MOSCOW. Dec 25 (Interfax-AVN) - The crews of the Project 971M super-Shchuka nuclear-powered submarines will train using a virtual electronic simulator worth some 100 million rubles, the newspaper Izvestia reported on Tuesday, citing its sources in the Russian Defense Ministry.
The new simulator, which simulates the work of all systems of Project 971M submarines, will be provided to the Russian Navy's training center named after L.G. Osipenko in Obninsk, the Defense Ministry told Izvestia.
Russian submariners undergo training in this center. It has simulators of control panels, command systems and communication systems of submarines of all types, but training spaces for Project 971M submarines will have to be created virtually from scratch.
"The cost of the work is estimated at some 100 million rubles," the report said.
The submarines of this series "by their noiselessness and maneuverability have created a lot of problems to the command of the U.S. Navy for many years." "Now they are undergoing modernization. The fleet will receive totally new submarines, which have no analogues. Their control systems are so different from the previous ones that the simulators that the military has now are not suitable for these submarines," Izvestia reported.
Project 971M is a modernized version of Project 971 Shchuka submarines, which were produced in 1985-2001. Throughout the past decades, the Shchuka was the main class of multi-purpose submarines. Their main task was to destroy enemy ships.
The multi-purpose Project 971 nuclear-powered submarine was designed in the St. Petersburg bureau Malakhit. The weapons for such submarines include torpedoes, torpedo rockets and cruise missile Granat, which have a firing range of 3,200 km. The submarine can dive at a depth of 600 meters, has a cruising speed of 35 knots (some 70km/h) and cruising endurance of over 100 days. The submarine has a crew of 100 people.
The head Project 971 nuclear-powered submarine was built in 1985.