Submarine Scare Off Alaska May Have Been U.S. Navy, Not Russian

There has been speculation about the identity of a submarine which reportedly surfaced off Alaska last week. US Northern Command tweeted that they were monitoring the situation. Analysis of potential Russian Navy submarines pointed to the Omsk, an Oscar-II Class cruise missile submarine. It has transpired that a submarine had been spotted by crews of Alaskan fishing trawlers, who had also seen Russian warships in the area. But now a photo of the alleged submarine has emerged, at least the one seen by the fishing vessels. And it is not Russian.

The submarine in the photo provided to Alaska Public Media is a U.S. Navy Los Angeles class nuclear-powered attack submarine. Close examination of the photo suggests that it is a Flight-II boat. The dive planes can just be made out on the sail. This is a recognition point of the Flight-II sub-class when compared to the Flight-III, aka the Improved Los Angeles Class. The latter has its dive planes mounted much lower on the hull, below the waterline, and they are retractable.

This narrows it down to just six submarines currently active with the Navy. Only three of those are based in the Pacific. The USS Chicago (SSN-721) is based in Pearl Harbor, while the USS Key West (SSN-722) and the USS Oklahoma City (SSN-723) are based in Guam. I will stop short of attempting to narrow it down to an individual boat.

There is little doubt that the fishing vessels encountered the Russian Navy however. They had bumped in to a large-scale Russian exercise in the area. To prove this, another photo provided to Alaska Public Media shows a Russian Grisha-V Class corvette crossing the path of a fishing vessel.

And Russian Navy submarines were also in the area. The Omsk, an Oscar-II class submarine, reportedly fired a cruise missile during the exercise. And a smaller non-nuclear Kilo class submarine was also noticed by analysts. But the submarine seen by the fishing vessels, if it is the one which led to the U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) statement, appears to have been a case of mistaken identity. It is possible that there were two surfaced submarines and that the USNORTHCOM statement relates to the other one.

Identifying submarines is not easy and mistakes are common. Often when a submarine is reported on the surface its identity can remain unclear long afterwards. Even if it is photographed. This happened in the Swedish submarine scare of 2014.

In this case the photo provided to Alaska Public Media was clear enough for the type to be identified however. So possibly, amid the confusion caused by the Russian naval exercise, a U.S. Navy submarine led to a Russian submarine scare.