MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. Six Project 636.3 Varshavyanka diesel-electric submarines that will sequentially join the Russian Black Sea Fleet will help revive full-fledged submarine forces in Novorossiysk already next year, Russia’s Navy Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Viktor Chirkov said on Monday.
"The construction of a series of six Project 636 diesel-electric submarines for the Black Sea Fleet is under constant control of the Navy’s Main Command. Until the end of 2015, the Navy will receive the submarine Krasnodar. Two more Project 636 submarines — the Kolpino and Veliky Novgorod — are in the active phase of their construction at the Admiralty Shipyards and we plan to accept them for operation in the Navy until the end of 2016," the admiral said.
In 2014, the Russian Navy already received the diesel-electric submarines Novorossiysk and Rostov-on-Don. In July this year, the Russian naval flag was hoisted over the submarine Stary Oskol, the admiral said.
"With the sequential arrival of these submarines in Novorossiysk in 2015-2016, we can state about the revival of the Black Sea Fleet’s submarine forces," he added.
The Russian Black Sea Fleet will have a group of submarines that possess the long-range and autonomous cruising capacity, modern armament systems and effective radio-technical and navigational complexes, the admiral said.
As the designers are developing submarines, they "face the tasks of concentrating all the efforts on increasing the depth of submergence and the speed of both diesel and nuclear-powered submarines, reducing their noise and traces and further improving their power units, weapons and electronic equipment," the Navy chief said.