Construction
The Nerpa was laid down at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur shipyard in 1993, but its completion was delayed for nearly a decade due to a lack of funds caused by the economic crisis of the early 1990s. The partly constructed vessel was mothballed until 2004, when Rosprom (the Federal Agency for Industry) signed an agreement with the Indian government to complete the submarine and lease it to the Indian Navy. The vessel was intended to be completed by 2007, but underwent further delays. In 2007, it was transferred to the Vostok shipyard in the closed city of Bolshoy Kamen, Primorsky Krai, for fitting-out. It was launched in October 2008 for sea trials, following which it was due to be handed over to the Russian Defence Ministry. Reports in the Indian media suggest that the resumption of construction was underwritten with Indian funding.
The standards of the vessel's construction were criticised by several commentators. Alexander Golts, defence editor of the Yezhednevny Zhurnal newspaper, said that in the 1980s, the Amur shipyard turned out submarines "one after another, like pancakes," but from 1993 to 2008 had produced just one. "The old specialists had left, and the new ones lacked professionalism." An unnamed worker at the Amur shipyard told Komsomolskaya Pravda that there were "questions about the quality of the metal that was used in building the nuclear submarine", some of which had been bought from China, and alleged that "when the first trials of the submarine were carried out water was leaking in between the seams! So it is not surprising that the work dragged on."
During May 2009, the repairs were reported to be almost complete and new sea trials were planned for June 15–20. However, by October 2009, the work had still not been completed due to the shipyard's electrical supply having been disconnected. Nikolai Povzyk, the head of the shipyard, complained they had not been paid the 1.9 billion roubles (63.8 million dollars) owed for the work carried out on the Nerpa.
Read more about this topic: Russian Submarine K-152 Nerpa
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