Iran Warship News | How IRIS Dena Was Sunk | Ctrl Alt Defence Ep 37 | Iran Warship News

0:13 Welcome to episode 37 of Control All Defense, India's most watched and most listened to military affairs podcast. Vishnu and I are here at a time when war has broken out in the Middle East and since yesterday, as of yesterday, the war has expanded right to India's maritime backyard. You already know what I'm talking about and Vishnu and I were on air through the day yesterday covering something that nobody expected to see happen. An Iranian warship that was part of an Indian Navy exercise with many different countries in Vishakhapatnam a few days ago was on its way back to Iran and then it was sunk by a torpedo just off the coast of Sri Lanka that was fired by a United States Navy submarine. It has

1:02 completely brought the region to a boil. But today on this episode, Vishnu and I who've been tracking every aspect of this contentious, highly controversial, highly heated debate over what has happened in India's maritime backyard, we decided that we were going to do something a little more interesting and not just talk about what happened but what it would have actually been like Vishnu and that's why it is our privilege here on Control or Defense. We've tried to mix up the format a little bit. I promise you we'll make things even better. But here we are in the NDTV studios recording our first episode of this podcast from a TV studio and we're joined by Commander Rajesh Ramkumar who Vishnu has

1:48 been able to track down and bring on to this podcast. So kudos to Vishnu first of all for managing to do so. A very warm welcome to you Commander Ramkumar. Vishnu do you want to introduce him because you know him best. four kilo class submarines of the Indian Navy. You will not find a more experienced submariner, very few possibly, in the Indian Navy, being the commanding officer of four separate Russian built kilo class submarines. That's just incredible. And so if we are talking about how a submarine locks onto a warship, I honestly can't think about anybody more relevant. So it's wonderful speaking to you and thanks very much for joining us. First up, for the benefit of our viewers, What were the four boats you were lucky to command?

2:33 First of all, thank you for this opportunity. I commanded four boats. They are Sindhuratna, Sindhukesri, Sindhudwaj and Sindhrakshak. I want to quickly throw in one question before we get into the incident that happened yesterday as of the time of this recording. Commander Rajkumar, what is that picture behind you? What are we looking at in that picture behind you? I paint. Oh, you do? So, this is my submarine. Yeah. And which boat is that? This is Sindhu Raksha and it is sort of inspired by the events

3:20 in 2013, early 2013 when we exited the Pope. port of Sivridhvinsk in peak winter. The temperature was minus 29. And most interestingly, my dad back in 1974 had taken me for a movie called Ice Station Zebra. And it was all about submarines and ice. So 37 years later, I actually lived that dream by sailing through ice. So I painted it based on that. Absolutely amazing and Vishnu and I know what you're talking about when you're talking about Severodvinsk because we've both been there in winter and can vouch for the temperatures that you're actually talking about. You know, we've been there in various assignments. I was there for the Vikramaditya commissioning. Vishnu's been there to

4:08 cover Russian submarines as well. But let's plunge right into the story of the moment and that's why we've decided to bring you on Commander Rajkumar, which is, which is Rabkumar, your reading of yesterday's incident, you know, much has been said in the day or so since that incident happened. I don't want to start with any leading questions because the US Navy has put out a video of the attack on that ship, the torpedo blasting into that ship and you know, completely destroying it and it's sinking. You're a Submariner. You have been in live firing exercises where you've done these things in training as well. What went through your mind when you saw these pictures? Because this is in many ways

4:55 maritime history. First time the US Navy has sunk a ship since World War II. Yes, so the footage was very dramatic and it pretty much follows the same, same sequence of events of a live detonation under a ship. Before I start, I don't want to romanticize war or death. I will be very technical. I will be as technical as possible. So what you're seeing is, of course, nighttime view. You're seeing the ship from the beam, that is from the side, from the port side. And you're seeing the thermal imaging or the low light plus the

