Lost Indonesian Submarine

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As German U-Boats are based in the Baltic Sea, and one of the requirements was close costal operations, one design specification is that they can operate there.

The same is true for countries that operate in the northern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. The US east coast is also pretty shallow near enough to shore for a lot of signals intelligence.

Cold war era sub operations were mostly cat & mouse games over very deep water, except for some intelligence gathering work. There is a lot more demand now for operating in littoral zones. The USN's Virginia-class submarine being the prime example.
 
Cold war era sub operations were mostly cat & mouse games over very deep water, except for some intelligence gathering work.

Back when the Polaris missiles had 1200 and 1500 mile range (A1 and A2), and targets deep in the Soviet Union, there were some big subs in very tight places covering targets on a regular basis. There were also cat and mouse games, with the emphasis on mouse.
 
There is about zero chance it is sitting in 300' of water. The normal operating envelope of submarines requires far more depth below the keel in order to dive.

Unfortunately history shows us these incidents typically never end well. Blessings to the crew and I hope beyond hope they make it out alive.
Not correct. subs operate just fine in shallower water, our subs traverse shallower depths all the time when working in the Straights of Georgia.
Slow and cumbersome compared to what? Are you thinking of flying divers to the ships on site by chopper? They might do that if they had qualified military divers but I can't see some admiral saying, "a TDI rebreather C-card will be fine".



Probably. Bureaucracies are very reluctant to use non-professionals for any potentially dangerous task. The risk to the decision-maker's career is enormous if they add civilian amature divers to the body count. I have no doubt that plenty of tech divers would volunteer for the task but the best they could hope to accomplish is find the wreck/coffin. Anyone alive would be hammering SOS on the hull which any number of ASW (Anti-submarine Warfare) vessels and aircraft searching the area could detect from many miles away.
A few years back, a diver was lost on a wreck around here. The RCMP dive team closed the area and searched for several days. Thursday night we got the word they were abandoning the search and the wreck would be open to divers. I got a team of 4 rebreather divers together and we splashed Friday morning and 4 TDI CCR divers found the body in less than an hour. I'm not saying the Navy of any country would sanction such things but don't underestimate the capability of us civvie divers.
 
I'm not saying the Navy of any country would sanction such things but don't underestimate the capability of us civvie divers.

That was far from the point of my statement. There are a lot of recreational divers that are far better on open or closed circuit Scuba than military or professional divers. The issue is getting a bureaucrat to sign off on it when inaction is safer for their career than taking a risk. It would be even worse if amateurs actually outperform the navy divers in your command. Imagine explaining that to the review board!
 
40 yrs old submarine should had been retired long time ago.

Commissioned the same year as the USS Ohio, which has a planned life of another two years or more. It is planned on being taken out of service because a new class of subs designed to replace them, not that the boat is unseaworthy.

The operational lifespan of a submarine is more a function of its ability to perform its mission, than age. If it costs more to repair and upgrade the boat than to build a new one, then it's replacement time.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/t...ubmarine-will-reach-astounding-80-years-19150
On Jan. 21, 2017, Taiwan announced that the 72-year-old SS-791 Hai Shih, or Sea Lion, will receive a retrofit allowing it to continue sailing until 2026. The $19 million retrofit will be to improve the hull and the diesel vessel’s “navigational elements,” Taiwan News reported.

Eight-zero. That’s a remarkable lifespan for a submarine, and the Hai Shih is already the oldest submarine still in service with a navy anywhere in the world — she looks like she traveled decades into the future through a wormhole.

Before she was Hai Shih, she was the U.S. Navy submarine USS Cutlass, a 1,570-ton Tench-class vessel that launched on Nov. 5, 1944 during World War II. Her wartime service was brief, and Cutlass didn’t reach her first patrol zone near the Kuril Islands until the day after Japan capitulated.
 
Torpedo ops may be a clue. Hot run followed by crush depth.

RIP
 
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