Thank you teach my misstake.
Poseidon nuclear warhead effect yield 2megaton of TNT.
Underwater nuke effect is make highest water colomn and big artificial earthquake.
Russia has raised tensions further by placing its nuclear forces on higher alert, termed "special regime of combat duty". We take a closer look at one of his most controversial weapons. Among a myriad of new and impressive 'super weapons', Poseidon stands out.
Thank you teach my misstake.
Poseidon nuclear warhead effect yield 2megaton of TNT.
Underwater nuke effect is make highest water colomn and big artificial earthquake.
Russia has raised tensions further by placing its nuclear forces on higher alert, termed "special regime of combat duty". We take a closer look at one of his most controversial weapons. Among a myriad of new and impressive 'super weapons', Poseidon stands out.
100 Megaton is TSAR-Bomba max yield.
Japan strikes mega earthquake and tsunami on 2011, I think 100 megaton yield effect on underwater will break earth.
Not even close. The K-T impactor was on the order of 100 MILLION megatons and it hardly "broke the Earth." To break the planet you'd need something akin to another Theia impact.
Not even close. The K-T impactor was on the order of 100 MILLION megatons and it hardly "broke the Earth." To break the planet you'd need something akin to another Theia impact.
To break the earth, as in to gravitationally dissociate the earth, requires energy input equal to the entire output of the sun over ball park or a week. The combined explosive energy of all the nuclear weapons ever made is equal to the total output of the sun over ball park of one millionth of a second.
on astronomy scales, our most extravagant nuclear ambition don’t even come close to rating as small fry.
Although the earth’s surface was dramatically effected it has easily brushed off pretty large meteor/asteroid collisions that must have had comparative yields in the thousands of giga-tons??
Although the earth’s surface was dramatically effected it has easily brushed off pretty large meteor/asteroid collisions that must have had comparative yields in the thousands of giga-tons??
The Chicxulub impact event would potentially have been large enough to open a transient crater through the full thickness of the planet's crust - about 35km deep before infill. That was roughly a 36 teraton impact.
First batch of "Poseidon" supertorpedoes are manufactured for "Belgorod" carrier.
For the special purpose nuclear submarine "Belgorod" produced the first batch of nuclear supertorpedoes "Poseidon". This was reported to TASS by a source close to the military department.
According to source of the agency, separate tests of the main components of "Poseidon", including a nuclear power plant, have been successfully completed earlier.
TASS does not have official confirmation of this information.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
Let's try to count the number of torpedoes and the number of aircraft carrier strike groups of the United States or the whole of NATO ... maybe there is a clue here?
Let's try to count the number of torpedoes and the number of aircraft carrier strike groups of the United States or the whole of NATO ... maybe there is a clue here?
I wouldn't have thought they'd be a factor in a nuclear war TBH, since the vast majority NATO's nuclear strike force isn't associated with carriers. It'd be far more useful to take out enemy SSBNs before they level every city you have.
Does the US have *any* nuclear strike capability with carriers anymore? As I understand it, the official answer to whether the US has nukes on carriers these days is "no comment." But even if they do, they'd be carried by F-18s (or even F-35s), not long range bombers. Chinese targets are clustered on the coast and within range, but most Russian targets are generally *far* from the ocean.
Carriers are a strategic system, not because they carry nukes, but because they threaten nuclear arms of the military. Most of China's nuclear arsenal is well out of reach of the U.S. Navy anyway. The main operating bases and silo fields for the former 2nd Artillery Corps are in Xinjiang.
The distances are comparable when you look at Dombarovskiy from the North or Mediterranean Seas and Base 64 from the Pacific.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
The only misdirection is vague allusions to Stalinist-era weapons by popular science journalists. Someone saw Poseidon was a big torpedo, and remembered the Soviet Navy in 1955 got told by an obscure weapons scientist that they could have a 100 megaton torpedo with the Tsar Bomba's fusion warhead, so obviously Poseidon has this giant obscure bomb and is basically this old thing no one cares about anymore.
The reality is that the warhead is probably similar in yield to the Kh-22's nuclear warhead and intended to sink carriers and their escorts. Poseidon probably doesn't have the sensor fit necessary for autonomous tailing of SSBNs.
I think it might just be a 50-60 nmi firing range ASTOR. The nuclear propulsion is to make sure it closes that range fast enough that the carrier can't just sprint away for another 15-20 nmi in the opposite bearing and the 2 megaton warhead ensures that the CVBG is damaged or degraded in formation. Multiple torpedoes could be fired on multiple TMA solutions to achieve a greater chance of kill.
This would be done in conjunction with a more conventional multi-axis missile attack by Zircons and Kh-32s I guess.
There's also been talk of Poseidon using the underwater acoustic network in the Arctic, which might play into tracking submarines, but that would be offboard sensors and underwater acoustic data transmission is kind of hard even for the best submarine forces. It seems more likely this will be done by the launch submarines and it will employ the Poseidon essentially as a very large, otherwise conventional, long-range torpedo. Perhaps it will employ a fiber optic link back to the Oscar for updates. It simply doesn't appear to have any serious sonars beyond a collision avoidance HFA in the nose. No hull or trailing arrays. No horseshoe or spherical arrays in the nose.