5:43 thermal imaging of the ship, the video of the ship. And what's most interesting is that it's a zoomed in image. You're not seeing the complete field. And you can see the plume, the exhaust plume coming out of the midships. That is the ship actually propelling. propelling normally, probably westward and the submarine approaching from south of the west of the south of the ship. And then you can see the slight oscillation of the periscope, thereby indicating it was very clear skies, no stars, I mean, very, very calm waters, no stars. So

6:32 that means a little cloudy. difficult to pick up anything in the night, and the ship was completely unaware. And then suddenly you can see the stern, the stern coming up, and that's the first primary detonation. You can see the stern coming up and then the rest of the plume erupts from inside the sea. So if you want me to get into the detonation chain, I can do that. So this is what you see. And what probably would have happened in the next eight to 10 minutes is the ship breaks into two. and then sinks to the bottom of the ocean. But Commander, let me ask you this. This was at periscope range. A submarine as advanced as a Virginia class or a 688i wouldn't necessarily rise to periscope range unless they were absolutely confident that they could actually get that close, rise to

7:21 periscope range and then record the entire sequence. They could have done it from much further away. Is it right for me to believe that this was the confidence the CEO of that submarine had in being able to close as close as he did before attacking? Yes, actually it is very unnatural because the submarine wouldn't want to lose the stealth in no way because it can get picked up even with a very alert watchkeeper. Difficult in the early hours in the morning, but it goes to prove that they wanted to show the world what a submarine can do. Yes, the submarine came up to PD and probably raised the photonics mast. They fired the torpedo at PD and thereby,

8:09 you know, giving the ship extremely little time. PD means what? For the benefit of our readers and viewers, PD means what? Oh, the periscope death. I'm so sorry. Yeah, you come close to the surface, the submarine's fin and the entire submarine's body remains underwater. You raise just a small mast. The mast is not penetrating the hull at all. It is actually... talking to the command post through a fiber optic cable. So it is a technological marvel in itself. It contains so much of technology in that mast. So it's a multi-sensor device. So you can see the vessel, see the target. They must have developed the fire control solution, fired the torpedo at PD, and

8:57 then recorded the entire scene. But how far would the warship, I mean I know it's a rough estimate because they would have been magnifying on the periscope, but in your estimate, how far would the submarine have been from the Iranian warship? I cannot put a finger on the correct distances, but you know, because there are two reasons why, because it's first of all, the zoomed in image and the resolution of those sensors are very very good. So even if you can see the mass lattice, you will not be able to actually correctly tell as to what will be the distance. Very close, that's what I presume. I wanted to talk to us a little bit about the

9:46 sequence of events that would have led up to the proverbial pulling of the trigger, Commander Ramkumar. This ship was transiting south of Sri Lanka. Obviously, the submarine had been sort of tracking it and you know on the prowl looking for it. It would have had its orders ever since the escalation took place in Iran to bring that ship down. Once the commanding officer had his orders, you know just give us, paint us a picture of what would have happened inside that submarine. It would have been following the ship, would have been tracking it, what would have been happening you know in the command room etc. until that trigger was actually pulled. Yeah, but this is a bit of speculation, but it actually follows the overall pattern of how a submarine gets into a

10:38 firing area, or how do they develop the fire control solutions, how to get to the firing point. I would presume that they had intelligence of this vessel approaching far, far earlier, probably through a an aircraft or it could be oceans are very transparent nowadays. You don't require anything at all. I mean, you can pick up a ship by the virtue of it being not transmitting on AIS. You can pick up a ship by the RF signals. You can have a synthetic aperture radar in the space. You can have extremely sensitive, you know, optical devices from the space. You can pick up a

11:23 ship very easily. So I would believe that the submarine knew about the ship few days in advance. And the fact that she came off the mill in 2006 suggested just that. So what prior knowledge did was to get the submarine into a general location where the ship would transit. Probably they would not have been very, very, very sure about the exact transit. So it was left to it probably the surveillance would have been handed over to a different platform and from space to a different platform. They would have located the ship, pass on the coordinates, the course and speed to the submarine. Then it is up to the submarine command team to actually get the submarine

