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Thursday, October 8, 2015
Interview: commander of INS Tanin submarine

Peacetime or Wartime: Israel’s Long Naval Arm
Israel’s submarine fleet increases the number of its operational activity
hours against the background of the challenges in the region. In preparation
for the arrival of the Navy’s fifth submarine, Or Heller spoke to the
commander of INS Tanin
Or Heller | 8/10/2015
http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/peacetime-or-wartime-israel%E2%80%99s-long-naval-arm

Former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi had a standing joke he once shared
with the former commander of the IDF Navy, Vice Admiral Eliezer “Chiney”
Marom: “There are only two elements in the IDF I cannot control once I have
dispatched them on a mission: a battalion of the Golani infantry brigade,
and a submarine.”

This joke reverberated loudly in my mind as I descended the ladder into the
hull of INS (Israeli Navy Submarine) Tanin, an AIP (Air-Independent
Propulsion) Dolphin-Class submarine – the Navy’s latest and most advanced
submarine which, according to foreign sources, can destroy most of the
Middle East with a single salvo of nuclear missiles.

“When we load the missiles from the outside into the submarine, we raise the
floor. It takes a few hours to load them,” one of the submarine commanders
answers the million dollar question of “Where do you keep the missiles?”

According to overt publications, the weapons openly discussed with regard to
Israeli submarines are torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles. Foreign
sources discuss radically different weapons: cruise missiles with nuclear
warheads.

One thing is certain: this is the most expensive weapon system of the IDF –
about half a billion dollars’ worth, more than the F-35 stealth fighter.
According to those foreign sources, Israel is evolving into a global
submarine power whose nuclear second-strike capability places it within a
highly prestigious – and restricted – club, worldwide.

According to IDF Navy data, the submarines are getting busier, doing more
and more. In 2010, the number of operational submarine hours had accounted
for 35% of the total operational hours of the Navy. By 2013, 58% of the
total operational hours of the Navy were logged by submarines.

The commander of this half a billion dollar submarine is Lieutenant-Colonel
(Commander) Guy. He is 36, a native of Jerusalem who currently lives in
Atlit. He had also commanded the ferrying of the INS Tanin from Germany to
Israel.

Lt. Col. Guy, commander of the INS Tanin, completed his naval officer
training course in 1999, and over the last four years he commanded another
Dolphin-class submarine, the INS Leviathan. After completing his term as
commander of the INS Leviathan, the Navy sent him to the shipyards in Kiel,
northern Germany for two years, to monitor the construction of submarine
number four – INS Tanin, the most advanced platform in the IDF Navy’s
submarine fleet.

The INS Tanin first sailed under the Israeli flag in June 2014 and reached
the port of Haifa in September of that year, after a long four-week voyage.
INS Tanin reached Haifa fitted with only a part of the systems it was
designed to contain. Communication, warfare and mainly classified
Israeli-made weapon systems are being fitted to it only now, as it prepares
to depart on its first mission in the coming weeks. The arrival of submarine
No.5, the INS Rahav, will enable the Navy to continuously maintain one
submarine on a mission at sea at any given time.

The submarines cooperate with IAF, with the IDF Intelligence Directorate,
with Israel’s Mossad and with IDF special operations units. The 7th
Flotilla, the Navy’s submarine flotilla, was awarded the Navy Commander’s
citation for a secret operation executed last year. The key word here is
secrecy. “Submarines that were detected are worth nothing,” says a senior
officer of the submarine flotilla, “If we were detected, we would no longer
be relevant to the mission. We would have lost the mission.”

Were you ever detected?

“Not that I know of. Whomever sees us does not necessarily understand that
what they see is an Israeli Navy submarine.”

A submarine commander is probably the job with the heaviest responsibility
in the IDF. Forget the fact that he commands a vessel worth half a billion
dollars. Forget the fact that according to foreign sources, he commands a
vessel that can destroy half of the Middle East with nuclear missiles. Even
during peacetime, on a relatively simple intelligence gathering mission, one
small mistake by the submarine commander can get the State of Israel
severely entangled in an international incident that can easily deteriorate
to war.

The submarine commander is located on the bridge, 13 meters away from the
helmsman. Any error by the helmsman can, for example, get the submarine too
close to the shore, thereby exposing it. If the sonar operator or the
navigator makes a mistake, the result could be similar. When you spend weeks
at a time in a submerged metal tube, the personalities, the psychology of
the submariners is of critical importance. “A submarine commander must be
able to think fast and sail slowly,” concludes the commander of the INS
Tanin.

