The Spanish Navy decided that they wanted to do away with their dependency on French and American designs for conventional submarines, so they came up with the eat-your-heart-out, S80 series.

It looked great on paper and was the jewel in the crown of the Spanish Navy but there was a problem – there was a good chance that after submerging, it wouldn’t come back up again. Allow me to explain.

The naval shipyards in Cartagena, Navantia, have been designing and building submarines which have been eagerly bought up by Chile Malaysia and India,  the S-71 Galerna class subs.

So Navantia sit down and come up with the S-80, with a 12-knot surface speed and 19 knots running submerged. The specifications gave it a range of 8,000 kilometres using the AIP hydrogen battery developed by the American company UTC (which supplies Nasa) allowing it to remain three weeks submerged without surfacing to renew its air supply. So far; so good.

The trouble was that the Spanish naval brass kept coming up with new gadgets to be included and before anybody realised what was happening, the sub had gained 75 extra tonnes of weight. If that happens to a small surface ship, it rides lower in the water, but with a submarine using its original ballast specifications, the sub might not surface, or if it does, certainly not in a suitably impressive manner.

So, with a lot of hand ringing, Navantia called in American specialists (Electric Boat) to see if they could sort out the problem. Just the resulting report will cost 14m euros. The solution might be to make the boat longer, but that would entail taking all the figures back to scratch, hence getting the Americans to lend a hand.

This 530m-euro beauty was supposed to be rolling down the launch ramp within months but with this hiccup, it could be delayed up to two years – and the project foresees four S-80 submarines more for the fleet. In the meantime, with one of the three S70-class subs in dry-dock undergoing 30m euros repairs, the Spanish navy is left with just two operative submarines.

But it is not only the Spanish Navy this will have problems, because Navantia was expecting to be able to sell their ‘most advanced conventional submarine in the world’ to Australia and India, but now they are worried that these potential buyers might change their minds.

The Spanish Navy has seen a 28% cut to its budget, resulting in the Príncipe de Asturias aircraft carrier being sent to the scrapyard because there isn’t the money to maintain it. The warship Cantabria has been lent to Australia for a year on condition that they pay for its upkeep and the poor old submarine Marsopa (S-63) is being sold off for scrap for just 90,000 euros – could be yours!

Finally, the far-left party leader for the IU, Gaspar Llamazares, suggested that Spain sold the submarine ‘that won’t float’ to the enemy, so that Spain could be assured of winning the war.

(News: Spain)