12:11 to a firing position. And at Mach 48, this could be a mod five, a mod six, a mod seven. A mod seven probably could be an overkill in this scenario, you don't require to come so close at all. And we are talking about 20 nautical miles or 10 nautical miles, 10, 15 nautical miles, good enough. But they chose to actually come close, probably raised the periscope, captured, made sure there's a positive identification that it is indeed the target they're looking at, and they must have discharged the weapon. Before that, there is a very complex procedure on board using the fire control computer. and also the command team, they generate, they reconfirm the target scores and speed, and so that they get into a position where the

13:00 torpedo can be launched. But remember, the torpedo itself is very, very intelligent. So the modern torpedoes, unlike the World War II torpedoes, you don't require the submarine to be very precise in the firing area. The torpedo has enough speed and enough intelligence, and also the fiber bomb fiber optic cable which links it back to the submarine enables excellent guidance and it can home on to the ship from any angle. So this is how it would have panned out on board. So this particular torpedo homed into the propeller, right? Is that what an ADCAP torpedo which is sort of targeting a warship, a

13:45 surface combatant actually does or can it be programmed to target a different part of the keel? As per my understanding, all the latest heavyweight torpedoes have got a combination kind of fuse. It can detect an electromagnetic anomaly vis-à-vis the magnetic field of the Earth. It can detect contact. It can detonate on contact. Or it can have a combination of a lot of things. So, whether... It actually was guided onto the propeller. I don't know. Probably the submarine chose to enter the stern, the wake of the ship, and home onto the propeller. Why? Because a hit on the propeller immediately breaks the ship at the stern. The stern has got the largest

14:34 compartments. So the flooding rate is significant, thousands of tons per hour. There is no system onward any ship in the world which can stop that kind of flooding. Even if the torpedo does not explode, suppose it did explode, even the hit on a propeller is good to incapacitate it. But commander tell me, I am just trying to understand, would the Iranian ship have had any inkling, assuming that there was a sonar operator at their station of an incoming torpedo? I realize that the chances of evading it were next to zero. I am not sure about the sound maker decoys that they had. But would they have actually had any inkling? I mean typically do you always monitor sonar 24-7? Or were they a sitting duck

15:19 basically? I presumably know because even if their sonar was on or if they had a sonar watch keeping in place because of the ship itself propelling at about say 15 knots, 10 to 15 knots actually masks the topedo, incoming topedo. And the fact that the submarine closed in to such low range means that ship practically didn't have any chance for any evasion. And it requires a well-trained crew with a lot of external internal intelligence and training to even take some actions against a torpedo. There are many layers of

16:06 anti-torpedo measures and counter-torpedo measures, but all of this require prior knowledge, excellent training, and excellent situational awareness, so to speak. The only way you can actually pick up a torpedo, if they had a toad array, definitely, I was actually watching your show yesterday, you were correct, but even then, the time afforded to you to take an evasive action, be it a soft kill or hard kill in case you have it, or for an evasion, it's extremely low. So, She was unfortunately a target they couldn't miss. Once that torpedo is fired, Commander Ramkumar, there is no escape,

16:53 is there? Yeah, practically in this case, for a ship designed to operate in literal waters, I would imagine because a draft was just three needles and she had a bias towards anti-air and and surface-to-surface weapons and sensors. I think she was probably designed to operate in the Persian Gulf, where there were relatively shallow waters. So in this case, she didn't stand a chance, but the best ships in the world, they have a layered kind of a system. First of all, intelligence. If you can get an intelligence that there could be a submarine lurking nearby, then you change your You deploy your toad array. If you're operating in a group, there is a way to operate together.

17:41 You start doing evasive steering, or you do unpredictable courses. You don't do anything that is steady. And there are soft kill measures, which are actually acoustic. You can, those decoys can be towed behind a submarine or a ship. can be deployed. So it actually goes away from the submarine. It has got a masked propeller and it produces a certain kind of, uh, noise. And finally there are hard kill measures that is actually like, it's like, it's like, uh, the iron dome underwater. Like you fire a small torpedo against a torpedo. There are very few, uh, operational systems in the world like that. So all of these require extremely fast decision-making and execution.

