25 juin 2012 Par Rédacteur en chef. PORTAIL DES SOUS-MARINS

Le directeur du consortium des constructions navales russes OSK a annoncé que la Russie prévoit de mettre sur cale en 2016 un destroyer de nouvelle génération.

Référence : RusNav Intelligence

25/06/2012 MER et MARINE

Trois hélicoptères MI-25 réparés en Russie et destinés au régime syrien, auquel ils appartiennent : la cargaison du cargo Alead a provoqué des remous. Alors que le navire, parti de Russie, faisait route vers la Syrie, il a été contraint de faire demi-tour devant l'Ecosse. Son assureur britannique, faisant valoir que le transport d'armes n'était pas couvert par la police, a résilié le contrat, empêchant le navire de continuer son route. L'Alead est reparti vers Mourmansk. Le gouvernement russe , furieux, a laissé sous-entendre que l'assureur agissait sur ordre du gouvernement britannique. Il a également précisé que le navire allait passer sous pavillon russe, réappareiller et livrer à la Syrie les hélicoptères, dont la maintenance a été assurée dans le cadre d'un contrat signé entre Damas et Moscou en 2008.

Cet incident intervient alors que les massacres de la population civile, perpétrés par l'armée fidèle à Bachar Al-Assad, se poursuivent et que même les émissaires de l'ONU ont dû quitter le pays tant leur mission était devenue dangereuse. La tension est également montée d'un cran entre Damas et Ankara après qu'un avion de chasse Phantom de l'armée de l'air turque ait été abattu vendredi par les forces syriennes. L'appareil, qui a peut-être pénétré un moment dans l'espace aérien syrien, a été intercepté au dessus des eaux internationales, ce qu'a dénoncé la Turquie. Alors que les recherches se poursuivaient hier pour retrouver les deux pilotes du Phantom, Ankara a demandé une réunion des membres de l'OTAN, qui se déroulera demain.

23 juin 2012 marine-oceans.com (AFP)

MOSCOU - Le cargo MV Alaed, forcé de faire demi-tour mardi au large de l'Ecosse alors qu'il transportait des hélicoptères russes pour la Syrie, est rentré dans les eaux territoriales russes, a indiqué samedi un responsable maritime.

Le cargo est attendu dans le golfe de Kola, d'où il rejoindra ensuite le port de Mourmansk (nord-ouest), à "06h00 heure de Moscou (02h00 GMT)", a déclaré un responsable du contrôle de la navigation maritime à l'agence Interfax.

Après son arrivée à Mourmansk, le navire --dont le ministre russe des Affaires étrangères Sergueï Lavrov a reconnu jeudi qu'il transportait des moyens de défense anti-aérienne et trois hélicoptères Mi-25 de fabrication soviétique appartenant à la Syrie-- devrait repartir vers la Syrie sous pavillon russe et sous escorte.

La secrétaire d'Etat américaine Hillary Clinton s'était alarmée au début du mois du transport présumé vers la Syrie d'hélicoptères en provenance de Russie.

Moscou maintient ne rien livrer qui puisse être utilisé dans la répression des manifestations "pacifiques" en Syrie, et n'enfreindre aucune règle ni embargo international.

NOVOROSSIISK, June 22 (RIA Novosti)

A Russian warship which some media reports claimed was carrying arms destined for Syria has arrived at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk on Friday, a spokesman said.

The Nikolai Filchenkov, an amphibious ship, was en route from the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Black Sea Fleet spokesman Vyacheslav Trukhachev told RIA Novosti.

"The military hardware, which the vessel delivered, will undergo planned repairs," Trukhachev said, adding that the ship will return to Sevastopol after it is unloaded next week.

Western media reports last week asserted the Nikolai Filchenkov and another amphibious ship, the Caesar Kunikov, were heading to Syria, where Russia has its only naval base outside the former Soviet Union.

The Russian military denied the reports.

Pro-democracy protesters in Syria are fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a 15-month-old uprising which the UN says has claimed more than 12,000 lives.

ST. PETERSBURG, June 21 (RIA Novosti)

The Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry will finance high-risk projects, a deputy prime minister said on Thursday.

“I believe that the foundation will take on all high-risk and fundamental research projects in the military-industrial complex,” said Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the defense related sectors of industry.

President Vladimir Putin has submitted to parliament a bill on the foundation’s establishment, which is expected to become Russia’s answer to the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The foundation will be tasked with informing the country’s leadership on projects that can ensure Russian superiority in defense technology.

It will also analyze the risks of any Russian technological backwardness and technological dependence on other powers.

