2023-06-25 16:17:12
16:16 GMT, June 25, 2023
An informed source provided Sputnik with new exclusive details about the Poseidon, the nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone first unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin in a speech to lawmakers in 2018. Sputnik has compiled everything we know on the strategic weapon to date.
Read on SputnikThe bench tests of the nuclear reactor facilities of the remote-controlled submarine Poseidon were carried out successfully, confirming their safety and state of readiness for operation, an informed source in the Russian defense sector told Sputnik this week. Sea trials of the autonomous drones are scheduled to start later this summer, the source said, and will focus on operational tests of the Poseidon nuclear power plant. The tests will involve the Belgorod, Russia’s custom-modified Project 949A cruise missile submarine made famous in 2015 when information about a secret Russian self-contained nuclear-powered submarine was first leaked in a news report. Russian television.
On June 22, Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Nikolai Evmenov confirmed to Sputnik that the Belgorod, which was delivered to the Navy in 2022, will formally enter service in sometime this year.
What do we know about the Poseidon?
The Poseidon project, whose original code name was Status-6 and in NATO Canyon, was first officially presented in 2018, when the Russian Defense Ministry released pictures of the development work, plus a modeled presentation of the principles of autonomous torpedo operations. This included footage of the Poseidon launching from the submarine carrying it and maneuvering near the ocean floor towards targets, which may include an enemy aircraft carrier group, or an enemy port.
Additional details have since been released, including information about the Poseidon’s dimensions and its weapon loadout. The autonomous torpedo is about 20 meters long, 1.8 meters in diameter and weighs 100 tons.
The second largest in history and with the Poseidon in its arsenal: this is the Belgorod submarine
November 15, 2022, 09:48 GMT
Equipped with a nuclear reactor and operating autonomously with the help of satellite communications and artificial intelligence, the Poseidon drones have what is essentially an unlimited range. This allows them to travel to any underwater location on Earth and remain operational for as long as their technical resources allow. The system has an estimated speed of between 100 and 130 km/h. As for weapons, it has the capacity to carry both conventional explosives and a nuclear warhead with an explosive power of up to two megatons. Previously, information circulated that the power of its warhead could reach 100 megatons, but later an informed source in the Russian military-industrial complex reported that it would be 2 megatons.
What do we know about the bearers of the Poseidon?
While the Belgorod submarine is being used to develop and test the Poseidon, a whole series of special submarines known as project 09851 Khabarovsk class are being built to be its carriers. The Khabarovsk, the lead submarine of the new fleet, was launched last year. past, and it is expected to enter service with the Pacific Fleet in 2024. Construction of the second submarine began in 2017 and it is expected to enter service with the Northern Fleet by 2025. Two more Khabarovsk-class submarines have been commissioned. The Khabarovsk class is believed to be a modification of the Borei class – ballistic missile-carrying nuclear submarines. Apparently, it will have the same basic hull, but adapted to carry up to seis drones Poseidon and possibly six to eight 533mm torpedoes to defend against enemy ship attacks.
What does the US say about Poseidon?
The Pentagon appears to recognize the strategic importance of the Poseidon, with its Nuclear Posture Review 2018, acknowledging that Russia is “developing” a “new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, and nuclear-powered autonomous submarine torpedo.” In 2020, the US Naval Institute stated that the “ramifications” of the new system “cannot be overstated” given that it is “immune to ballistic missile defense” and cannot be detected until detonatedThe Russian Poseidon submarine drone is “capable of taking out half of the US aircraft carriers”
August 9, 2020, 11:56 PM
Also in 2020, the State Department expressed fear that Poseidon drones could engulf US coastal cities in “radioactive tsunamis”and condemned its development as a possible violation of “applicable international legal norms and principles.”
However, it is worth noting the initially questionable aspect of the concept of a tsunami of several meters caused by a large explosion, since already in the 1950s and 1960s it was confirmed that the waves of marine explosions disperse and that these types of weapons are intrinsically ineffective. The same happened with the cobalt bomb—theoretical modification of the nuclear bomb that multiplies radioactive contamination—which had also been called into question due to its dubious efficacy.
Does the Poseidon have a predecessor?
Actually, the Poseidon is not the first doomsday torpedo developed by Russia. At the dawn of the nuclear age, in the late 1940s, Soviet engineers were tasked with creating a nuclear-armed torpedo that could be launched toward American shores in the event of war. The project, known as the T-15developed in the 1950s, shortly after the USSR tested its first nuclear bomb, but before Moscow reached nuclear parity with Washington, which by then had amassed an arsenal of nearly 300 nuclear weapons.
The T-15 project torpedo was 23.5 meters long, 1.55 meters wide, weighed 40 tons and was armed with a thermonuclear warhead. It would be launched from a Project 627 Kit-class attack submarine, the USSR’s first nuclear-powered submarine.
The preliminary design of the torpedo was completed in 1953, and that of its carrier was finished a year later. Unlike the Poseidon, the T-15 was not powered by nuclear energy, but by an electric motor that gave him enough power to travel about 30 km.
The Navy studied the project and concluded that it was problematic, given the need for the carrier submarine to approach within 40 km of the target area, the comparatively low speed of the system (about 45 km/h), and the need to drastically reduce the number of the submarine’s torpedo tubes, which would affect its defensive capabilities. Future revisions to Project 627 ultimately excluded the T-15 from its design, and the sub went on to serve successfully in the Soviet Navy as traditional attack submarine until 1990.
the soviet academician Andrei Sajarov he also toyed with an idea similar to that of the Poseidon, recalling in his memoirs that in the early 1960s he had come up with the concept of a submarine-launched torpedo powered by a steam-to-water direct-flow nuclear reactor with sufficient power to launch the 100-megaton torpedo as if it “jumped” out of the water and attack targets several hundred kilometers away. Finally, the physicist rejected the project.
Why did Russia develop the Poseidon?
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and its NATO allies took a series of steps to undermine Russia’s strategic security, first by expanding the Western alliance into Eastern Europe, gobbling up all former members of the defunct Pact of Warsaw, three former Soviet republics and four former Yugoslav republics, despite repeated promises not to. In 2002, Washington unilaterally tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a groundbreaking 1972 arms control agreement that limited the development of advanced defenses against ballistic missiles by the nuclear superpowers. “A monster looking for war” with the expansion of NATO
Simultaneously, in the 2000s, the United States began to deploy anti-missile defense systems in Europe, “to protect itself from rogue powers,” Washington assured, first in the Czech Republic and Poland, and later in Poland and Romania, in the latter country with the construction of Aegis Ashore facilities.
Russia expressed serious concerns about these facilities, noting that they use the same Mk 41 vertical launch systems (VLS) that are used to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. If they were equipped with the latter, Russia would have only two to five minutes to react in the event of an American surprise attack.
But that is not all. Also in the 2000s, US military planners began to develop the concept of immediate global attack, an initiative that proposes the massive launch of hundreds or even thousands of conventional ballistic and cruise missiles to neutralize an enemy’s nuclear deterrent and decapitate its leadership.
These moves prompted Russia to reactivate its Soviet-era Perimetr autonomous nuclear control system, better known in the West as a dead hand, which allows for the automatic launch of Russian nuclear weapons if the enemy has carried out a successful first strike and it has eliminated the Russian decision-making centers.
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