Soviet/Russian submarines have long had the capability of carrying small, crewed tracked vehicles for seabed operations. I learned this as a correspondent in Moscow in the 1980s. A popular Soviet military magazine I subscribed to once featured an artist’s rendering of such a vehicle mounted on the back of a submarine.
Thinking that this might explain tracks that Swedish intel was observing on its nearby seabed, I gave the magazine to a Swedish defense attaché whom I knew. He reported back a week or so later that Swedish mil intel also subscribed to that magazine—but that this particular issue had never arrived in the mail. We concluded that publication of this image had been a mistake, and that foreign mailings had been stopped.
No doubt in the intervening 40 years or so, this capability has significantly evolved.
Soviet/Russian submarines have long had the capability of carrying small, crewed tracked vehicles for seabed operations. I learned this as a correspondent in Moscow in the 1980s. A popular Soviet military magazine I subscribed to once featured an artist’s rendering of such a vehicle mounted on the back of a submarine.
Thinking that this might explain tracks that Swedish intel was observing on its nearby seabed, I gave the magazine to a Swedish defense attaché whom I knew. He reported back a week or so later that Swedish mil intel also subscribed to that magazine—but that this particular issue had never arrived in the mail. We concluded that publication of this image had been a mistake, and that foreign mailings had been stopped.
No doubt in the intervening 40 years or so, this capability has significantly evolved.
Thanks for all your work. Suggest a brief summary for your readers in this report and those in the future.