By Geoff Fein
For the first time in the seven-year history of Bold Monarch, the Russian navy took part in the international submarine exercise that brings together 18 countries in a cooperative effort to train for submarine escape and rescue.
Not only was this the first time the Russian navy participated in the event, but their participation marked the first time a Russian submarine linked with a non-Russian boat, Capt. Dave Dittmer, chief of staff to Commander Submarines North (COMSUBNORTH), told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“They mated with a non-Russian submarine for the first time in the history of the world. That was done [in late May],” said Dittmer from Norway.
After the initial docking, the Russians mated their submarine with two of the submarines in the task force here and were very successful in doing that repeatedly, he added.
“It’s a great step forward. They have rescue gear in the northern fleet, Black Sea fleet, and also in the Pacific fleet that is the same kind,” Dittmer said. “So now we have a lot more regions in the world where we can depend on a rescue.”
On May 28, Norway and Russia created submarine history by completing a simulated rescue of submariners from a Norwegian submarine by a Russian rescue vehicle, according to the Bold Monarch website.
This year’s exercised showcased two new rescue systems: NATO’s Submarine Rescue System (NSRS) and the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System (SRDRS).
NATO’s NSRS was developed by France, the United Kingdom and Norway, Dittmer said. “It’s just coming online this year.”
The system is still under the ownership of Rolls-Royce. However, Dittmer noted it should transfer over to NATO later this year or in early ’09.
SRDRS is brand new and will replace the 30-year-old Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV).
Both SRDRS and its NATO counterpart are modular and can be taken apart for transport on a C-17 or larger cargo aircraft, Dittmer said.
“So countries like Argentina, Singapore, Brazil…if they don’t have another locally available system, all they do is get on the world-wide network which we established and [ask for help] and we are on an airplane,” he added.
Although both rescue systems are air transportable, Dittmer noted it takes a few aircraft to transport the systems. For Bold Monarch, the Navy transported SRDRS from San Diego to Norway on the Russian Tupalov cargo aircraft. “That’s the preferred one because it has the biggest cargo carrying capacity, but it takes multiple ones of those also.”
However, because both the NATO and U.S systems are modular, depending on what the scenario is, a country may not need the whole system, Dittmer added. “You may only need part of it, which can greatly reduce your air transport requirements.”
The first phase of Bold Monarch began in late May and started out by providing an opportunity for the various navies to familiarize themselves with each other, Dittmer said.
“We would just simply mate a submarine with the rescue system…do it a couple of times and then we’d rotate and the next day we’d mate a different submarine with that rescue system,” he said. “We did all three rescue systems and three submarines each day, all day long, until evening meal time, just to prove we can do it and to become familiar with each others’ procedures.”
Besides the NATO and U.S. rescue systems, the Russian navy provided a Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle for the exercise.
In early June, Bold Monarch entered the advanced phase in which rescue teams encountered more challenging situations, Dittmer said.
The exercises included evacuating people from the submarines on stretchers, moving them from the “downed” submarine into the rescue vehicles, to see if they fit in, Dittmer explained.
“We did things like having divers in atmospheric diving suits go down to the submarine and pass in atmospheric control materials for example, while they were still on the bottom, through the hatches,” he said.
The biggest event, according to Dittmer, was a simulated rescue of a full component nuclear submarine’s crew.
“So what we wanted to do was the throughput, so we used observers and doctors and crew members of the two submarines we put next to each other on the bottom,” he said. “We used two rescue systems simulating going to the forward hatch and the aft hatch and we just stressed it to see how long it would take to get 150 people out.”
The even ran around the clock for almost two days, Dittmer said. “We had some problems and challenges, we learned some lessons, but overall we proved the systems could sustain operations.”
“The biggest lesson learned for me had nothing to do with submarine technology or rescue system technology. It’s about cooperation,” Dittmer said. “I have never worked closely with the Russians before. I had some preconceived notions and I would say most of them were dispelled.”
The Russians were flexible, innovative, cooperative and leaning forward in the whole exercise, he added.
“The language barrier was there obviously, but in some cases I found it easier to work with the Russian navy than I did with some of our contractors,” Dittmer said.
Another lesson learned, although not entirely positive, but one Dittmer said was important for Bold Monarch participants to learn was that they discovered that the Russian submarine couldn’t mate with two of the five hatches on other systems because of design differences.
“So we couldn’t mate with every single hatch on two of the NATO subs, but we did on most of them. So now we can go back and look at the hatches all around the fleet and all around the other countries of the world and tell them what the problem was and fix them so now we can be safer,” Dittmer said. “We never would have known that if we didn’t come here and do this exercise.”
Besides providing the opportunity to exercise submarine escapes and rescues, Bold Monarch also provides an opportunity for nations to share new technologies, Dittmer added. “There is no monopoly on good ideas.”
The Norwegians came up with a technology called Mini Pod Posting. Dittmer said it is a pressurized pouch that can hold items such as morphine, or atmospheric control chemicals, handwritten messages, or a digital camera.
“You can pass it in through the signal ejector on submarines. That doesn’t damage your hatches or risk damaging your hatches that you need to escape,” he said. “But it can get small quantities [of goods] into a submarine.”
For example, Dittmer said if there were a medical emergency inside the bottomed submarine, rescuers could pass a digital camera and some drugs into the guy on the scene…a corpsman.
He could take pictures of injured sailors, administer drugs, and then send the digital camera out back through the pod.
“The divers could take it back up to the surface and you could have a medical team up on the surface provide expert medical advice and care,” Dittmer said. “So that is the kind of thing we haven’t done before, but that the Norwegians came up with.”
One of the big lessons Dittmer said he personally learned was the command and control process for rescuing a sub on the bottom. “There still is a lot of refinement to be done there, but there is a procedure …a NATO publication, that talks about how you would do that.”
“For example, let’s say you have a submarine from country X that is going on a port visit to country Y and has a collision and sinks to the bottom inside territorial waters. Who is responsible for coordinating the rescue? Is it the country that owns the submarine, is it the country whose territorial waters you are in, is it the country providing the rescue system? Those are the kind of questions that wouldn’t be a good idea to have to ask when the incident happens,” Dittmer said. “We have drilled through that kind of thing and have got some good [lessons from it].”