It's not built for passive detection and tracking. It's built to go fast for a long time.
I think that's more in line with what Russia is actually capable of, too. I can believe a large submarine can be modernized to the extent it can fire extremely long range weapons accurately, with a physical weapon datalink, using underwater packet exchange with acoustic SOSUS sensors.
I find it harder to believe the Russians have made a super smart torpedo that can replace the submarine's own CIC.
tl;dr Northern Fleet will probably use it as a weapon to kill SSBNs in lieu of sending out an Akula. Pacific Fleet will use it to kill CVBGs in lieu of sending out a Tu-22 regiment. Both will use them as mostly normal torpedoes fired from a modified Oscar II.
It's a recognition more that the SSN fleet is too small to tail NATO boomers and the cruise missiles in inventory are too few in number to penetrate Aegis, and a concession that Russian underwater weapon complexes are aging. Big warhead + nuclear propulsion = fast torpedo with a large targeting ambiguity and long range. A conventional torpedo would require a near direct hit, and multiple warheads, while a non-nuclear powered torpedo would be either too slow or too large to be practical at long range.
Poseidon just isn't built for shallow water work required for a strategic weapon or long-range carrier tail.
Does the US have *any* nuclear strike capability with carriers anymore? As I understand it, the official answer to whether the US has nukes on carriers these days is "no comment." But even if they do, they'd be carried by F-18s (or even F-35s), not long range bombers. Chinese targets are clustered on the coast and within range, but most Russian targets are generally *far* from the ocean.
The F-35A is the first fifth-generation fighter to near certification as a nuclear-capable platform after final flight tests at the Tonopah Test Range.
Does the US have *any* nuclear strike capability with carriers anymore? As I understand it, the official answer to whether the US has nukes on carriers these days is "no comment."
So far as I can tell, there has been no official change to the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review that said there are no nukes on carriers. There was a brief interlude where the F/A-18F was on the list of potential B61-12 platforms, but that was probably for the Germans. F-35C has never been on the list specifically.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has quietly removed the F/A-18F Super Hornet from its B61-12 nuclear bomb fact sheet. No public explanation has been offered for why the aircraft was removed or added in the first place. The F/A-18F was added to a “November 2021” fact sheet...
Let's try to count the number of torpedoes and the number of aircraft carrier strike groups of the United States or the whole of NATO ... maybe there is a clue here?
I wouldn't have thought they'd be a factor in a nuclear war TBH, since the vast majority NATO's nuclear strike force isn't associated with carriers. It'd be far more useful to take out enemy SSBNs before they level every city you have.
There are several methods, none *great.*
1) Lidar or radar scan the surface of the ocean, look for the *faint* signal of wakes
2) electromagnetic emissions from the communications system
3) Water-penetrating radar
4) Listen for them with hydrophones
5) Bang away with sonar
6) Look for a trail of waste
7) Espionage: spies or hackers dig up the planned courses of the subs
8) IR scan the ocean, look for the Exceedingly Faint signal of a warm thing deep below
None of these are likely to be terribly effective, but they are at least *possible.*
1) Lidar or radar scan the surface of the ocean, look for the *faint* signal of wakes
2) electromagnetic emissions from the communications system
3) Water-penetrating radar
4) Listen for them with hydrophones
5) Bang away with sonar
6) Look for a trail of waste
7) Espionage: spies or hackers dig up the planned courses of the subs
8) IR scan the ocean, look for the Exceedingly Faint signal of a warm thing deep below
9) Green-wave water-penetrating laser, seeking for a characteristic turbulence in water. Seems like the method that may actually force submarines to seek greater depths.
1) Lidar or radar scan the surface of the ocean, look for the *faint* signal of wakes
2) electromagnetic emissions from the communications system
3) Water-penetrating radar
4) Listen for them with hydrophones
5) Bang away with sonar
6) Look for a trail of waste
7) Espionage: spies or hackers dig up the planned courses of the subs
8) IR scan the ocean, look for the Exceedingly Faint signal of a warm thing deep below
9) Green-wave water-penetrating laser, seeking for a characteristic turbulence in water. Seems like the method that may actually force submarines to seek greater depths.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
Unlikely. 80 knots is about as fast as you can go without supercavitating, and then you more or less instantly jump in speed to about 200 knots. Also, the leaked mechanical arrangement is a steam turbine spinning a shaft, not the rockets you need for supercavitating speeds.
So it's so loud we can hear it coming from anywhere in the world, and all it would take to deal with is a B61 with a depth fuse. Set yield to max and drop.
Carriers are a strategic system, not because they carry nukes, but because they threaten nuclear arms of the military. Most of China's nuclear arsenal is well out of reach of the U.S. Navy anyway. The main operating bases and silo fields for the former 2nd Artillery Corps are in Xinjiang.
