Japanese Submarine 29SS Has No Blended Sail

Kyle Mizokami, in his June 25, 2019 Popular Mechanics article, unfortunately was incorrect in predicting Japanese submarine class "29SS" would have a "sail... substantially reduced and blended into the hull". Also 29SS means the 29th year of the era of the former Japanese Emperor "Heisei" NOT a submarine that would appear in 2029 or shortly after.

The Popular Mechanics in question claimed:

"... 29SS retains the general hull form of earlier submarines but with some important changes. The sail is substantially reduced and blended into the hull, which should reduce hydrodynamic drag."

The artwork of the sub with the expected 29SS blended sail used Kyle's Popular Mechanics article.
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"This will make the submarine quieter, perhaps a little faster, but also more energy efficient. Non-nuclear powered submarines, operating underwater under combat conditions, must carefully manage their power or risk being forced to surface. The dive planes have also been moved from what’s left of the sail to the hull.

...The research and development phase will take place from 2025 to 2028, and the first ship of this class will probably hit the water around 2031."

PETE COMMENT

Japan works on the basis of gradual, iterative, structural changes, submarine by submarine. So, 29SS, is only slightly different from the preceding sub 28SS (the final sub of the Soryu class). 29SS, launched in October 2020, turns out the first sub of the Taigei-class (see the Table below). 

Note, 26 seconds into the youtube here and above, there are only slight outer structural differences with a very Soryu-like sail for Taigei class 29SS (SS-513).  

Also note that while some of Japan's subs partly rely on air independent propulsion (AIP)  indicated below, all of Japan's subs use diesel engines. It is not either/or.

Oyashio-Soryu-Taigei TABLE as at October 16, 2021.
 

SS No. Diesel Type Motor	Build No Name	Pennant No.	MoF approved amount ¥ Billions FY	LABs, LIBs, AIP	Laid Down	Laun -ched	Commi ssioned	Built By
5SS Oyashio 2 Toshiba motors	8105 Oyashio currents	SS-590/ TS3608	¥52.2B FY1993 2 x 12V25/25S  diesels for all Oyashio class (each diesel 2,000kW)	LABs only	Jan 1994	Oct 1996	Mar 1998	KHI
6SS-15SS Oyashios  10 subs 2 Toshiba motors SMC-7?	8106 -8115 various	SS-591-600	¥52.2B per sub FY1994-FY2003	LABs only	15SS Feb 2004	15SS Nov 2006	15SS Mar 2008	MHI & KHI
16SS Soryu/ Dragon class  Mk I Collided with Ocean Artemis Feb 8, 2021	8116 Sōryū dragons	SS-501	¥60B FY2004 all Mk.1 LAB+AIP Soryus have 2 x Kawasaki  12V25/25SB  diesels (totaling 4,240kW) + 4 AIP SMC-8 motor	LABs + AIP	Mar 2005	Dec 2007	Mar 2009	MHI
17SS	8117 Unryū	SS-502	¥58.7B FY2005	LABs + AIP	Mar 2006	Oct 2008	Mar 2010	KHI
18SS	8118 Hakuryū	SS-503	¥56.2 FY2006	LABs + AIP	Feb 2007	Oct 2009	Mar 2011	MHI
19SS	8119 Kenryū	SS-504	¥53B FY2007	LABs + AIP	Mar 2008	Nov 2010	Mar 2012	KHI
20SS	8120 Zuiryū	SS-505	¥51B FY2008	LABs + AIP	Mar 2009	Oct 2011	Mar 2013	MHI
21SS LIBs Concept Research Project			No 21SS built. It was an 8 year research project on LIBs. 1st LIBs sub launched was 27SS in 2018.
22SS	8121 Kokuryū	SS-506	¥52.8B FY2010	LABs + AIP	Jan 2011	Oct 2013	Mar 2015	KHI
23SS	8122 Jinryu	SS-507	¥54.6B FY2011	LABs + AIP	Feb 2012	Oct 2014	7 Mar 2016	MHI
24SS	8123 Sekiryū	SS-508	¥54.7B FY2012	LABs + AIP	15 Mar 2013	2 Nov 2015	13 Mar 2017	KHI
25SS	8124 Seiryū	SS-509	¥53.1B FY2013	LABs + AIP	22 Oct 2013	12 Oct   2016	12 Mar 2018	MHI
26SS	8125 Shoryū	SS-510	¥51.7B FY2014 last SMC-8 motor	LABs + AIP	2014	6 Nov 2017	18 Mar 2019	KHI
27SS a Soryu "Mk II" as it has LIBs. 1st Soryu Mk II	8126 Oryū 11th Soryu	SS-511	¥64.4B FY2015  with 2 12V25/25SB diesels (totaling 4,240kW)  SMC-8B motor Soryu Mk IIs may have twice as many batteries as Mk Is, ie 960 LIB-arrays in Mk IIs, other improvements	LIBs only (SLH type)	Nov 2015	4 Oct 2018	5 Mar 2020	MHI
28SS Soryu Mk II, 12th & final Soryu	8127 Toryu	SS-512	¥63.6B FY2016 "2,950t" surfaced 2 12V25/25SB diesels	NCA? LIBs	Jan 2017	6 Nov  2019	24 Mar 2021	KHI
29SS 1st Taigei Class ("Great Whale") 3,000 tonne (surfaced)	8128 Taigei	SS-513	¥76B FY2017 (Heisei 29) Higher ¥76B budget  may be due to 1st of class many changes & new layout of LIBs. 2 x 12V25/25SB diesels or variants (totaling 4,240kW)	SLH LIBs maybe 960	month?in  2017	14 Oct 2020	Mar 2022	MHI
30SS  2nd Taigei Class  whale a mythol- ogical creature	8129? Hakugei	SS-514	¥71.5B FY2018  (Heisei 30) 12V25/25SB diesels or variants (totaling 4,240kW)	SLH LIBs	2018?	14 Oct 2021	March? 2023	KHI
01SS  3rd Taigei Class		SS-515	¥B? FY2019 (Reiwa 01) 12V25/25SB diesels or variants (total 4,240kW)	SLH LIBs maybe 960+	2019?	2022?	2024?	MHI
02SS  4th Taigei Class	8130?	SS-516	¥B? FY2020 (Reiwa 02) Improved SLH LIBS. New 2 x 12V25/31S diesels (totaling 5,520kW)	Impro ved SLH LIBs	2020?	2022?	2024?	KHI?
03SS	8131?	SS-517	¥B? FY2021	LIBs	2021?	2023?	2025?	KHI?
04SS	8132?	SS-518	¥B? FY2022	LIBs	2022?	2024?	2026?	MHI?
05SS	8133?	SS-519	¥B? FY2023	LIBs	2023?	2025?	2027?	KHI?
06SS	8134?	SS-520	¥B? FY2024	LIBs	2024?	2026?	2028?	MHI?
07SS	8135?	SS-521	¥B? FY2025	LIBs	2025?	2027?	2029?	KHI?
08SS	8136?	SS-522	¥B? FY2026	LIBs	2026?	2028?	2030?	MHI?

