Mistral Decision Coming Next Month

      French President François Hollande will decide in November whether France will go ahead with a delivery of the Mistral-class helicopter carrier to Russia, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday.

Sources have said previously that a decision was expected in either late October or early November.

“In early September, the president said that if the political conditions did not change, he could not imagine authorizing a delivery,” Le Drian told journalists at the Euronaval trade show.


“He would decide when it was time for delivery. It will be in November,” he said.

Asked about France’s reliability and the Mistral sale to Russia, Le Drian said, “I have never made any forecast on the president’s decision.”

Hollande has set the conditions as the ceasefire being observed in Ukraine and a political settlement between Kiev and Moscow.

In Le Drian’s speech to the foreign delegations at the official opening of the exhibition, the minister spoke of France as a “reliable partner,” citing the 34 years of support and maintenance for warships sold in 1980 to Saudi Arabia under the Sawari export program.

On arms exports for 2014, Le Drian said sales would be similar to the €6.87 billion (US $8.7 billion) reached in 2013, up almost 43 percent from the previous year.

“I think we will be close to that again this year,” he said. “That shows our companies’ performance, technological excellence, the French performance,” he said. “That does not happen without competition, without a contest. The figures show the results are there.”

France agreed in 2011 to the €1.2 billion sale of two Mistral class warships to Russia, with options for two more. The former two are named Vladivostok and Sevastopol. Following the crisis in the Ukraine and the deadly downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, Paris is under pressure from allies to cancel the Mistral handover.

But there is also domestic concern over jobs on the second vessel and potential damage to French reliability as a supplier in the world arms market.

Mystery Deepens Over Reported Russian Sub in Sweden

STOCKHOLM — Mystery deepened Sunday over a Swedish military operation triggered by “foreign underwater activity” off the coast of Stockholm, amid an unconfirmed report of a hunt for a damaged Russian submarine.

Late Saturday, Swedish armed forces stepped up an operation — involving more than 200 men, stealth ships, minesweepers and helicopters — in an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of the Swedish capital. The manuevers were initiated Friday after the armed forces said they had been informed of a “man made object” in the water.

Officials denied they were “submarine hunting,” calling the mobilization — one of the biggest, barring purely training exercises, since the Cold War — an “intelligence operation.”

Russia also denied on Sunday that any of its submarines were involved.


“There have been no irregular situations and, even less so, accidents involving Russian naval vessels,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

But the respected Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet reported that a damaged Russian submarine was at the center of the mystery.

Russian Emergency Transmission
The report said that Swedish military intelligence had intercepted radio signals between an area off the coast of Stockholm and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad — home to much of Russia’s Baltic Sea naval fleet.

“It was transmitted on a special frequency, used by Russia in emergency situations,” the newspaper wrote, citing Swedish military sources involved in the search.

Sweden’s armed forces remained tight-lipped, but did say its focus was on “underwater activities.”

“The Swedish Armed Forces are not in a position to deny or verify media news or speculations recently published about a missing foreign submarine,” spokesman Erik Lagersten said.

“At the moment we are conducting an intelligence operation in the archipelago of Stockholm with optical reconnaissance as well as with naval vessels equipped with qualified underwater sensors... to establish if there are or has been foreign underwater activities in the area.”

Anonymous military sources told Svenska Dagbladet that the emergency signal in Russian was intercepted on Thursday evening, and that further encrypted signals were sent on Friday after Swedish armed forces began combing the area.

In August 2000 the Kursk, a Russian nuclear submarine, sank in the Barents Sea killing the entire crew of 118. Russian authorities were later criticized for refusing international assistance and for misleading the public about the pace of their failed rescue operation.

In recent months, Sweden has seen an uptick in Baltic Sea maneuvers by the Russian air force. In one incident in September, two SU-24 fighter-bombers allegedly entered Swedish airspace in what Foreign Minister Carl Bildt at the time called “the most serious aerial incursion by the Russians” in almost a decade.

During the 1980s and early ’90s, the then-neutral — and now non-aligned — Nordic country was regularly on alert following Russian submarine sightings, including one notable case in 1981 when a Soviet U-boat ran aground several miles from one of Sweden’s largest naval base.

New-generation nuclear-powered missile destroyer under development in Russia

MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/. Russia’s Defense Ministry has approved the technical design specification for the Leader class destroyers, a high-ranking source in the ministry told TASS on Tuesday.

The destroyer’s nuclear-powered and gas turbine versions are planned. He said there was no clarity yet concerning the weapons, but the new ship will be most likely equipped with the Caliber high-precision cruise missile system and the S-500 antiaircraft defense system.

“The Leader technical design specification prepared by the Navy command has been signed by the Defense Ministry leadership that approved the engineering design for two versions of the destroyer — nuclear-powered and gas turbine,” the source said.

The Severnoye (Northern) Design Bureau has been given the engineering design preparation assignment; it plans to launch the work in 2015, he added.

According to the source, the Russian Navy is going to place orders for 12 Leader class destroyers — 6 for the Northern Fleet and 6 for the Pacific Fleet.

“In any case, given the complexity, novelty of the project and huge work amount, the first Leader — either its nuclear-powered or conventional version — is expected to be competed no earlier than 2023-2025,” he said. According to him, the Leader building project is not included in the state armaments program for the period until 2020, so "the construction will be carried out under the shipbuilding program until 2050."

Future Is Cloudy for Russian Carrier Aviation

The future of the Russian navy aircraft carrier component is in doubt after the Russian defense ministry decided to have its nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser, the Admiral Nakhimov, rather than its aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov repaired and refitted at Sevmash, the nation’s largest dockyard.

Sevmash had considered taking either the Nakhimov or the Kuznetsov for extended work after its facilities in the port city of Severodvinsk, including a large dry dock, became available following the conversion of the Kiev-class carrier Admiral Gorshkov into the INS Vikramaditya for the Indian Navy. Top Russian and Indian officials are expected to participate in a departure ceremony for the Vikramaditya in mid-November.


After some studies, Sevmash expressed a preference for repairing the Nakhimov, a decision supported by the defense ministry, which is expected to issue an order for the work after the Vikramaditya is formally handed over to the Indian navy. By volume and complexity, the work to be done on the modernization and refit of the Nakhimovwill be close to that done on the Gorshkov/Vikramaditya.

Meanwhile, the condition of the Admiral Kuznetsov has been gradually deteriorating following a major, four-year-long repair completed in 2004, due to a lack of high-quality repair facilities at Severomorsk, near Murmansk, where the ship is based. With Sevmash working at capacity on submarines and eventually the Nakhimov, only the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg is capable of building or refitting the largest capital ships. But the Baltic Sea region’s status as a nuclear weapon-free zone has complicated prospects for repairing the Kuznetsov.

The Kuznetsov carries Sukhoi Su-33 single-seat interceptors and Su-25UTG two-seat subsonic trainers with limited land-strike capability, as well as Kamov Ka-27/29 helicopters. The ship’s advertised capacity is 50 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, but the Russian navy does not make public the exact numbers of aircraft on board the ship. The number of Su-33s is estimated to fall between 15 and 20. Last year, the defense ministry placed an order for 24 MiG-29K/KUBs to supplement and eventually replace in-service Su-33s.

As it stands, the long-needed modernization and refit of the Kuznetsov will either be postponed again or may never happen. A next-generation carrier of similar displacement (55,000 to 60,000 tons) under development by the Nevskoye Design Bureau could take the ship’s place. However, the Kremlin has not decided whether such a ship will be constructed.