Here's an "oops!" moment if there ever was one!
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Spanish+build+submarine+heavy+resurface/8483286/story.html#ixzz2VWtQpmNZ
Officials are afraid to let the submarine submerge after a design error was discovered.
Photograph by: Handout , Navantia
HARTFORD, Conn. — A new, Spanish-designed submarine has a weighty problem: The vessel is more than 70 tons too heavy, and officials fear if it goes out to sea, it will not be able to surface.
And a former Spanish official says the problem can be traced to a miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place.
“It was a fatal mistake,” said Rafael Bardaji, who until recently was director of the Office of Strategic Assessment at Spain’s Defence Ministry.
The Isaac Peral, the first in a new class of diesel-electric submarines, was nearly completed when engineers discovered the problem. A U.S. Navy contractor in Connecticut, Electric Boat, has signed a deal to help the Spanish Defence Ministry find ways to slim down the 2,200-ton submarine.
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Spanish+build+submarine+heavy+resurface/8483286/story.html#ixzz2VWtQpmNZ
