At time when Europe is preparing mass rearming, Portugal’s submarines “inoperational”
Popular tabloid Correio da Manhã gives one of its ‘thumbs down’ today to the Minister of Defence after learning that both the country’s submarines are inoperational.
Being that the submarines ‘Arpão’ and ‘Tridente’ are the “principal means of Naval dissuasion to defend Portugal’s maritime interests”, it is not great news.
Tridente has actually been out of action since October 2022. It is in ‘maintenance’ at the naval shipyard in Alfeite, explains CM.
Arpão (which not long ago returned from a four-month mission, taking part in NATO exercises) was due to enter various drills and exercises at sea last Friday. But these were cancelled due to “impurities” discovered in the hydraulics system, says the paper.
This system allows for the raising and lowering, for example, of the periscope mast. “A submarine cannot operate in safety with these limitations”, according to CM, but there is more bad news: it seems that naval sources do not know when repair works will even start, as this is dependant on the work ongoing on Tridente being concluded. Simply put, there is no space (or expertise) available to repair Arpão right now, which is anyway overdue maintenance work, costed at over €700,000.
Maintenance costs have always been an issue with these two submarines (notorious for the backstory over suspicions of corruption in their original purchase) – and Tridente’s “major service”, budgeted at over €23 million, is already roughly a year behind schedule, with seemingly no information yet made public on when it will be back in action.