18:30 Commander, what does it feel like for a heavyweight torpedo, which you fired of course on a few occasions on Indian Navy kilo class submarines. What does it feel like as the torpedo exits the torpedo tube? So, the submarine I was commanding in, there are two kinds of torpedo discharges in the discharging stage. One is a swim out torpedo which actually quietly swims out of the tube. It doesn't mean that it actually creeps out of the tube because it produces far less noise. And there is another system where there is a high pressure system ejecting the top it outside the submarine and the propulsion begins after that. So if you have a discharge system, automatic discharge system,

19:21 there is a perceptible recoil inside the submarine, which you can feel. You can imagine thousands of tons You know, if the submarine is so big, but the moment the torpedo is ejected, you can feel the recoil inside the boat. Commander, why is it so difficult for surface ships to detect submarines in the Indian Ocean? That's mostly because of the, first of all, closer to shore, because of extreme shallow waters. That means there is a lot of biologics, other sounds. Take, for example, Persian Gulf. There's so much of man-made noises in those areas. Fish, then the fact that the surface and the

20:08 bottom reverberates. So anything, all sounds are distorted. And together with the fact that the sea surface temperature is so high, that it has a negative gradient. So that automatically means sound bends downwards. So you have large shadow zones where sound does not penetrate. Hydrology is a complete subject in itself. And that actually forms the crux of all the commanding officers and ASWs and sonar officers study. Because it's your secret sauce. How do you interpret the hydrological patterns in an area? Commander Ankhubat, I want to talk about the moment when that torpedo

20:57 arrives at its target. Because we've been doing some reading as well and you sent us a message that the explosion that is triggered by that torpedo is very different from what you know, one is tempted to imagine it as. It's not the same thing as an explosion above the surface of the water. I want you to explain the dynamics of how a torpedo destroys a ship. And you've seen this for yourself. You've, you know, he did it. You, you fired, you have fired a torpedo. He blew up a warship. Of course, it was a decommissioned ship, right? But tell us that experience. Yeah. Yeah, that happened a long time back and we were very, very, very close. And I'll come to that, but I'll tell you actually how a torpedo destroys the unfortunate target. So take for example, the

21:47 Mark 48 and she's gone about, if I remember it right, about 650 pounds of plastic explosive. It's a polymer bounded explosive. So if I'm not mistaken. So what happens is there's a fusing mechanism and this is the high explosive overhead. So once the fusing mechanism takes over, it actually sends a detonation pulse into the main explosive. And the main explosive at a predetermined time, say about three or four meters under the keel, explodes. But the detonation velocity is so, so much that it actually crosses nearly eight kilometers a second. So you can see the pulse traveling immediately. So this pulse is the first thing which will hit the ship. So anyone standing on a deck holding a pipe maybe resting on anything is

22:37 killed immediately. There is no way you can escape that. Then what happens is very interesting. It explodes. The chemical substance inside the water converts into a gas bubble. The gas bubble has an overpressure of 300,000 atmospheres. And the temperature reaches about 3,000 degrees. It happens in milliseconds. So one atmosphere is what we feel at sea level, and you can imagine 300,000. So this gas bubble starts expanding. It happens in milliseconds. And water is, you can't compress water. So the moment it expands, the water pushes it back. So

23:24 it starts oscillating between expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction, and starts rising to the top. And it hits the bottom of the ship. So when you hit the bottom of the ship, depending upon what stage it is in, there is a pressure differential which actually throws the ship up. And then it breaks the ship apart. And also, when this gas bubble expands and contracts, it starts sending secondary pulses. So the primary pulse, the secondary pulses, the gas expansion, and the structural hogging or sagging, whatever it is, it can break the ship apart in no time. Mostly it just sinks in five to eight minutes. And when the ship is