The distances are comparable when you look at Dombarovskiy from the North or Mediterranean Seas and Base 64 from the Pacific.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
The only misdirection is vague allusions to Stalinist-era weapons by popular science journalists. Someone saw Poseidon was a big torpedo, and remembered the Soviet Navy in 1955 got told by an obscure weapons scientist that they could have a 100 megaton torpedo with the Tsar Bomba's fusion warhead, so obviously Poseidon has this giant obscure bomb and is basically this old thing no one cares about anymore.
The reality is that the warhead is probably similar in yield to the Kh-22's nuclear warhead and intended to sink carriers and their escorts. Poseidon probably doesn't have the sensor fit necessary for autonomous tailing of SSBNs.
I think it might just be a 50-60 nmi firing range ASTOR. The nuclear propulsion is to make sure it closes that range fast enough that the carrier can't just sprint away for another 15-20 nmi in the opposite bearing and the 2 megaton warhead ensures that the CVBG is damaged or degraded in formation. Multiple torpedoes could be fired on multiple TMA solutions to achieve a greater chance of kill.
This would be done in conjunction with a more conventional multi-axis missile attack by Zircons and Kh-32s I guess.
The 65cm torpedoes the Russians have are already capable of that. The Type 65-76A has a 100km range at 56kph, and the Type 65-73 was originally a nuclear tipped torpedo. It's got the size and weight reserves to put a megaton class warhead in there, the standard warhead is 450kg and the warhead in the wake-homer is 557kg(!).
You don't need to build a 200cm diameter, 24m long torpedo for that.
There's also been talk of Poseidon using the underwater acoustic network in the Arctic, which might play into tracking submarines, but that would be offboard sensors and underwater acoustic data transmission is kind of hard even for the best submarine forces. It seems more likely this will be done by the launch submarines and it will employ the Poseidon essentially as a very large, otherwise conventional, long-range torpedo. Perhaps it will employ a fiber optic link back to the Oscar for updates. It simply doesn't appear to have any serious sonars beyond a collision avoidance HFA in the nose. No hull or trailing arrays. No horseshoe or spherical arrays in the nose.
It's not built for passive detection and tracking. It's built to go fast for a long time.
I think that's more in line with what Russia is actually capable of, too. I can believe a large submarine can be modernized to the extent it can fire extremely long range weapons accurately, with a physical weapon datalink, using underwater packet exchange with acoustic SOSUS sensors.
I find it harder to believe the Russians have made a super smart torpedo that can replace the submarine's own CIC.
tl;dr Northern Fleet will probably use it as a weapon to kill SSBNs in lieu of sending out an Akula. Pacific Fleet will use it to kill CVBGs in lieu of sending out a Tu-22 regiment. Both will use them as mostly normal torpedoes fired from a modified Oscar II.
The Russians would first have to find the SSBNs. The US boats are ghosts in the water, you have to look for places where there isn't any noise. I'm assuming that the British and French are similarly capable (never served on the east coast).
Based on the sheer size of the beast, I expect it to be used to delete port cities and naval bases.
The Russians would first have to find the SSBNs. The US boats are ghosts in the water, you have to look for places where there isn't any noise. I'm assuming that the British and French are similarly capable (never served on the east coast).
The Russians would first have to find the SSBNs. The US boats are ghosts in the water, you have to look for places where there isn't any noise. I'm assuming that the British and French are similarly capable (never served on the east coast).
Not like we don't have a huge neutrino detector that we orbit around, plus literally billions of others in the galaxy... But the real issue is with how non-interactive neutrinos are. Scientific uses of neutrino detectors work over a significant timeline, getting many, many detections to say "there's a neutrino source in this direction of black sky." And don't forget that all the time the earth is spinning, changing the bearings to those neutrino sources at somewhere between 900 and 0 mph, depending on where the detector is located on the globe.
Military detection of moving neutrino emitters would need to get such a positive bearing often enough to say "hey, this source of neutrinos is moving relative to our background emitters". This would imply a very large detector unit, just to have a large chance of detecting the neutrinos (technically electron antineutrinos, but neutrinos is shorter to type) reliably, and quickly enough to get a bearing to the reactor.
It'd take multiple orders of magnitude increases in the rate of detection of this small sensor (or probably tens of thousands of this detector) to get into the militarily-usable submarine detection capability. Is DARPA considering it? maybe? I mean, they did end up doing SOSUS arrays all over the ocean that are sensitive enough that the first generation arrays, the ones from the 1960s, could hear a submarine imploding from thousands of miles away with Thresher (1963) and Scorpion (1968). So huge arrays to just constantly listen are not impossible to happen, but I doubt they're going to be cheap.
Wouldn't a neutrine detector sensitive enough to pick up a reactor from miles away (a very unlikely thing given how neutrinoes are friggen ghosts) be *blinded* by solar neutrinos?
Wouldn't a neutrine detector sensitive enough to pick up a reactor from miles away (a very unlikely thing given how neutrinoes are friggen ghosts) be *blinded* by solar neutrinos?