Key to Table: Table information provided by Anonymous to Submarine Matters. LABs = lead-acid batteries, AIP = air independent propulsion, LIBs = Lithium-ion Batteries. 
¥***B = Billion Yen. MHI = Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, KHI = Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation of Kawasaki Heavy Industries. 

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Pete

India's Reliance on Variants of Russian Submarine Reactors

India has, since the 1950s [A], been talking about building nuclear attack submarines (SSNs). Their principal mission would be to scour the seas for enemy (mainly Pakistani and Chinese attack) submarines before and during India’s Arihant class SSBN nuclear deterrent patrol activities. India’s SSNs would particularly be a counter to China’s growing numbers of SSNs visiting the Indian Ocean. 

A major technical hurdle for India is improving reactor output from the 83 to 90 MW achieved on the Arihant class small SSBNs to 150 to 190 MW required for India's future 13,000 ton S5 class SSBNs and the SSNs.

India's highest priority may be building an Indian variant of INS Chakra's/Akula's Russian 190 MW OK-650B/OK-650M reactor.

[A] Drawing from this August 2014 Submarine Matters’ report:

India plans to build 6 SSNs “to be constructed at Visakhapatnam. Few details, no date milestones. This [1990s Federation of American Scientists] report indicates India has been interested in building or buying 6 SSNs since the 1950s, with Russian assistance, for fleet protection, mainly against Chinese subs. India financed the completion of INS Chakra (ex Nerpa) (a Russian Akula 2) - is long leasing it - and commissioned it into the Indian Navy in 2012. Since commissing Chakra has been almost invisable. It may not be operational but rather a full test model for examination and trials by the India Navy, DRDO and India's nuclear reactor sector. It is likely any Indian built SSN would draw heavily on Akula 2 technology and be built with Russian assistance."

