Myanmar will own submarines soon, said Commodore Moe Aung, Chief of Staff (Navy) on March 18 while answering to the media after the Combined Fleet Exercise-Sea Shield 2019.
“The Senior General already explained about the possession of submarines. They can be seen at Myanmar navy soon. Submarine arm is an armed forces and its operation area is under water. There are natural disasters as well as dangers from the enemies which can attack anytime. If there will be a problem, it is difficult to save them. So we are considering about long term plan. Another thing is to train submariners. It is required to train the submariners. A skillful submariner needs at least four years training to handle the submarine and to operate it. So our marines are having trainings for a long time,” said the Commodore.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Services said during September 2015 that the Tatmadaw is planning to possess submarines within over four or five-year time.
“If we buy the submarines, we can own them now. We are thinking about many ways. We bought the navy vessels before and now we are building them. If we can build them, we can build them what we like. We can build the navy vessels based on the budget. If we cannot build them, we have to think of buying them from other countries,” he said.
In the submarines, attack submarines or hunter-killer submarines are called SSK which used diesel engines and SSN Nuclear which used nuclear power. Moreover there are ballistic missile submarines, cruise submarines and nuclear submarines.
Analysts said Myanmar should possess diesel powered submarines.
On the Combined Fleet Exercise-Sea Shield 2019, the navy performed exercises to prevent danger of enemy in the territory. While the fleet was heading with Formation-5, the information about an enemy submarine is reported. Two anti-submarine war vessels conducted an exercise in which the vessels attacked and destroyed the enemy submarine using torpedo, RDC rockets and LDC submersible bombs.
(Eleven Myanmar)