Mistral sub for sale: $150K, nobody wants to buy it or scrap it

By TOC

No company has so far expressed interest in the Spanish Mistral submarine. The Navy, through Cartagena’s Delegated Disposal and Material Liquidation Board, put the ship up for auction last March. The submarine was decommissioned in mid-2020 after 35 years of service.

Mistral submarine for sale: $150K, no one wants it and no scrap it
Photo credit: Armada

The starting price was €136,000 [US$150,000]. The Navy is looking for a specialized scrap company to dismantle the submarine after the various equipment and mission systems are removed and turn it into scrap.

In Cartagena, a civic platform presented a proposal to keep the Mistral’s bow and sail and place them at a roundabout in the city. The initiative comes shortly after the city council will carry out a project to display another retired submarine, the Tonina, and turn it into a museum with the support of Navantia and the navy.

The Mistral submarine was decommissioned in mid-2020 and has been in Cartagena’s arsenal ever since. The ship ceased service on June 10 of the same year, after 35 years of active service.

After its withdrawal, the Navy, with Navantia’s support, proceeded to dismantle various equipment and systems that would be used as spare parts during the maintenance of the other two submarines of the series still in service, the S-71 Galerna and the S-74 Tramontana. The Almirante Mateo Garcia de los Reyes Submarine School, in turn, received all the equipment that is still in operation and used to train future submarine crews.

The Mistral is the third in a series of four Agosta-class submarines, also known as the Galerna class, of French design. It was built at the shipyards of E.N. Based in Cartagena, now Navantia, beginning on 14 November 1983 at its launch in the presence of the President of the Government Felipe Gonzalez Marquez, the Minister of Defense Narcis Serra Serra and Admiral, Chief of Naval Staff [Ajema], Saturnino Suanzes de la Hidalga.

During the 35 years in service, the submarine logged 3,039 sea days, 243,468 nautical miles, 69,289 sea hours, and 43,776 submerged hours. His first time at sea, only on the surface, was on October 30, 1984, making his first dive in the waters of Cartagena on November 2 of that year. It was handed over to the Navy on June 5, 1985.

The case of the aircraft carrier Principe de Asturias

aircraft carrier Principe de Asturias
Photo credit: US DoD

A scrapping and scrapping auction is a procedure that the Navy regularly resorts to after decommissioning ships. In 2020, for example, it auctioned the submarine Siroco, the first of the S-70 series, and the transport ship El Camino Espanol, decommissioned in 2012 and 2019 respectively.

The same fate befell the aircraft carrier Principe de Asturias, scrapped by the company Surus Inversa in Turkey with the support of the local company Leyal Deltas.

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