“Making Decisions from the Gut”

Giving orders is very nice on land, but “distance” only does not last very
long during a month-long mission, a thousand kilometers away from home, with
the submariners wearing casual civilian clothes for comfort. “Sometimes you
must make decisions from the gut,” admits a senior commander in the
submarine fleet, “in a submarine you sometimes command people who are
smarter than you are, who are more familiar with their systems than you do –
and there is absolutely no margin for error.”

Following the initial psychological screening, the submariners are not
subjected, for example, to any periodic mental examinations. Admittedly,
however, so far the screening method has worked just fine. The number of
submariners dropping out of the unit during their service is very small.

Major Yagel Sharabi has been serving as the psychologist of the IDF Navy’s
Naval Officer School for the past two and a half years. Among other things,
he is responsible for screening the officers who would serve on board the
submarines.

“What are we looking for? We train naval officers, and one year into the
training course, we actually separate the submarine officers from the
officers intended for the missile frigates and the Dvora patrol boats.
Submarine officers are required to demonstrate a high level of
professionalism and the ability to cope with new material. To begin with,
only volunteers serve as submariners. Anyone who’s not interested will not
be screened for the training course. They go through a psychological
interview, a voyage on board a submarine, meetings with a submarine
commander and with serving submarine officers.”

Do you have a representative psychological profile for people who choose to
spend long weeks at a time under water?

“There is a profile. For example, the command style on board a submarine is
different from the one on board a surface vessel. You must have the ability
to establish a position where you are an officer who’s professionally less
proficient than the submariner you command as he had graduated from an
eighteen month long training course and has already been serving on board a
submarine. The officer must have the ability to position himself and fit in
and consolidate his position from the ground up. This requires excellent
sociability skills and the officer must keep learning all the time.”

If you have a Polish or an American passport and you want to serve on board
a submarine, you will have to give up that passport for security reasons.

“They know it and we do not hide it from them, and there are quite a few
individuals who gave up their foreign passports in order to serve in the
submarine fleet,” says psychologist Sharabi. “The cadets in the naval
officer training course must cope with command and maritime challenges
anyway, so to be assigned to the 7th Flotilla means to select the cream of
the crop from among the very best.”

What are the chances that we may see the submarine fleet opening up and
accepting servicewomen?

“We currently have a servicewoman training to be a naval officer on board a
Dvora patrol boat, so we have already accomplished a breakthrough in this
context. I believe that we may have female submariners eventually. Today,
servicewomen are doing well in the naval officer training course. A
servicewoman who can comply with the criteria that pertain to physical
capabilities and thinking and social skills may qualify – we may see such
servicewomen as submariners in the future. This issue is highly complex.”

Under a Veil of Secrecy

Since the 1960s operation involving an Israeli submarine at the Egyptian
port of Alexandria, nothing could be told about whatever the Navy’s
submarines are doing. As the Navy’s submarine fleet goes from three
submarines to six, it needs to double its submariner manpower, too, thereby
competing against the IDF’s other elite units – without being able to tell
the recruits anything about their future service.

“We tell the new recruits: I am going to cut you off Facebook, off your
WhatsApp groups, for weeks at a time – and never tell you why,” says Guy,
commander of the INS Tanin.

Are there missions where the submariners themselves do not know the purpose
until the end?

“There are very few missions where they are not aware what the purpose of
the mission is or where they are. The entire crew has to sign non-disclosure
forms.”

One thing is certain: the submarines are extremely busy. They are at sea all
the time, and have logged thousands of hours of operational activity in
2014, about which we have not heard even a single word on the news.

The IDF Navy’s current estimates maintain that Lebanon and Syria do not
possess the capability of spotting Israeli submarines at sea, but their
Radars and routine security vessels are definitely taken into consideration.
The Egyptians, on the other hand, possess advanced submarine detection
capabilities. The IDF Navy makes every effort to conceal the actual
activities of the Israeli submarines in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Red
Sea.

Sometimes, reality knocks on the door in the middle of a secret mission in
which the submarine is involved: it may range from a hatch that slams shut
on a submariner’s finger to more serious health-related incidents where the
submariner involved must be evacuated to a hospital. In some situations, the
submarine commander orders the submarine to surface somewhere in the eastern
Mediterranean, in hostile waters, just so that one of the submariners may
send a congratulations telegram to his brother, who’s getting married.
Incidentally, one party that spots the submarines in the open sea very often
are dolphins – who regard the submarine as a friend and accompany it.