Inspired by Manu Bubby of India’s The Economic Times, June 24, 2019, most excellent report and a mainly subsequent Wikipedia report:

India approved the construction of 6 SSNs [1] in February 2015.[2] These will be Indian designed and built with a lot of help from the Russian research and on-site advisers...at India’s Visakhapatnam Main Naval Base East shipyard. Expertise gained in the construction of the Arihant class SSBNs (which I suspect use variants of the Russian VM-4 or VM-5 reactor ) will be transferred to the SSN project.[5] Since India is a traditional user of Russian nuclear submarines (with INS Chakra (2011) on lease) the new domestically built submarines would be third class of SSN operated by Indian navy after leased Charlie-class submarine and Akula-class submarines.[3] All six submarines are expected to be constructed in India [ie. none in Russia] under India’s  “Make in India” Program.[1][4]

The submarines will be powered by a conventional PWR reactor being developed by Russia and India's BARC. The new reactor will likely be in the 150-190 MW range (likely variant of Russia's 190 MW OK-650B/OK-650M reactor). This will be much more powerful than the under-powered 83 MW Russian-BARC reactor used in the Arihant-class (INS Arihant and INS Arighat so far) SSBNs.[3]

On June 24, 2019 , it was reported [5] that ₹100 crores = 100 x 10,000,000 = 1 Billion Indian Rupees = only US$14.4 million has been allocated for the initial phase of the project. With such small infusions of money since the project began in 1950s-2015 “development work would stretch beyond 2025”. Unsurprisingly the SSNs will use pressure hull steel permitting them to dive deeper than the Arihants. A scaled down model of the SSN is scheduled to begin testing soon.

References (courtesy Wikipedia)

[1]"India to Build 6 Nuclear-Powered Submarines - Navy Chief". Sputnik International. Sputnik. 4 December 2015.

[2] "Government clears construction of 7 stealth frigates, 6 nuclear-powered attack submarines". The Economic Times. 18 February 2015. Retrieved 19 April 2015.

[3] "Watch Out, China: India Is Building 6 Nuclear Attack Submarines". The National Interest. 18 February 2015. Retrieved 19 April 2015.

[4] "India finalizing plans to order three more Scorpene submarines". The Times of India. Retrieved 2015-12-04.

[5] Pubby, Manu. "Work begins on India’s next gen nuclear-powered submarines" The Economic Times. 24 June 2019

FURTHER COMMENT

India's rather relaxed, underfunded SSN program, might commission the first basically Russian Husky (concept sketch above) derived "indigenous Indian" SSN/SSGN by 2050, if Pakistan and China are lucky.

Pete

Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program: Site-Meter "Hacking" Iranian Interest

Map of Iran's highest priority nuclear facilities. This includes the research centers at Tehran and  Isfahan/Esfahan (from which Submarine Matters' site-meter picked up Iranian reader interest in computer simulations of nuclear weapon explosions) see below. 

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The whole bomb Iran issue is dominated Israeli and US politicians-officials. Most effectively the US National Security Advisor, John R. Bolton (from the years he worked for Reagan, to the present day). 

Repetition of "when not if we should bomb Iran" commentary is usually unhelpful in the absence of first hand data. By the time data reaches these commentators it is often highly distorted and third or fourth hand. The following research and some analysis is intended to fill part of the void in knowledge.

Submarine Matters direct technical monitoring of  the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) as far back as 2006 reflects Iran's ongoing interest in nuclear weapons research as an option for Iran. The AEOI is active in many university institutes, cities and isolated sites in Iran, particularly in Tehran and Isfahan (aka Esfahan) a large city about 350 km south of Tehran.

The Isfahan University of Technology (IUT) is closely related to AEOI. IUT includes the Nuclear Technology Center (INTC) (run by the AEOI) with an estimated 3,000 scientists   http://www.nti.org/facilities/237/ . INTC has many nuclear functions including Uranium enrichment. INTC operates three small nuclear research reactors supplied by China.

Like all research communities the Iranian nuclear community uses internet searches for general and specific purposes. Internet search for sensitive nuclear topics involves inherent security risks for searching organisations - so sensitive internet searches require good reasons. One of those reasons from mid 2006 was Divine Strake. In mid 2006 the US Government announced that it intended to conduct a large, non-nuclear, high-explosive test known as "Divine Strake" at the US Government's Nevada (nuclear) Test Site. The test would use hundreds of tonnes of conventional explosive to simulate a low nuclear yield bunker buster test of the type that might be useful one day against deep dug Iranian nuclear facilities.