24:10 propelling, like as against a decommissioned stationary target, which itself sinks in, say, 10 minutes, when the ship is propelling, that speed itself will drive the ship underwater. So it's a violence of a different order. If I may say that. Was it similar to what you've seen in your training as well? You fired a torpedo at a, obviously at a training ship during your training as a Submariner. What was that like? What did you see? Was that similar sir? Absolutely. So, on that appointed day, we approached the ship beam on exactly what you see in the video. And then we distaste the weapon and that was at that point of time, that was our straight runner. It was designed to

24:57 be running straight. And we were pretty close. And I still remember I was on the scope. I could see the ship very clearly. It was mid-afternoon and it was exceptional visibility, calm seas, blue skies, and the ship disappeared. And there was just a huge column of water. And I still remember the thump and the vibration inside the boat and the deep bass kind of a sound. and a rain of metal raining down near the submarine. You could see that the ship was already torn apart and when the water settled, already she was sinking. And I think she disappeared under the waves within

25:46 five to 10 minutes. We couldn't believe that it could be so powerful and so So shockingly powerful. That's it. Commander, have you ever tracked a Pakistani submarine or anybody else's submarine? If you ask a submariner of any nation this question, he would lie. So you'll give us the truth then, right? So I'm not able to speak about that. Understood. Why is it so rare in military history for a submarine to engage another

26:32 submarine? It never happens. Has it ever happened? That's a very interesting question because a submarine is supposed to be quiet and the main tactic of a submarine is to remain steady. the moment her location is known, she's very vulnerable. So if you have two submarines operating in the same area, you will be very surprised that during the Cold War, there have been submarines colliding with each other. They didn't know. They were so close. Understandably, they were stalking each other, but they couldn't know that they were so close. It would be interesting for you to

27:18 know that if a war breaks out and if you get underwater contact, you know, you probably would be better off firing at it rather than classifying it. Because if you suddenly come upon a submarine, he would do the same thing. I think that's a very interesting part to that. So the answer to your question is, it's so quiet. I mean, it's very difficult to pick up. There have been advances in sonar technology, quietening technology, but considering the fact that all the nations are investing in the same thing and if you have two submarines in the same area in the same depth envelopes, you could have a close quarter situation and you may not even know about it. Commander, one of the areas where we have done really

28:05 well is our own sonars. You know, we had the Ushus and then we have got variants of that. How has this been an area of Indian technological advancement where we are confident enough to use our sonars on board, our submarines lately and on our warships? We are using our own sonars on board and they have been effective and that's all I can tell at this point of time. We are very confident we have deployed our own systems, our own sonars. I've used it personally, so there should not be any doubt. But remember one thing, so every system takes time. It is not like making a phone or making an aircraft, actually, if I may. It takes time to validate. It takes time to build that

28:53 industry. It takes time to have a complete supply chain in India and prove the entire system. And it requires a lot of patience. Even the best navies in the world take a lot of time to validate the system, especially the new ones. So I think we should be very patient, yet keep deploying our own weapons and sensors, and that's the way ahead. Commander Ramkumar, you know, a lot of people are very curious about three or four things surrounding this incident that we're talking about and I want to draw you back in on that because and it's a question that's on my mind as well and we haven't gotten any official answers so far but from what you can tell and I know you don't want to move away from the technical aspects of things but would the Indian Navy have known that

29:42 this was going to happen or would it have known that this kind of thing could happen in the current circumstances? No, because when she cast off from Vizag, there were indications that something might happen, but we never had a clue when the US or Israelis would strike. So, once she was at sea, then I don't think the Indian Navy had any prior knowledge about the attack per se. This is just speculation and I don't have any insider information about this. Whether that would have saved the ship, I doubt. Was it a wise decision for this ship to even

30:29 get out of Vishakapatnam in your view, given the prevailing situation? You're right, you know, a decision was taken by the Trump administration to sink the entire Iranian Navy, quote unquote. You know, but... the war had begun effectively. So, you know, it was always going to be dangerous and vulnerable and you have a volatile enemy that wants to finish you. Was it wise to leave? I mean, I'm getting a lot of this question, Vishnu is getting this question a lot. Why didn't the ship just stay put until things calm down? Probably, she didn't know that when, I mean, the strike didn't happen till after she left. She was well down south, I think probably even south of Chennai or