The primary advantage of INS Tanin is the fact that it is an AIP
(Air-Independent Propulsion) submarine, which enables it to remain at sea
for longer periods of time. It is ten meters longer than the older
submarines – which made it possible to fit it with additional systems that
also enable the submarine to remain at sea for longer periods of time.

Within two to three years, the INS Tanin should be ready to dive in one
minute. The thing is, one can simply pick up a pair of binoculars and spot
it from many points around Haifa. The IDF Navy takes it into account that
all kinds of over-curious elements are monitoring the submarine’s movements.
In the near future, a roof will cover the Navy’s polynomial building, the
submarine base inside the Navy’s base in Haifa. Until then, they practice
what they call “habituation”, namely – they depart and enter the port of
Haifa several times a week in order to confuse the enemy, so that they can
never know whether the submarine had actually departed for operational
activity.

What about the submarines’ share of the effort to defend Israel’s “economic
waters”? Apparently, 55% of the gas used by the State of Israel come from
the offshore rigs. By 2040, not less than 80% of Israel’s gas supply will
come from the sea. On top of that, 99% of Israel’s trading pass through the
sea. The members of Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS understand these statistics,
too.

Just a few months ago, an ISIS detachment in the Sinai seized an Egyptian
Tiger missile boat, probably through the cooperation of Egyptian troopers
“from within”. ISIS will not encounter any special difficulties if they
attempted to seize a Lebanese or a Syrian vessel and run it into an Israeli
offshore rig. On land, you can secure similar installations using a fence
system, but at sea the task of securing these installations is much more
complex. Very few countries, worldwide, know how to secure offshore gas
drilling rigs.

So what can be done about it? The IDF Navy relies heavily on intelligence,
but they want to be at the offshore rigs physically with their surface
vessels, with their submarines and with maritime patrol UAVs, with the
aspiration of having each offshore rig protected by its own missile frigate
guarding it with Barak-8 missiles against Kamikaze UAVs or missiles. If
anyone in the Navy had ever entertained the idea of deploying mobile Iron
Dome launchers on board the drilling rigs, a closer examination of that idea
concluded very quickly that the combination of gas and explosives is not a
very good idea, assuming you want to keep the rig rather than exploding it.
At some point the Navy even thought about deploying defensive rigs alongside
the drilling rigs, fitted with Iron Dome launchers and other elements, but
that idea, too, turned out to be completely impractical.

Within two to three years, the Navy’s new missile frigates will patrol the
area around the “Tethys Ocean” drilling rigs in the south, not far from the
Gaza Strip, the “Tamar” drilling rig, located about a hundred kilometers to
the west of Haifa, and the “Leviathan” drilling rig, located even further
west of Haifa.

Another drilling rig is expected to commence operations to the west of Haifa
in the near future, which will push the defensive plans up to four missile
frigates for four drilling rigs. During Operation Protective Edge last
summer, the Navy allocated missile frigates to protect the drilling rigs,
fearing rocket and missile attacks, mainly against the “Tethys Ocean” rig,
located about 30 kilometers to the west of Ashqelon. During the recent
period of tension opposite Hezbollah, pursuant to the elimination in Syria
of the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah command group, attributed to Israel, the
Navy was ordered to protect the offshore rigs owing to concerns that
Hezbollah’s revenge will be implemented by the launching of a Yakhont
shore-to-sea missile, which has a range of 300 kilometers.

The IDF Navy realized, however, that the security blanket of the “offshore
gas drilling rig navy” was too short. Gone are the days where people in the
IDF would ask “What do we need a navy for? Couldn’t we settle for a coast
guard? What do we need submarines for? Couldn’t we settle for patrol boats?”
The Navy of 2015 can be called upon, at short notice, to find out not only
what happens within a range of 12 nautical miles, but also within a range of
70 nautical miles, where they would have to patrol, secure, protect and
collect intelligence above water as well as deep under water.

In order to provide the necessary information, the Navy has what they call a
“maritime command and control unit” – an “Oren Adir” Radar (the EL/M-2080S
AESA Radar system by IAI/Elta) mounted on INS Lahav, a Sa’ar-5 missile
frigate. That Radar system can pick up aircraft targets at ranges up to 200
kilometers. Another Radar system is a part of the Barak-1 missile system,
soon to be converted into the Barak-8 system, which is capable of
intercepting missiles, UAVs and manned aircraft.

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