The Russians would first have to find the SSBNs. The US boats are ghosts in the water, you have to look for places where there isn't any noise. I'm assuming that the British and French are similarly capable (never served on the east coast).
The CosI has been around for about a decade and hasn't gotten much traction as a useful laboratory device outside it's creators. It's not something one could strap it to a Y-8Q and hunt down SSNs. More established detector technology requires a very large volume to increase the odds of detection, and a lot of conditions that can't be met on an aircraft or even a ship. Nothing about neutrino detection/tracing happens fast, either.
The more likely route for Chinese NAS are something like the wake detectors used by the RN.
1) Lidar or radar scan the surface of the ocean, look for the *faint* signal of wakes
2) electromagnetic emissions from the communications system
3) Water-penetrating radar
4) Listen for them with hydrophones
5) Bang away with sonar
6) Look for a trail of waste
7) Espionage: spies or hackers dig up the planned courses of the subs
8) IR scan the ocean, look for the Exceedingly Faint signal of a warm thing deep below
9) Green-wave water-penetrating laser, seeking for a characteristic turbulence in water. Seems like the method that may actually force submarines to seek greater depths.
Carriers are a strategic system, not because they carry nukes, but because they threaten nuclear arms of the military. Most of China's nuclear arsenal is well out of reach of the U.S. Navy anyway. The main operating bases and silo fields for the former 2nd Artillery Corps are in Xinjiang.
The distances are comparable when you look at Dombarovskiy from the North or Mediterranean Seas and Base 64 from the Pacific.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
The only misdirection is vague allusions to Stalinist-era weapons by popular science journalists. Someone saw Poseidon was a big torpedo, and remembered the Soviet Navy in 1955 got told by an obscure weapons scientist that they could have a 100 megaton torpedo with the Tsar Bomba's fusion warhead, so obviously Poseidon has this giant obscure bomb and is basically this old thing no one cares about anymore.
The reality is that the warhead is probably similar in yield to the Kh-22's nuclear warhead and intended to sink carriers and their escorts. Poseidon probably doesn't have the sensor fit necessary for autonomous tailing of SSBNs.
I think it might just be a 50-60 nmi firing range ASTOR. The nuclear propulsion is to make sure it closes that range fast enough that the carrier can't just sprint away for another 15-20 nmi in the opposite bearing and the 2 megaton warhead ensures that the CVBG is damaged or degraded in formation. Multiple torpedoes could be fired on multiple TMA solutions to achieve a greater chance of kill.
This would be done in conjunction with a more conventional multi-axis missile attack by Zircons and Kh-32s I guess.
The 65cm torpedoes the Russians have are already capable of that. The Type 65-76A has a 100km range at 56kph, and the Type 65-73 was originally a nuclear tipped torpedo. It's got the size and weight reserves to put a megaton class warhead in there, the standard warhead is 450kg and the warhead in the wake-homer is 557kg(!).
You don't need to build a 200cm diameter, 24m long torpedo for that.
A 1 megaton thermonuclear warhead is closer to 1,000 kg. The Type 65 with the 550 kg warhead still requires multiple hits to disable a carrier and can be fooled by a tailing frigate too. It's also shallow running which makes it vulnerable to hardkill anti-torpedo systems. Poseidon solves these by being big enough to mount a one tonne warhead (at least) and being deep diving enough to evade normal torpedoes much less hardkill defensive ones.
The main hangup about the harbor attack idea is two fold for me: the yield is reportedly rather small and the design of the weapon resembles a conventional torpedo.
I'm not sure how it is going to get inside the harbor when it lacks buoyancy and thrust systems for navigation of ports tbf. Normally those types of harbor attack midget submarines tend to be shallow running and have internal buoyancy systems and external thrusters, but Poseidon seems to be super optimized for deep running at normal torpedo speeds.
A one megaton, underwater detonation a few miles outside Pearl Harbor or Bangor isn't going to do much to the infrastructure either. I'd expect either much better shallow water performance for navigation of channels, or a much bigger warhead for destruction of ports, since it isn't going to be detonating right next to a pier or whatever. You'd just put on a overcoat and work through the radioactive rain shower, like a normal human being, and nothing much of value was damaged.
The Russians would first have to find the SSBNs. The US boats are ghosts in the water, you have to look for places where there isn't any noise. I'm assuming that the British and French are similarly capable (never served on the east coast).
Based on the sheer size of the beast, I expect it to be used to delete port cities and naval bases.
That's not true at all. Submarines hide by approaching baseline ocean acoustics, not "no noise" lol. You will always make noise, because you have a wake and are a thing that isn't water, so you can't escape that. Making no noise at all would make it somewhat trivial to detect a submarine, obviously. You'd just use active sonar, and triangulate where you aren't getting any pings, because your sound waves are being absorbed by a metamaterial or something.
Russian SSNs since Akula and its steel cousin, and maybe some of the later Victors, have wake detectors built into the sail that can pickup SSBNs locally without needing to hear them. This is how the Soviets were able to trail US and British boomers in the Cold War extremely accurately and hide in their wakes. Which they did. Routinely.