31:19 Trincomalee when it happened. So when the strike happened the first day, this was the fifth day of the war, if I'm not mistaken. So there was no way to... This is a very interesting question. So I asked myself, like, if I had been the captain, what would I have done? because I would have been in a very vulnerable situation because I knew that the entire US Navy would be in the Northern Arabian Sea. There is a carrier battle group there. I'm sure that there may be SSNs there, SSBNs there, SSGNs there, definitely firing tomahawks, all of them having extremely advanced torpedoes, and the resolve of the adversary would make me very nervous. So just to answer your question, very hypothetically, I would have entered Colombo and sought refuge.

32:11 I think discretion is a better part of valor here. And what you're saying makes sense because just before we began recording this podcast, Vishnu is hearing from his sources that a second Iranian ship, you know, a naval ship, probably a tanker of some kind, has actually dashed to Colombo for exactly the purpose that you're talking about, Commander Ramkumar. So you're right. I didn't know that. It's something we just broke on NDTV a short while ago. which is that this ship was in international waters not very far from Sri Lanka. And after this has happened, that ship has now sought refuge in Colombo. So you're saying that would have been the perhaps the sensible thing to do in the circumstances. You're only tactically. I don't know the diplomatic fallout

32:59 and what would the parties do. That's beyond my pay grade. But if I were the the sole person who was supposed to take a decision, I would have entered even Trincomalee and tried to be there anywhere where I can enter. I can seek refuge. This is purely being dispassionate and thinking like a ship captain, which I was never, but seeing what a submarine can do, I don't know. I think probably that could have been a better option. Yeah, but this is very much my personal opinion. Commander, there's a big difference between diesel electric submarines like what you commanded and a nuclear powered fast attack boat like the Los Angeles 688i and a Coola or a

33:48 Virginia class which may have been involved in this. Is there any scenario in which a small diesel electric submarine can hold its own against a much larger possibly more powerful SSN or nuclear attack boat? It depends upon the situation because there are diesel electric submarines like the 214s. They are very capable and they've got very advanced on our sweet needs. They're extremely quiet. They got AIP fuel cell AIPs making them really, really quiet. So depending upon the geographical location and certain tactical situations, yes, our new always has a higher noise signature. That's what I was given to believe.

34:39 And there can be a situation where a diesel electric port can sneak up on anyone, anyone, anyone. You know the incredible thing about yesterday… He just said that with a straight face. Yeah, he did, I know. As you can see in this podcast, Vishnu is the guy who likes pulling us towards the technology aspect of it and I am the one who is thinking about the headlines and how I am going to get people more interested in the aspects that are never spoken about. But no, jokes aside, I think one of the interesting aspects and something that I am curious to know about and it is very valuable speaking to a submariner for it, Commander Ramkumar is that this was the first time that the US, United States Navy has torpedoed a ship since

35:27 World War II. The last time, you know, any Navy submarine torpedoed a ship and brought it down, I think Vishnu was saying it's 1982 in the Falklands War? No, 1982 and after that in 2016 when a North Korean mini submarine fired a small torpedo and brought down I think a Corvette, of the very powerful South Korean Navy. Okay, so if we are talking just specifically about… Twice in 44 years. This is the third incident. So twice in 44 years, if we are talking just about the United States for the first time since… The second world war. Since the second world war. So I am just wondering from a submariner's perspective, Commander Ram Kumar, what would that have been like? It basically means that since the world war, since the second world war, all American Submariners have only trained for this kind of

36:17 a thing. And this wasn't really a big challenge in any sense. It was a kind of a bit of a sitter as far as a combat operation was concerned. But will there be learnings from this for the submarining community? I think, yeah, you're absolutely right, given the target motion parameters. probably developed by the submarine, this is an easy shoot. I'm sorry to say that because there are lives lost. But having said that, I think more than submariners learning lessons, it has got larger lessons for a Navy and a government. You can see how quickly the battle space expanded.

