Torpedo Trouble?  Russian Defense Newspaper Says Sunken Sub Switched to More Volatile System By Margaret Litvin and Michael James N E W   Y O R K, Aug. 19 - The Russian nuclear submarine lying paralyzed on the floor of the Barents Sea was retrofitted two years ago with a potentially dangerous torpedo-launching technology against the wishes of navy officials, the Russian military's official newspaper reported Friday.      The article in the Web-_base_d version of Red Star described a quarrel between weapons industry representatives and officials of Russia's Northern Fleet, to which the Kursk, the sub stranded at the bottom of the icy sea, belongs.      The report said industry officials persuaded the Russian navy to take out the Kursk's state-of-the-art torpedo system, which used an expensive silver battery and propeller, and replace it two years ago with potentially dangerous liquid fuel technology. 'Complicated . and Dangerous' The older, cheaper technology - the installation of which the article referred to as a modernization - uses liquid fuel to power the torpedo and a gas stream to launch it. Navy officials _object_ed that it would be complicated to store and dangerous to use, the Red Star article said.      Nonetheless, the report said, industry representatives attempted to foist on the fleet the purchase and implementation of the new torpedo as Northern Fleet officials tried to resist in any way they could. The information was attributed to an unnamed admiral who served several years ago in the Northern Fleet and was directly involved in acquiring arms from industry.      Without directly blaming the altered torpedoes for disabling the submarine last week, the Red Star article listed a liquid-fuel explosion as one of several theories circulating in Russia about the crash.      The article appeared on the Web site early Friday, but hours later, it had been replaced with a new story that made no mention of the alleged change of torpedo technology. The reports, written in Russian, were translated into English by ABCNEWS.com. Two Explosions The sub went down Saturday with 118 men aboard. Russian rescue crews have tried since then to reach the vessel, but it's not clear any of the crew members are still alive.      Preliminary analysis of readings from a seismographic station in Norway suggest an initial explosion near the Kursk of a magnitude of one-tenth of ton or less of TNT, says Professor John Wallace, a geo-scientist at the University of Arizona.      Then, about two minutes later, a second sound was recorded, suggesting a much larger blast registering about 3.47 on the Richter scale. That suggests a force of roughly one ton of TNT, according to a preliminary analysis by Wallace. Pentagon experts say the second reading indicates a force of around two tons of TNT (see related story).      Earlier, the Russians suggested that the vessel hit an unspecified huge, heavy _object_ about 66 feet below the surface and plunged to the sea bottom in seconds. However, more recently they have suggested that an internal explosion may be to blame.      The Russian theory now squares more easily with U.S. intelligence sources, who say the most likely explanation for the disaster was an explosion of a torpedo or missile in the front compartment that ripped a hole in the side of the submarine. U.S. Thinks Russia Uses Liquid Fuel U.S. officials told ABCNEWS they could not confirm the Red Star story. But they say they believe the Russians have been testing liquid-fueled rocket motors, which would propel torpedoes. They believe the most plausible scenario is that a torpedo fired during military exercises never left the tube. Instead, the fuel started to burn and then a warhead exploded.      Richard Sharpe, a former nuclear submarine captain and editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, says some liquid-fuel systems, including hydrogen peroxide, had been used in the West but were later rejected as too dangerous.      An accident involving liquid fuel propellant contributed to the 1986 sinking of a Russian nuclear sub in the Atlantic Ocean, according to Clay Moltz, a professor at the Monterrey Institute for International Studies in California. In that incident, noxious gas vented into the sub and started a fire after sea water reacted with the propellant in a launch tube, Moltz says. Torpedo Theory 'More Likely' Frederic Hauge, who heads the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group that has been monitoring submarine activity in the Barents Sea, says Bellona scientists had been skeptical of a torpedo-explosion theory until they read the Red Star report.       The electrically driven torpedo is much safer in such an accidental situation than the liquid fuel ones, Hauge says. This explains why an explosion in the weapons compartment could damage the sub so much. . With the new situation where they changed the torpedoes, that scenario is much more likely.      Hauge says Bellona now believes the sub collided with the sea floor, accounting for the first explosion reading. He speculates that the second, more powerful explosion could have been a torpedo explosion caused by a chemical reaction from jarring or flooding the unstable liquid fuel in the launching system.       The last explosion is too big to only be that the sub hit the bottom, Hauge says.      But a naval expert at Princeton University says the scenario sounds unlikely.       That speculation to me sounds weak, says Josh Handler of the Princeton University Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. The sound of the submarine striking the bottom should be distinguishable from an interior explosion. . The statements by the Norwegians and the U.S. indicate that there was a small internal explosion followed by a larger one. Experts: Don't Jump to Conclusions Sharpe says its hard to draw firm conclusions from the available information.       The first [explosion] could have been a torpedo, Sharpe says. It could have been a surface-to-surface missile. It could be any one of those things and we have absolutely no clue.      He cautioned against the tendency to blame poor funding of the Russian military for the accident.      Another military analyst also cautioned against guesswork.       It's just speculation about speculation, says Pavel Felgenhauer, Moscow's leading independent military analyst. There is serious evidence the Kursk was destroyed because of an explosion in the first compartment of the ship. But it could have been this, that or another thing. ABCNEWS.com's Oliver Libaw in New York and ABCNEWS' Barbara Starr in Washington contributed to this report.  Excerpts From Red Star Report Following is an excerpt of a report published today on the Web site of Red Star, the Russian military's official daily newspaper. It carried the bylines of Vladimir Gundarov, a Red Star submarine specialist, and Andrei Gavrilenko. It was written in Russian and translated by ABCNEWS.com's Margaret Litvin. This section of the report was no longer on the site tonight.      It has come to light that the hydro-acoustics of the Northern Fleet ships and the Norwegian reconnaissance ship Marietta registered two distinct sounds (claps) and that moreover the second was stronger than the first. About what happened one can so far only guess. And on this subject as well there exist several versions.      One of these has to do with the presumed presence in the first compartment of the submarine of modernized torpedoes. Modernization of the Kursk's torpedo equipment to fit new torpedoes was done . in Severodvinsk. In January of 1998 at the naval dock Sukhona the Kursk underwent a systematic dock inspection.      According to one of the admirals who served several years ago in the Northern Fleet and was directly involved in acquiring weaponry from industry, industry representatives tried to foist on the fleet the purchase and implementation of the new torpedo. This the submariners tried to resist as much as they could. They supposed that the modernized torpedo was very complicated to store and dangerous to use, as its energy source is not an expensive silver battery but a cheaper liquid-fuel motor. Besides, it [the torpedo] is shot from the torpedo apparatus not by compressed air, but by a stream of gas which forms from the combustion of a special pyro-cartridge [or trigger].      If the first clap the hydro-acoustics heard could have been the sound of the hull hitting the sea bottom or sound of the trigger detonating after a collision, then the second, stronger clap the hydro-acoustics picked up could have come from the explosion of the liquid-fuel torpedo.      The probability also cannot be ruled out that the torpedo during launch did not exit the torpedo tube and exploded inside it.