21/06/2012 MER et MARINE

Le chantier russe Baltic Plant Shipbuilding de Saint-Pétersbourg devrait débuter en août la construction de blocs destinés aux deux bâtiments de projection et de commandement destinés à la Russie. Commandés en juin 2011 par Rosoboronexport au groupe français DCNS, ces BPC seront, en effet, partiellement réalisés en Russie, au travers d'un contrat de transfert de technologie. L'objectif est de profiter de ce programme pour moderniser l'outil de production et les méthodes de travail des chantiers russes. Ces derniers vont, ainsi, se rôder à la construction de navires en blocs pré-équipés, avec le soutien des équipes françaises, notamment de STX France. Si DCNS est le concepteur des BPC, ce sont en effet les chantiers de Saint-Nazaire qui les réalisent. Après l'achèvement à l'été dernier du Dixumude, troisième BPC de la Marine nationale, STX a débuté fin 2011 l'usinage des tôles du premier bâtiment russe, les travaux ayant débuté quelques semaines plus tard sur son sistership.

Alors que la fabrication des blocs se poursuit à Saint-Nazaire, où des équipes russes sont venues pour se former aux méthodes de travail des chantiers français, les livraisons du Vladivostok et du Sébastopol sont prévues en 2014 et 2015. Le premier BPC devrait être réalisé à 80% par STX, qui en assurera l'achèvement et les essais. Sur ce bateau, Baltic Plant devrait fournir des blocs de la partie arrière, pour environ 20% de la coque. Le chantier russe doit ensuite monter en puissance sur le deuxième BPC, pour lequel sa participation devrait doubler si l'on s'en réfère aux déclarations faites au moment de la signature du contrat. Alors que les deux premiers BPC seront assemblés à Saint-Nazaire, les négociations se poursuivent en vue de réaliser deux bâtiments supplémentaires, qui seraient alors construits en Russie.

LOS CABOS (Mexico), June 20 (RIA Novosti)

The missile defense dispute between Russia and the United States will not be resolved regardless of whether President Barack Obama will be re-elected in November, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

“The United States has been following the path of creating its own missile defense for more than one year, and I do not see anything that could change its approach,” Putin told journalists following the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Putin said the situation would change only if the United States agreed to build the missile defense system jointly with Russia and the European Union.

“This means all three participants would jointly be building that system, and would be able to jointly assess threats, manage that system and make decisions on its use,” he said.

“But this does not mean we are unable to agree on some fragments of that joint work. I think it is possible,” Putin said.

Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on the so-called European missile defense system at the Lisbon summit in November 2010. NATO insists there should be two independent systems that exchange information, while Russia favors a joint system with full-scale interoperability.

Russia has retained staunch opposition to the planned deployment of U.S. missile defense systems near its borders, claiming they would be a security threat. NATO and the United States insist that the shield would defend NATO members against missiles from North Korea and Iran and would not be directed at Russia.

Moscow insists it should receive legal guarantees from Washington that its European missile defense shield will not target Russia's strategic nuclear forces.

Russia’s military and political leaders have repeatedly warned their western partners that if talks fail, Moscow may take a series of measures including deployment of Iskander short-range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in the Kaliningrad exclave.

19 juin 2012 marine-oceans.com (AFP)

LONDRES, Un assureur britannique a annoncé mardi qu'il avait annulé l'assurance couvrant un cargo russe en raison d'informations selon lesquelles ce navire transporterait des hélicoptères d'attaque à destination de la Syrie, en violation d'un embargo européen.

Le navire concerné, le MV Alaed, propriété, selon le Daily Telegraph, de l'armateur russe Femco, et venant du port russe de Kaliningrad dans la Baltique, a stoppé ses machines au large de l'Ecosse après avoir été prévenu du retrait de son assurance par l'assureur britannique Standard Club.

"Nous avons été informés que l'Alaed transportait des munitions destinées à la Syrie", a indiqué l'assureur dans un communiqué transmis à l'AFP.

"Nous avons déjà informé le propriétaire du navire que leur couverture d'assurance prenait fin avec effet immédiat du fait de la nature de leur périple", a-t-elle ajouté.

Des responsables britanniques cités par le Daily Telegraph ont fait savoir à Standard Club que fournir une assurance à la cargaison supposée de l'Alaed contreviendrait aux sanctions édictées par l'Union européenne interdisant toute fourniture d'armes à la Syrie, où la répression d'une rebellion a fait en un an plus de 14.000 morts selon des ONG.

Les Etats-Unis ont notifié la semaine dernière au gouvernement britannique que le navire russe était assuré par une société britannique, avait indiqué ce week-end l'édition dominicale du même journal, le Sunday Telegraph.

L'Alaed transporterait des hélicoptères Mi-25 de fabrication russe, vendus à la Syrie du temps de l'URSS, et que Damas avait renvoyés en Russie pour les remettre en état de marche, selon le même journal.

De tels appareils servent à la répression des insurgés syriens et Washington, par la bouche de la secrétaire d'Etat Hillary Clinton, s'est alarmé publiquement le 12 juin du fait que ces hélicoptères étaient en cours d'acheminement.

