MOSCOW. March 22 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Navy should have at least 40-50 new strategic submarines instead of the outdated ones, Vice Adm. Oleg Burtsev, a first deputy chief of staff of the Russian Navy, said on Echo Moskvy radio on Saturday.
"We have to skip over a certain generation of submarines and switch to the next one. We need to make some efforts to this end," Burtsev said.
Since the 1990s, the Russian Navy has lost a generation of submarines "that simply never existed," he said.
According to the media, the Russian Navy currently has about 60 third-generation submarines, including 10 strategic nuclear submarines, over 30 multipurpose nuclear ones, and the rest diesel and special purpose submarines.