Those same Cold War boomers and same Soviet SSNs are still in service, except the Russians have newer subs than Akula, just fewer of them and they can't really spare the subs to trail the boomers. Perhaps Poseidon has the same sensor fit as Akula, perhaps not, and maybe it can trail a SSBN. Probably not, as that's a job that's a bit too complex for a smart phone I think.
Finding SSBNs in any case is hard but it's also possible that the Oscar IIs may be used to attack U.S. CVBGs in the Norwegian Sea, since they tend to sit there too.
Without a carrier OTOH the Russians can't sortie deep outside the Northern Fleet's bastion, because submarines need airpower to keep themselves safe (which is why the US has carriers in the Norwegian Sea and Pacific in the first place), but I'm not sure how far away a US carrier would be from something like Murmansk compared to the boundaries of the Russian underwater bastion. Maybe they have a implicit A2AD standoff like in the South China Sea, maybe they don't, that's something a EUCOM battle planner would know.
Carriers are a strategic system, not because they carry nukes, but because they threaten nuclear arms of the military. Most of China's nuclear arsenal is well out of reach of the U.S. Navy anyway. The main operating bases and silo fields for the former 2nd Artillery Corps are in Xinjiang.
The distances are comparable when you look at Dombarovskiy from the North or Mediterranean Seas and Base 64 from the Pacific.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
The only misdirection is vague allusions to Stalinist-era weapons by popular science journalists. Someone saw Poseidon was a big torpedo, and remembered the Soviet Navy in 1955 got told by an obscure weapons scientist that they could have a 100 megaton torpedo with the Tsar Bomba's fusion warhead, so obviously Poseidon has this giant obscure bomb and is basically this old thing no one cares about anymore.
The reality is that the warhead is probably similar in yield to the Kh-22's nuclear warhead and intended to sink carriers and their escorts. Poseidon probably doesn't have the sensor fit necessary for autonomous tailing of SSBNs.
I think it might just be a 50-60 nmi firing range ASTOR. The nuclear propulsion is to make sure it closes that range fast enough that the carrier can't just sprint away for another 15-20 nmi in the opposite bearing and the 2 megaton warhead ensures that the CVBG is damaged or degraded in formation. Multiple torpedoes could be fired on multiple TMA solutions to achieve a greater chance of kill.
This would be done in conjunction with a more conventional multi-axis missile attack by Zircons and Kh-32s I guess.
The 65cm torpedoes the Russians have are already capable of that. The Type 65-76A has a 100km range at 56kph, and the Type 65-73 was originally a nuclear tipped torpedo. It's got the size and weight reserves to put a megaton class warhead in there, the standard warhead is 450kg and the warhead in the wake-homer is 557kg(!).
You don't need to build a 200cm diameter, 24m long torpedo for that.
A 1 megaton thermonuclear warhead is closer to 1,000 kg. The Type 65 with the 550 kg warhead still requires multiple hits to disable a carrier and can be fooled by a tailing frigate too. It's also shallow running which makes it vulnerable to hardkill anti-torpedo systems. Poseidon solves these by being big enough to mount a one tonne warhead (at least) and being deep diving enough to evade normal torpedoes much less hardkill defensive ones.
The main hangup about the harbor attack idea is two fold for me: the yield is reportedly rather small and the design of the weapon resembles a conventional torpedo.
I'm not sure how it is going to get inside the harbor when it lacks buoyancy and thrust systems for navigation of ports tbf. Normally those types of harbor attack midget submarines tend to be shallow running and have internal buoyancy systems and external thrusters, but Poseidon seems to be super optimized for deep running at normal torpedo speeds.
A one megaton, underwater detonation a few miles outside Pearl Harbor or Bangor isn't going to do much to the infrastructure either. I'd expect either much better shallow water performance for navigation of channels, or a much bigger warhead for destruction of ports, since it isn't going to be detonating right next to a pier or whatever. You'd just put on a overcoat and work through the radioactive rain shower, like a normal human being, and nothing much of value was damaged.
The Russians would first have to find the SSBNs. The US boats are ghosts in the water, you have to look for places where there isn't any noise. I'm assuming that the British and French are similarly capable (never served on the east coast).
Based on the sheer size of the beast, I expect it to be used to delete port cities and naval bases.
That's not true at all. Submarines hide by approaching baseline ocean acoustics, not "no noise" lol. You will always make noise, because you have a wake and are a thing that isn't water, so you can't escape that. Making no noise at all would make it somewhat trivial to detect a submarine, obviously. You'd just use active sonar, and triangulate where you aren't getting any pings, because your sound waves are being absorbed by a metamaterial or something.
Russian SSNs since Akula and its steel cousin, and maybe some of the later Victors, have wake detectors built into the sail that can pickup SSBNs locally without needing to hear them. This is how the Soviets were able to trail US and British boomers in the Cold War extremely accurately and hide in their wakes. Which they did. Routinely.