37:02 You can see how quickly a single submarine can block off a wide expanse in the ocean. You can see how how an action like this can immediately be interpreted as a complete full-fledged war by one of the parties and not interpreted as such by the other party. You can suddenly see how a submarine's strategic weight comes into being. So it's more for the Navy and the government to understand how powerful how strategically valuable submarines are. Commander, I just wanted to, as we start to wrap this up, you

37:48 know, both Shiv and I have been on kilo-class submarines in the past. In fact, I've sailed underwater, you know, with long back, with the then Defense Minister George Fernandez on a kilo-class submarine. And many years later, when I did a documentary on a kilo of Vizag, I noticed one of the things that sailors do is you monitor the batteries for hydrogen buildup and other gases, gaseous buildup. It's this tiny chamber and there's a little tray on which the sailor lies and then that tray sort of moves in this and they carry a torch with them. There is absolutely no space to move. It is claustrophobic beyond words. It gives me nightmares to think about it.

38:37 How did you, could you describe that experience? I mean, it's scary. Yeah, so there are, yeah, it is scary for everyone. But we learn to control that fear. But jokes apart, actually, there are two battery pits or battery spaces and you You have to go inside the battery spaces to monitor the connections, the voltages, or you just cross-check and do manual inspection of the torpedo cells, the battery cells, not the torpedo, the battery spaces. So there are many things which you do. You have to check the cooling, you have to check the connections, you have to check the electrolyte levels. So

39:22 there is no other way but to check it in a systematic manner. So what you do is you open the battery hatch that happens in two compartments in a kilo class and then you go down onto the tree, so to speak, and then you pull yourself into position and keep checking. It's a very dangerous thing to do. You know, if you walk a spanner, if you drop anything, you're not supposed to carry anything. Suppose you draw anything, you can actually shot a battery and thereby causing catastrophic fire on board. So, yeah, so it's a very dangerous thing. And To answer your question, we monitor about 15 to 17 gases on board, depending upon which submarine it is and principally 2-3 gases. But we have a real

40:09 fetish for the kind of atmosphere we are breathing. I'm going to end this with one final question for you, Commander Ramkumar, which is that, you know, we are familiar with submarines. The public's sort of interface with submarines is always through the movies, And there's obviously this incredible mystery and secrecy and romance about, you know, the submarine life. I want to ask you what made you want to become a submariner? Oh, that was very easy. I wanted to be a submarine captain when I was four years old. And my dad took me to see the Ice Station Zebra. And when I got out of the theatre, I

40:54 still remember, I still remember vividly telling my dad that I want to be a submarine captain. He laughed it off. But then I could do that. So, I love my dream. That's an incredible story. I have one final question for you. Unless you want me to go on for another R. No, no. It's not a problem. Two hours. We totally can but we've got to wrap. Shoot. Commander, what is your favorite submarine movie? Crimson Tide. No. Dust boat? No, that's something. The Hanford Air October? No, not the later, not the Hollywood ones. I want the visceral, the visceral ones,

41:43 which actually captures the Second World War U-boat ones. They really, those are really, really striking and actually... brings down it's not about the technology it's it's about the men inside the iron men in the steel boats and actually those movies you know there could be there are many of them actually they bring out the real metal of the men who command and operate her which is which is basically why that every submarine movie is not really an action movie. They are all basically psychological dramas. Okay, Shaev, we need to end this because we are going to be booted out of the studio. There is a news bulletin about to start right now. It's been absolutely fabulous. What a

42:28 wonderful conversation. Having you on this episode, Commander Ramkumar, we wish you well. We thank you for your service. And we hope that we can have you back at some point. Vishnu and I both, of course, personally wish that it were in better circumstances. We also... feel bad about the lives lost, but war is a terrible business. And as defense correspondents and, you know, purveyors of the headlines, we must report and ask the questions and give our viewers and listeners as much of an authentic view of these unfolding situations as we possibly can. So we very much appreciate your time and we'll have you back very soon. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much. And that's a wrap on this podcast. If you have been, thanks for watching. We'll see you again next

43:16 time. Goodbye.