Then there is the poor performance of the Russian military in its war on Ukraine, part of which analysts blame on bad weapons design and corruption which has seen maintenance of Russian military hardware neglected. The CRS said it did not expect the Poseidon torpedoes to be deployed until 2027.Īnd Kristensen points out that the Belgorod itself is really a test vessel for the coming Khabarovsk class of nuclear-powered submarines, the first of which could be launched this year. The Poseidon is not expected to be ready for deployment until the second half of this decade, he said. Why this Russian plane could signify a 'warning to the West' “This is still a technology in development, both the torpedo and the platform,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. If armed with conventional warheads, the Poseidons could be used against targets “including aircraft carrier groups, shore fortifications, and infrastructure,” Putin reportedly said.īut there are doubts about the weapon and whether it will eventually be added to Russia’s arsenal. The CRS reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had touted the Poseidons in a 2018 speech, saying, “They are quiet, highly maneuverable and have hardly any vulnerabilities for the enemy to exploit.” That’s “thirty times the size of a regular ‘heavyweight’ torpedo,” Sutton wrote. Sutton wrote in 2019 that the Poseidon, which is expected to be 2 meters (6.5 feet) in diameter and over 20 meters (65 feet) long, “is the largest torpedo ever developed in any country.” Ford, then assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, said Poseidons are being designed to “inundate US coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis.”Ī US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report in April said Poseidons are intended as retaliatory weapons, designed to hit back at an enemy after a nuclear strike on Russia.Īccording to the CRS report, the Belgorod would be capable of carrying up to eight Poseidons, though some weapons experts say its payload is more likely to be six torpedoes. Russia and China are ahead of US in hypersonic missile technology. It will reshape naval planning in both Russia and the West, leading to new requirements and new counter-weapons,” Sutton wrote.īoth US and Russian officials have said the torpedoes could deliver warheads of multiple megatons, causing radioactive waves that would render swathes of the target coastline uninhabitable for decades. “Poseidon is a completely new category of weapon. Sutton wrote on his Covert Shores website in March.

“This nuclear ‘mega torpedo’ is unique in the history of the world,” American submarine expert H. TASS has reported that the sub will carry the in-development Poseidon nuclear-capable torpedoes, which are being designed to be launched from hundreds of miles away and to sneak past coastal defenses by traveling along the sea floor. What sets the Belgorod apart from any of the nuclear-powered submarines in the Russian fleet – or indeed from any of the nuclear submarines operated anywhere in the world – is its mission. No timeline for the sub’s first deployment was given. The Belgorod was floated in 2019 and was expected to be delivered to the Russian Navy in 2020 after trials and testing, but those were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported. If the Belgorod can successfully add those new capabilities to the Russian fleet, it could in the next decade set the stage for a return to scenes of the Cold War under the ocean, with US and Russian subs tracking and hunting each other in tense face-offs.Īt more than 184 meters (608 feet), the Belgorod is the longest submarine in the ocean today – longer even than the US Navy’s Ohio class ballistic and guided missile submarines, which come in at 171 meters (569 feet).

New images appear to show final moments of Russian warship

Russian submarine