Those same Cold War boomers and same Soviet SSNs are still in service, except the Russians have newer subs than Akula, just fewer of them and they can't really spare the subs to trail the boomers. Perhaps Poseidon has the same sensor fit as Akula, perhaps not, and maybe it can trail a SSBN. Probably not, as that's a job that's a bit too complex for a smart phone I think.
Finding SSBNs in any case is hard but it's also possible that the Oscar IIs may be used to attack U.S. CVBGs in the Norwegian Sea, since they tend to sit there too.
Without a carrier OTOH the Russians can't sortie deep outside the Northern Fleet's bastion, because submarines need airpower to keep themselves safe (which is why the US has carriers in the Norwegian Sea and Pacific in the first place), but I'm not sure how far away a US carrier would be from something like Murmansk compared to the boundaries of the Russian underwater bastion. Maybe they have a implicit A2AD standoff like in the South China Sea, maybe they don't, that's something a EUCOM battle planner would know.
Right. And the Ohios are allegedly quieter than the ocean baseline noise levels. As are the Seawolf, and probably the Virginias, especially later flights. I served on the Georgia and Kentucky, you would not believe how close you'd have to get to detect one on passive sonar.
Carriers are a strategic system, not because they carry nukes, but because they threaten nuclear arms of the military. Most of China's nuclear arsenal is well out of reach of the U.S. Navy anyway. The main operating bases and silo fields for the former 2nd Artillery Corps are in Xinjiang.
The distances are comparable when you look at Dombarovskiy from the North or Mediterranean Seas and Base 64 from the Pacific.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
The only misdirection is vague allusions to Stalinist-era weapons by popular science journalists. Someone saw Poseidon was a big torpedo, and remembered the Soviet Navy in 1955 got told by an obscure weapons scientist that they could have a 100 megaton torpedo with the Tsar Bomba's fusion warhead, so obviously Poseidon has this giant obscure bomb and is basically this old thing no one cares about anymore.
The reality is that the warhead is probably similar in yield to the Kh-22's nuclear warhead and intended to sink carriers and their escorts. Poseidon probably doesn't have the sensor fit necessary for autonomous tailing of SSBNs.
I think it might just be a 50-60 nmi firing range ASTOR. The nuclear propulsion is to make sure it closes that range fast enough that the carrier can't just sprint away for another 15-20 nmi in the opposite bearing and the 2 megaton warhead ensures that the CVBG is damaged or degraded in formation. Multiple torpedoes could be fired on multiple TMA solutions to achieve a greater chance of kill.
This would be done in conjunction with a more conventional multi-axis missile attack by Zircons and Kh-32s I guess.
The 65cm torpedoes the Russians have are already capable of that. The Type 65-76A has a 100km range at 56kph, and the Type 65-73 was originally a nuclear tipped torpedo. It's got the size and weight reserves to put a megaton class warhead in there, the standard warhead is 450kg and the warhead in the wake-homer is 557kg(!).
You don't need to build a 200cm diameter, 24m long torpedo for that.
A 1 megaton thermonuclear warhead is closer to 1,000 kg. The Type 65 with the 550 kg warhead still requires multiple hits to disable a carrier and can be fooled by a tailing frigate too. It's also shallow running which makes it vulnerable to hardkill anti-torpedo systems. Poseidon solves these by being big enough to mount a one tonne warhead (at least) and being deep diving enough to evade normal torpedoes much less hardkill defensive ones.
The main hangup about the harbor attack idea is two fold for me: the yield is reportedly rather small and the design of the weapon resembles a conventional torpedo.
I'm not sure how it is going to get inside the harbor when it lacks buoyancy and thrust systems for navigation of ports tbf. Normally those types of harbor attack midget submarines tend to be shallow running and have internal buoyancy systems and external thrusters, but Poseidon seems to be super optimized for deep running at normal torpedo speeds.
A one megaton, underwater detonation a few miles outside Pearl Harbor or Bangor isn't going to do much to the infrastructure either. I'd expect either much better shallow water performance for navigation of channels, or a much bigger warhead for destruction of ports, since it isn't going to be detonating right next to a pier or whatever. You'd just put on a overcoat and work through the radioactive rain shower, like a normal human being, and nothing much of value was damaged.
While the B83 nuclear bomb does weigh in the neighborhood of 1000kg, that's including the parachute packages and crush padding for laydown delivery. A similar generation or newer design could likely get down to a 500kg weight for a 1MT boom. And I will never discount Russian engineers and especially physicists/mathematicians.
Also, only the wake homer runs shallow, the 450kg warhead version is equally capable of chasing down a submarine or a carrier.
As to getting into PH, that's a straight shot in from the ocean. Active sonar navigation, slow down to about 15 knots to line up with the entrance to the bay, then run in at whatever the fastest speed that can hold course and depth at. 1MT or more on the north side of Ford Island will take out the entirety of Pearl Harbor.
Bangor would be quite a bit trickier, as it'd have to navigate Hood Canal.
Let's try to count the number of torpedoes and the number of aircraft carrier strike groups of the United States or the whole of NATO ... maybe there is a clue here?
