UK Defence Forum

The Brazilian Navy (Marinha do Brasil)'s first Scorpène-class submarine, the Riachuelo (S40), successfully performed its first independent surface and propulsion tests.

ArmChairCivvy wrote:Trump-like carousel at the top of administration is not new in Bolsanaro's Brazil (gone thru 4 health ministers and a couple of justice ministers), but now foreign & defence ministers were abruptly changed
- is the fact that all three commanders (army/navy/ AF) left their posts a sign of priming the country for 'cancelling elections as an unnecessary and wasteful use of resources'?

Scheduled to arrive at Aliağa, Turkey on 7 September 2022 for scrapping, the ship was towed from Rio de Janeiro on 4 August 2022 by the Dutch tugboat Alp Centre, after been bought for R$10,550,000.00 or US$1,919,857.35 from Sök. The ship and its tugboat arrived off the Moroccan coast on 26 August, preparing to enter the Mediterranean Sea through Gibraltar, when the Turkish government suddenly withdrew permission for the ship to dock in Turkey. This decision was made after officials at the Turkish Ministry of the Environment determined that the report submitted by Brazilian authorities significantly underestimated the amount of hazardous material aboard the ship when compared to ships of the same class and period. For example, the report estimated the presence of only 9.6 tons of asbestos when Clemenceau — São Paulo's sister ship — contained at least 600 tons of this carcinogenic material. The convoy reversed course and headed back to Rio de Janeiro.

Since the announcement of decommission, a private foundation called Instituto São Paulo/Foch formed by former crew and enthusiasts had also attempted to transform the carrier into a museum ship, like the aborted plans for its precessor Minas Gerais and was responsible for the judicial order to tow it back to Brazil, given also the worries from several national and international environmentalist organizations over the potential risk of "massive ecological damage". A lawyer instrumental in the ship's return characterized the overall handling of the matter as severely rushed and negligent, with authorities bypassing proper evaluation and selling the ship for a fraction of its real price. The foundation was also barred from the auction as Brazilian authorities were only interested in companies seeking to dismantle the ship. The Brazilian Navy refused to allow the ship to anchor again in Rio de Janeiro, and sent the convoy to a port in Suape, Pernambuco, where it was again also not allowed to anchor, and had thus been waiting in the waters for a pending cleanup by the Navy.

Scuttling (2023)
On 20 January 2023, the ship was seized and forced out to sea by the Brazilian Navy, who then declared it would scuttle the São Paulo into the Atlantic Ocean in February 2023, following the rejections of injunctions from Ministry of the Environment and the Federal Public Ministry by a federal judge. The Navy stated that the São Paulo's "deteriorating floating condition" and "inevitability of uncontrolled sinking" gave the navy no other option, even with an offer of R$30 million from Sela Saudi Arabian Jeddah group to buy her for 3 times more than the Turkish company paid, so US$ 6 million but to scuttle it approximately 350 kilometres (220 mi) off the coast of Brazil in international waters, 5000 m deep, just within the outer limit of Brazil's exclusive economic zone. The Public Ministry appealed against the judicial decision. Former Turkish owners criticized the decision as showing indifference and attempts to evade responsibility from Brazilian authorities. The Brazilian Navy claimed the ship's hull already had three holes in it and sinking would have been inevitable before the end of the month. It was scuttled on 3 February 2023.