Royal Navy specialists practise submarine rescues alongside NATO allies

An allied team of more than 100 personnel headed to Glasgow to undergo an intensive mass evacuation exercise using the NATO Submarine Rescue System (NSRS) – a lifeline for submarines stranded beneath the waves. 

The workout provided sailors, divers, and medics from the three nations the opportunity to practise the lifesaving procedures that would help evacuate stricken submariners from a submarine disabled on the seabed. 

The NSRS is made up of three parts: a remote-controlled vehicle to deploy rapidly to deliver valuable supplies, a crewed submersible to ferry submariners back to the surface and, finally, a chamber for safe decompression.

The Royal Navy’s Commander Chris Baldwin, Rescue Element Commander and Operations Officer for the NATO Submarine Rescue System, said: “It is vitally important to bring the tri-national team together to conduct a dedicated period of capability training so that our submariners and their families can have confidence that if called upon, their colleagues in the NSRS are ready to come to their aid.

“We completed a very successful period of ‘mission rehearsal’ to ensure that the NSRS-trained personnel from France, Norway, and the UK can operate effectively together in
conducting submarine rescue operations.

“The completion of this exercise helps to keep the NSRS team ready to respond to any submarine emergency globally.”

The mass evacuation exercise was held at the NATO Submarine Rescue System’s base at the Westway industrial site, near Glasgow Airport. 

The facility houses the 350-tonne, high-tech, air mobile, system that’s capable of being deployed anywhere in the world at immediate notice.

Commander Nick Samuels RN, Coordinator Rescue Forces (CRF) during the exercises, said: “The NSRS is one of the leading submarine rescue capabilities in the world and is held
at immediate readiness to respond to a submarine emergency.”

The NATO Submarine Rescue System is in three parts, with the first being an Intervention Remotely Operated Vehicle, or “IROV”. 

This small, remotely operated, system can be deployed quickly and dived down to a stricken submarine to deliver stores such as food, water, and medical supplies to trapped crew.

The second part is a Submarine Rescue Vehicle (SRV) named “Nemo”.

Capable of diving to 610 metres – 2000ft – and docking with a submarine’s escape hatch, Nemo is used to ferry submariners to the surface. It can take up to 15 passengers at a time, including patients on stretchers, where they are brought up for medical attention.

And that’s where the third, and final, piece comes in – the decompression chamber complex with a transfer under pressure (TUP) capability. 

This is a portable chamber complex that enables the safe decompression of crew members under expert supervision while Nemo continues to perform further recovery dives. It takes around 50 people to operate the TUP for a rescue mission.

After being flown to a suitable airport in some of the world’s largest military and civilian cargo aircraft, the equipment is then moved by road to the closest seaport. There, both ROV
and rescue systems are mobilised onto a mothership which would sail to the emergency zone to carry out their lifesaving mission.