Carriers are a strategic system, not because they carry nukes, but because they threaten nuclear arms of the military. Most of China's nuclear arsenal is well out of reach of the U.S. Navy anyway. The main operating bases and silo fields for the former 2nd Artillery Corps are in Xinjiang.
The distances are comparable when you look at Dombarovskiy from the North or Mediterranean Seas and Base 64 from the Pacific.
One thought is that the whole tidal wave thing is misdirection, and this is really for taking out rival SSBNs (and/or naval ships) via educated guesswork.
The only misdirection is vague allusions to Stalinist-era weapons by popular science journalists. Someone saw Poseidon was a big torpedo, and remembered the Soviet Navy in 1955 got told by an obscure weapons scientist that they could have a 100 megaton torpedo with the Tsar Bomba's fusion warhead, so obviously Poseidon has this giant obscure bomb and is basically this old thing no one cares about anymore.
The reality is that the warhead is probably similar in yield to the Kh-22's nuclear warhead and intended to sink carriers and their escorts. Poseidon probably doesn't have the sensor fit necessary for autonomous tailing of SSBNs.
I think it might just be a 50-60 nmi firing range ASTOR. The nuclear propulsion is to make sure it closes that range fast enough that the carrier can't just sprint away for another 15-20 nmi in the opposite bearing and the 2 megaton warhead ensures that the CVBG is damaged or degraded in formation. Multiple torpedoes could be fired on multiple TMA solutions to achieve a greater chance of kill.
This would be done in conjunction with a more conventional multi-axis missile attack by Zircons and Kh-32s I guess.
The 65cm torpedoes the Russians have are already capable of that. The Type 65-76A has a 100km range at 56kph, and the Type 65-73 was originally a nuclear tipped torpedo. It's got the size and weight reserves to put a megaton class warhead in there, the standard warhead is 450kg and the warhead in the wake-homer is 557kg(!).
You don't need to build a 200cm diameter, 24m long torpedo for that.
A 1 megaton thermonuclear warhead is closer to 1,000 kg. The Type 65 with the 550 kg warhead still requires multiple hits to disable a carrier and can be fooled by a tailing frigate too. It's also shallow running which makes it vulnerable to hardkill anti-torpedo systems. Poseidon solves these by being big enough to mount a one tonne warhead (at least) and being deep diving enough to evade normal torpedoes much less hardkill defensive ones.
The main hangup about the harbor attack idea is two fold for me: the yield is reportedly rather small and the design of the weapon resembles a conventional torpedo.
I'm not sure how it is going to get inside the harbor when it lacks buoyancy and thrust systems for navigation of ports tbf. Normally those types of harbor attack midget submarines tend to be shallow running and have internal buoyancy systems and external thrusters, but Poseidon seems to be super optimized for deep running at normal torpedo speeds.
A one megaton, underwater detonation a few miles outside Pearl Harbor or Bangor isn't going to do much to the infrastructure either. I'd expect either much better shallow water performance for navigation of channels, or a much bigger warhead for destruction of ports, since it isn't going to be detonating right next to a pier or whatever. You'd just put on a overcoat and work through the radioactive rain shower, like a normal human being, and nothing much of value was damaged.
While the B83 nuclear bomb does weigh in the neighborhood of 1000kg, that's including the parachute packages and crush padding for laydown delivery. A similar generation or newer design could likely get down to a 500kg weight for a 1MT boom. And I will never discount Russian engineers and especially physicists/mathematicians.
The problem is Russia has no capacity to produce new warhead designs. They might have some random paper designs but their entire nuclear MIC was ravaged by the end of the Cold War, same as America, for the same reasons.
Much like the United States, the Russians no longer possess a major plutonium production complex. They're getting the stuff from HEU/LEU when possible, stockpiled Cold War production, and recycling old pits. Only France and the PRC have a significant plutonium supply chain and that's pretty meager, although the PRC is ramping it up.
I'd imagine the warheads used in Poseidon are similar to Kh-22 physics packages. possibly actual ones that have been refurbished, or new manufacture using recycled pits. The Maritime Missile Regiments have recently received Kh-32s ahead of the Tu-22M3M arrival so shifting a dozen or two warheads out of bunkers to be replaced in a new casing or recycled to a new, similar warhead is no big deal. The USN did the same thing with the W76-1 because it cannot make new warheads anymore. The USAF is going to be doing the same with W88-1 for the LGM-35A.
Also, only the wake homer runs shallow, the 450kg warhead version is equally capable of chasing down a submarine or a carrier.
As to getting into PH, that's a straight shot in from the ocean. Active sonar navigation, slow down to about 15 knots to line up with the entrance to the bay, then run in at whatever the fastest speed that can hold course and depth at. 1MT or more on the north side of Ford Island will take out the entirety of Pearl Harbor.
Bangor would be quite a bit trickier, as it'd have to navigate Hood Canal.
The B83's parachute and crush padding are less than 300 lbs together. The physics package weighs a bit north of 600 kg.
Yeah that's the problem, I don't think Poseidon can actually do that.
