Forty-two of the ship's 69 crew members lost their lives in that incident. It's like the space program. When you see problems occur with the space program there's a powerful correlation between that and the level of funding and their ability to attract, and retain, exceptional talent. Gompert acknowledged he was not familiar with the specific performance history of the Kursk, a 505-foot long behemoth weighing more than 14,000 tons that ranks as one of the largest submarines in the world. Any piece of machinery, including a submarine, really needs a certain level of operation to maintain.
Nothing is worse for a ship than being welded to the pier.
There were no nuclear weapons on the Kursk, Russia's Defense Ministry said on Monday, noting that radiation levels on the stricken vessel were normal. The submarine can remain submerged for up to four months, a point the Ministry invoked to suggest the crew is not in immediate danger. But nuclear submarines get only about 15 percent of the total defence procurement, which Pekaev says is not enough to maintain them at a proper level of preparedness. Alarmingly, he added, more than 100 nuclear submarines have been decommissioned in Russia since the Soviet collapse, though only a small proportion of those have been properly dismantled. In many cases, he said, the vessels still retain their nuclear reactor cores.