Buenos Aires (November 24, 2017): A noise detected near the last known location of a missing Argentine submarine on the day it vanished was consistent with an explosion, the Argentine navy said on Thursday.
“An anomalous, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear event, consistent with an explosion, was registered,” navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference in Buenos Aires.
Teams from a dozen nations has been searching by air and sea for the ARA San Juan, which has 44 crew aboard and was last contacted off the coast of Argentina on November 15.
The latest update comes as the clock runs down on the chances of finding the vessel before its air supply runs out.
The San Juan has enough air to last only seven to 10 days if it has remained fully immersed since that time, experts say. If the submarine has surfaced or “snorkeled” — that is, raised a tube to the surface to refresh the vessel’s air — since then, the crew may have bought more time.
Balbi said information about the noise had first been given to Argentina on Wednesday by the United States.
In addition, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), based in Vienna, Austria, informed Argentina on Thursday that its monitoring systems had detected an unusual sound.
On November 15, it said, “two CTBTO hydroacoustic stations detected an unusual signal in the vicinity of the last known position of missing Argentine submarine ARA San Juan.”
The sound of “an underwater impulsive event” was detected at 1:51 p.m. GMT (10:51 a.m. local time) by its underwater microphones, it said. The organization is set up to monitor compliance with the proposed nuclear-test ban treaty and has 11 hydroacoustic stations positioned around the world listening for signs of nuclear explosions.
Balbi said six teams were currently searching for the missing submarine in waters of the Gulf of San Jorge, about 430 kilometers (268 miles) from the coast. The depth of the ocean varies considerably there, ranging from 200 to 2,000 meters, he said.
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