KSAL Projects Submarine Base In Three Indonesian Navy Fleets

Chief of Staff of the Indonesian Navy (KSAL) Admiral Muhammad Ali (central)/ANTARA/M Risyal Hidayat.

JAKARTA - The Chief of Staff of the Indonesian Navy (KSAL) Admiral Muhammad Ali projects that in the future there will be a submarine base in the three Indonesian Navy fleets.

Admiral Ali explained that the projection was also in line with the purchase of new submarines including two Scorpene Evolved submarines which will be made at the PT PAL shipyard in Surabaya, East Java.

"Several places have been reviewed and surveyed for distribution, to become submarine bases," said Admiral Ali during a press conference on the sidelines of an international seminar entitled "Future Submarine" in Jakarta as reported by ANTARA, Tuesday, May 14.

However, the plan to form a submarine base in the three Indonesian Navy fleets may still be long. The reason is, to build a submarine takes 57 years.

"To build a Scorpene takes 7 years, 5 7 years. For that, we have to have an interim submarine (temporary, red)," said Ali.

KSAL continued that so far it has also traveled to several countries to see the submarine technology from leading shipyards. For Ali, it is possible that Indonesia will buy other submarines outside France. Several countries visited by Admiral Ali in the past year include China, Germany, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Scorpene Evolved, which was built at the PT PAL Indonesia shipyard in the near future, is a technology made by Naval Group from France. Later, Naval Group and PT PAL Indonesia will work together to build the submarine from start to finish in Indonesia.

"It is possible (we) will take it from several places, because as stated by the Minister of Defense (Prabowo Subianto) we need a lot of submarines," said KSAL.

Ideally, Ali continued, Indonesia needs many submarines because Indonesia's waters reach 6.4 million square kilometers. Apart from that, in the near future, KSAL assessed that the Indonesian Navy needed 12 submarines to be strengthened.

"The optimum may be 12 first, we have 12 submarines in the Old Order era, in the era of President Soekarno's administration we have 12 submarines, and in the future we may have 12 large submarines and another small submarine, or an unmanned system (nirawak)," said Admiral Ali.

The Indonesian Navy is currently reinforced by four submarines, all of which are members of the Submarine Operations Command (Koopskasel) based in Fleet II Surabaya, East Java. The four ships include KRI Cakra-401, KRI Nagapasa-403, KRI Ardadedali-404, and KRI Alugoro-405.