. Even if the deal with the SSN is only a newspaper story then we'd need some replacements for the Delfinul anyway. So how many SSKs do you think we need and who is willing to offer them (I see you talk about new ones).
I see the glass half full, not half empty. If this government can make a deal with the americans thats great. Even if a deal is about SSNs or SSKs there will always be people talking about "comisioane".
I dont know much about naval issues, but I know that even if that SSN sub is to stay for weeks unmoved (to reduce noise) on the bottom of the sea waiting in ambush it would be hell of a trouble for any enemy out there.

Yes, if we could get it for free, that would be a deal.

The poles have one Kilo like owers but working and 3 norwegian Kobben class SSKs
I think we should buy from the germans a brand new U212 they would be happy to sell one to us, the Italians ordered 4 of them and the greeks are going for the Type 214 a slightly larger but cheaper sub, $560mil it's a modernized U 209 with AIP but it doesn't have a nonmagnetic hull like the 212, it's slightly noisier and slower.The South Koreans are buying 214s too.The americans don't have or build SSKs, the only thing they have to offer us is a old Sturgeon.

This tactic won't work very great for the Sturgeon because the reactor is still making a fair ammount of noise."Delfinul" is actually quieter than the Sturgeon and is more effective at this "mobile minefield" tactic.

That fair amount of noise could be anywhere in a big amount of sea. The tactic (basically the existence of the submarine in our arsenal) will oblige the enemy to reduce sorties of ships that dont have anti-submarine protection and will increase the cost by obliging him to provide anti-submarine protection to most if not all of its movements. Ofcourse, it would be even better if we had more than 1.
As for the noise, I dont know, but I imagine the offensive weapons on board have a role too can compensate for the noise left after reduction of all activity apart from the basics.

As I've said our Kilo is actually much more efficient at this tactic than a old Sturgeon why do you think they are trying to get our sub, to study it, train against it, find the best way to counter it!
The USN says that it's biggest threat today comes from quiet SSKs like the russian Kilo, their newest SSK Lada, japanese Oyashio,U 212 etc.A cheap Kilo running silently at 2-3kts can ruin the day for one of their uber-expensive CVBGs or subs.Have you heard about the recent exercises where the USN “leased” a swedish Gotland class SSK and it's crew to practice against them and it's no surprise that the mighty USN was unable to find it!
So this is the reason for this deal and they are trying to get hold of as many Kilo or newer type of SSKs as they can.I think that we should repair our sub or just sell it to them and buy a new U212 or 214, if we accept the Sturgeon we are suckers.Now this deal makes much more sense.