Le général Robert Mood, chef des observateurs de l'ONU en Syrie, a annoncé samedi la suspension de leurs opérations en raison de l'intensification des violences dans ce pays.

La Russie avait rétorqué qu'elle ne livrait aucun nouvel appareil au régime de Bachar al-Assad et qu'il ne s'agissait que de réparations d'hélicoptères déjà vendus il y a longtemps à Damas.

A Moscou, le départ de deux navires de guerre russes pour la base navale de Tartous, sur la côté syrienne, a été annoncé lundi.

Aucun commentaire officiel sur cette affaire n'avait pu être obtenu mardi matin de source gouvernementale britannique.

Voronezh-DM class anti-missile radar

ARMAVIR, June 19 (RIA Novosti)

A new-generation Voronezh-DM class anti-missile radar will enter combat duty near the town of Armavir in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region around the end of the year, the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces commander, Oleg Ostapenko, said on Tuesday.

“The [radar] station is in the final stage of preparations for entering combat duty,” Ostapenko told journalists at the radar site. “We are planning to almost wrap up the work on the station approximately by the end of the year.”

He added that the station may enter combat duty “ahead of the approved schedule.”

The anti-missile radar near Armavir is one of the four new-generation Voronezh-class radars that have been put into operation in Russia in recent years.

Two Voronezh-M radars have been deployed in Lekhtusi near St. Petersburg and near the town of Usolye-Sibirskoe in Siberia’s Irkutsk Region.

Another Voronezh-DM class radar stationed in the westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad was put on combat duty in November last year in what then-President Dmitry Medvedev said was part of Russia’s response to U.S. and NATO European missile defense shield plans.

Voronezh-DM class radars have a range of 6,000 kilometers. They can be more quickly deployed to a new site and require a smaller crew to operate it compared to previous generation stations.

Two sections of the Armavir radar that have been put into operation have allowed monitoring the area from France and Spain in the west, to Algeria in the southwest, Sudan in the south, and Iran, Afghanistan and parts of India and Pakistan in the southeast, its crew said.

Ostapenko also said on Tuesday the Aerospace Defense Forces plan to complete the entire Voronezh radar deployment program before the 2020 deadline.

“We are doing everything we can to narrow this timeframe,” he said.

Aerospace Defense Forces spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin has previously said Voronezh-class radars were planned to be deployed near the town of Pechora in Russia’s Komi Republic, the Siberian cities of Barnaul and Yeniseisk.

Tu-95 MS bomber

MOSCOW, June 19 (RIA Novosti)

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday he was in favor of development of the PAK DA long-range bomber for the country's air force, just hours after saying the project was unnecessary, in apparent contravention of  President Putin's call last week for domestic aerospace industry to develop just such an aircraft.

“I am for PAK DA but it should not be a copy of the B-2. We need to look at the horizon and develop hypersonic long-range aviation, civil and military,” Rogozin said on his Twitter blog on Tuesday afternoon. The B-2 is an American long-range stealth bomber developed by Northrop, which became the most expensive aircraft ever built and is in service with the U.S. Air Force in very small numbers.

Earlier on Tuesday, Rogozin, who has special responsibility for the military-industrial complex, insisted Russia has no need to develop a new long-range bomber to replace its existing fleet.

Rogozin was repeating a statement he made to Russian media reports earlier this month. He said then that he saw no need for PAK DA, an acronym for future long-range aircraft in Russian, to replace the air force's ageing Tu-95MS cruise-missile carriers and Tu-160 supersonic bombers.

“These aircraft will not get anywhere. Not ours, not theirs,” Rogozin said in an interview with Izvestia in June.

"I'm ready to insist on my point of view," Rogozin said on Tuesday on his Twitter blog. "With modern air defense systems, these targets will be destroyed on the way," he said.

In May, Rogozin called on Russia's defense industry to develop hypersonic air-breathing weapons as a future strike system. He picked out American development work in the X-51, Falcon, HiFire and HyFly programs as examples of what he described as the perspective threat posed by U.S. hypersonic development work.

"The undertaking of this work allows us to lay the basis for creation of a national competitor in hypersonic weapons," he said.

Development of such a weapon should be discussed at the highest levels of state, he said.

Last Thursday, President Vladimir Putin ordered initial development of the new long-range bomber for strategic aviation. Speaking during a conference on defense orders, Putin said: "We have to develop work on the new PAK DA long-range bomber aircraft for Long-Range Aviation. I know how expensive and complex this is. The task is not easy from a scientific-technical standpoint, but we need to start work," Putin said.

If Russia did not start work soon on the project, it could miss the boat, Putin said.

Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said previously that a new aircraft assembly line in Russia's Kazan plant (KAPO) would build PAK-DA and the new Antonov An-70 propfan transport aircraft. The same plant previously built the Tu-95MS and Tu-160.

The Defense Ministry is due to hold a meeting to discuss development of the new bomber later in June.

“The comments from Putin and Rogozin appear to reflect sharply differing opinions – unusually being aired in public -  as to the desirability of pursuing a bomber replacement for the Tu-160 and Tu-95 in the strategic strike role," said Douglas Barrie, air warfare analyst for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"In the long term the Russian Air Force’s role in the nuclear triad – beyond the Tu-160 and the Tu-95 – would seem to rest on the acquisition of the PAK DA, though the aircraft would also have utility in the tactical environment.  A programme such as PAK DA would be expensive, and whether this could be accommodated within available likely funding also remains in question,” he added.

Currently, only Russia and the United States operate intercontinental range bomber aircraft. Most other nuclear-capable nations rely solely on intercontinental ballistic missiles, based on submarines or in land-based silos, or cruise missiles. The United States has expressed an interest in successor systems to its B-1, B-2 and B-52H long-range bombers.

June 19, 2012 defpro.com

At the Eurosatory 2012 international land defence and security exhibition Rosoboronexport, JSC has struck new agreements on cooperation with major arms manufacturers.

On the first day of the exhibition the company signed contracts with Thales Optronics for licence production, repairs and servicing of the Catherine XP new-generation thermal imagers at the facilities of the Vologda optical-mechanical plant.

During Eurosatory 2012 Rosoboronexport held talks with its traditional French business partners and defined priority projects that both sides are to start in the near time. Similar talks were held with a number of European and American companies.

"Summing up the exhibition's results I would like to underline that we have risen to a totally new level of cooperation with our Western counterparts. There has been cooperation before, but now one can speak of the beginning of a full-scale cooperation that embraces almost all types of armaments," said Igor Sevastyanov, deputy director general of Rosoboronexport and head of the joint delegation of the Russian Technologies State Corporation and Rosoboronexport at Eurosatory 2012.

On the invitation of the US company General Dynamics the Russian delegation visited its stand at the exhibition. "We have familiarised ourselves with the presented wheeled armoured vehicles and discussed potential areas for effective cooperation. It concerns projects mainly in the interests of third countries," noted Igor Sevastyanov.

The US-Russian military technical cooperation was started after working together in the interests of the Afghan armed forces. At the present time Afghanistan is receiving Russian military transport helicopters, and issues related to the procurement of smalls arms and ammunition for the International Security Assistance Forces and local law enforcement units are under discussion.

"We welcome the positive approach taken by our American partners. It shows that we can be not only competitors in the world market but also reliable partners. It is all the more true when this kind of cooperation helps to upkeep stability and strengthen security in some regions," said Igor Sevastyanov.

Rosoboronexport noted special attention of foreign delegations to some defence equipment items showcased at the Russian exposition. A great deal of specialist attention was drawn to full-scale exhibits such as the modernized T-90S main battle tank, Kornet-EM antitank missile system mounted on the Tigr armoured car, BMPT tank support combat vehicle, new Ural hardened truck, small arms, high precision munitions.

"It is true that there are Russian defence products popular with Western armed forces, police and special-purpose units. In our opinion the era of the "iron curtain" in military technical area is over. Although there is still certain inertia and a degree of distrust remaining, we do our best to get rid of these vestiges," noted Igor Sevastyanov.

MOSCOU, 19 juin - RIA Novosti

La mise au point d'un bombardier russe de nouvelle génération destiné à remplacer les bombardiers stratégiques Tu-95MS et Tu-160 n'a pas beaucoup de sens, a déclaré mardi le vice-premier ministre russe Dmitri Rogozine sur son compte Twitter.

"Je suis prêt à défendre mon point de vue. Vu le niveau de perfectionnement actuel des armements antimissile et antiaériens, ces cibles (les bombardiers - ndlr) seraient détruites à l'approche", a écrit le vice-premier ministre.

Ce point de vue diverge de celui du président russe Vladimir Poutine qui, lors d'une réunion avec des responsables militaires russes jeudi dernier, a exigé de commencer à mettre au point un nouveau bombardier stratégique, "tant qu'il n'est pas trop tard".

Le ministre russe de la Défense Anatoli Serdioukov devrait convoquer d'ici fin juin une réunion consacrée à la mise au point du bombardier.

Le chef de l'Aviation de longue portée, le général Anatoli Jikharev a annoncé auparavant que le nouveau bombardier pourrait équiper l'armée russe en 2025.

Actuellement, l'aviation stratégique russe comprend 32 bombardiers Tu-95MS6, 31 Tu-95MS16 et 13 bombardiers Tu-160. Ils sont capables de porter plus de 850 missiles de croisière de longue portée.