The prospect of a Divine Strake test created considerable interest in the Iranian nuclear community in 2006-2007. The point of interest for Iran was probably that Iran might be the likely target of US weapons. Iran might also benefit from conducting zero yield nuclear tests along with supercomputer simulations (noting the evident interest below). These simulations might be one of a number of productive avenues for Iran's own nuclear test program as they might partly avoid the need for Iran to conduct actual nuclear tests, down the line, if it wanted to. 

The Iranian nuclear community therefore began to conduct some pointed internet searches to discover what the American's were doing. Using my website and a simple, free site-meter, Submarine Matters began to detect and collect some searches by employees of Iranian Atomic research institutions. Although the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) officially canceled Divine Strake in February 2007 some interesting Iranian Google search results were gathered as detailed below. If readers are accustomed to using simple site-meters or even professional metadata collection they will have a handle on the significance of the following.

In 2006 Google revealed to commercial site-meters the words used by readers in keyword seachers. By 2016 Google began to disguise the precise keywords.  

Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) Employee Google keyword searches detected by Submarine Matters' site-meter include:

- July 21, 2006 (IP 80.191.142.11) "Esfahan", conducted Google search for "deep bunkers MOP" MOP means Massive Ordinance Penetrator  (a large US bomb useful for blowing up deep dug high value targets including nuclear facilities)
   
- October 30, 2006 (IP 217.218.11.165) "Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran" "Tehran"  employee googled "what is nuclear simulation". Comment - literally revealing "Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran" as the Iranian ISP is clearly poor security. One can now conclude that 217.218 is an "Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran" IP number even if "Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran" is disguised with bland ISP names.  

- November 19, 2006 (IP 217.218.64.202) Atomic Energy Organization of Iran disguised as "Area No 6 Partition" "Tehran", conducted a Google search for "nuclear explosion simulation".

- March 4, 2007 (IP 213.176.127.82) from - "Iranian Research Organization" employee googled key words "simulation underground nuclear explosion".

- September 9, 2007 (IP 217.218.64.202) Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, employee googled information on "nuclear weapon effects computer".

- October 23, 2007 (IP 217.218.64.202) Atomic Energy Organization of Iran employee googled information on "nuclear weapon effects computer".

- November 13, 2007 (IP 217.218.64.202) Atomic Energy Organization of Iran employee googled information on "underground nuclear explosion"

- November 22, 2007 (IP 217.219.18.13) a reader from Isfahan/Esfahan University of Technology, Tehran campus, detected as reading information on Submarine Matters concerning "Indian and Pakistani nuclear missiles".

- June 3, 2010 (IP 83.147.213.101) a reader in Isfahan/Esfahan Googled Submarine Matters for information on the SILEX laser uranium enrichment process.

Information collected above on Iranian interest in "nuclear weapon effects computer" prompted me to do further research on supercomputer upgrades at the Isfahan University of Technology. In 2011 the then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly unveiled a supercomputer at Isfahan University of Technology - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isfahan_University_of_Technology#Research_and_facilities . 

A supercomputer has many uses including complex physical and chemical reactions that occur in nuclear explosion simulations. Such simulations demand the enormous speed and capacity of supercomputers. By 2011-2012 the Iranians are likely to have conducted nuclear explosion simulations using the supercomputer.More on Iran nuclear - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11927720 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_facilities_in_Iran  

PETE'S COMMENT

Since 2014 Iran has been at or near nuclear weapon breakout status - with the three components being:

- substantial stocks of semi-enriched uranium (LEU or MEU), which could become bomb grade (90+%) HEU within a couple of months using Iran's thousands of centrifuges and possible hidden laser enrichment capability.

- delivery means - in the form of Sejjil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejjil solid fuel IRBM and the  Shahab series liquid fueled IRBMs, and

- enough nuclear device plans and components acquired from Pakistan's A. Q. Khan network to have constructed crude fission devices (minus the HEU and/or Plutonium explosive) around 2006.

see https://www.nti.org/learn/countries/iran/nuclear/

SAUDI NUCLEAR PROGRAM?

Iran has been building a nuclear weapon program because regional opponent, Israel, has developed nuclear weapons since the mid 1960s. 

Shiite Iran's Sunni opponent Saudi Arabia has had the potential political and financial muscle to buy nuclear weapons and missiles from Pakistan and China since the 1980s. The Saudis bought Chinese inaccurate-hence-nuclear-specific-use CSS-2 IRBMs in 1987.  The Saudi's also reportedly bought from China more advanced nuclear-use DF-21 (CSS-5) MRBMs in 2007. See the Newsweek article and http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/us-backed-secret-saudi-missile-purchase-china/.

A more detailed map of Iran's nuclear sites.

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Pete