It has almost no ballast controls, or internally deployable slow speed thrusters/azipods, that would indicate typical harbor navigating AUV capability. It's not manned and it isn't being piloted by wire link, so it has to do stuff autonomously, but it's quite literally built like a fat Type 53 even then. For harbor navigation you'd expect some sort of azipod and a controllable ballast bladder for buoyancy at least. Poseidon has neither.
This isn't unknown to the Russians either, since they have the most diverse stable of AUVs and shallow water submersibles in the world.
Poseidon simply has no serious adaptations indicating shallow water capability. The bulk of the interior is a large steam turbine that intakes water, boils it with an open cycle nuclear reactor, and drives a shaft that pushes at ~55 knots. There's a autopilot computer between the turbine and the warhead, and a high frequency "collision avoidance" sonar. I don't think it can go any slower than 25-30 knots tbh. Probably just has a high and low gear, and one would be used for maneuvering in sprint-drifts, while the other is used for chasing. That would be easiest/cheapest.
I also don't think the Type 65 can push 100 km and actually catch a carrier, either. It only moves at like 25 kts at that range. A carrier would just outrun it.
That advertised range is definitely not useful in most combat situations at standoff, except against maybe a Liberty Ship or unprotected merchant carrier, which is not uncommon a target, and wouldn't be typical for a carrier or convoy engagement. You'd want to get as close as possible and the Russians realize they can't do this anymore with the deployment of SURTASS-LFA. Poseidon is probably just humongous to carry a fat warhead and still be able to literally chase down a supercarrier that's fleeing at 30+ knots after being fired from 60 nmi, which is still an hour of travel for the thing, and ~100 nmi total travel.
Any closer that that would be nearly within the inner defense zone of the BATGRU and heavily patrolled by H-60s and surface frigates. Further out gives the Belgorod and friends a capability comparable to their standoff cruise missiles but actually have a chance of busting through the defense zone (a single Aegis equipped escort would devour the entire missile volley of a Oscar II, much less the two or three typical escorts of a modern CSG) and sinking the carrier.
Everything about Poseidon suggests it's a way to keep a launching submarine out of range of anti-submarine warfare attack and penetrate strong air defense of the U.S. Navy. Modern missiles like the Saccade can't do this, even if they catch the crew by surprise, and there is no capability for subsea-launching a Tsircon AFAIK.
The lack of a conventional fuel propulsion system and reversion to an extremely mechanically simple nuclear shaft drive suggests that Russia probably just lacks the ability to produce highly efficient, electronically controlled turbines or electric motors like the type in the Seahake, and little else, really. They decided to solve the range problem of torpedoes with sheer brute force rather than import Chinese ECUs or Japanese electric motors.
In any other time, they'd have made a DM2A4 ER with a Legenda RORSAT datalink and called it a day I guess, but they can't do that.
Yeah that's the problem, I don't think Poseidon can actually do that. It has almost no ballast controls, or slow speed thrusters, that would indicate typical harbor navigating AUV capability. It's not manned and it isn't being piloted by wire link, so it has to do stuff autonomously, but it's quite literally built like a fat Type 53. For harbor navigation you'd expect some sort of azipod and a controllable ballast bladder for buoyancy.
This isn't unknown to the Russians either since they have the most diverse stable of AUVs and shallow water submersibles in the world.
Poseidon has no serious adaptations indicating shallow water capability. The bulk of the interior is a large steam turbine that intakes water, boils it with an open cycle nuclear reactor, and drives a shaft that pushes at ~55 knots. I don't think it can go any slower than 25-30 knots. It doesn't have a huge gearing setup and there's no electric motor, it's a purely mechanical design built to go fast.
I also don't think the Type 65 can push 100 km and actually catch a carrier, either. That advertised range is definitely not useful in most combat situations, except against maybe a Liberty Ship, and wouldn't be typical for a carrier engagement. Poseidon is probably just humongous to carry a fat warhead and still be able to literally chase down a supercarrier that's fleeing at 30+ knots after being fired from 60 nmi, which is still an hour of travel for the thing.
Everything about Poseidon suggests it's a way to keep a launching submarine out of range of anti-submarine warfare attack.
The lack of a conventional propulsion system and reversion to an extremely mechanically simple nuclear shaft drive suggests that Russia probably just lacks the ability to produce highly efficient, electronically controlled turbines or electric motors like the type in the Seahake, too. They decided to solve the problem with sheer brute force rather than import Chinese ECUs or Japanese electric motors.
You don't necessarily need ballast, as long as the torpedo itself is close to neutrally buoyant. A bow thruster is really only useful at stupidly low speeds. If you're able to control depth and do 25 knots close to the surface you fire up a HF active sonar and do a very tight beam sweep to identify headlands. Or, hell, fire up a LIDAR. I said 15 knots because you're going to cavitate like a monster fart in a bathtub much past that, no matter how much horsepower you have.
And again, the 65cm torpedoes are quite capable of holding a large nuclear warhead, 100+kt assuming old designs, and reaching 100km. I think the 65-76A DT is even wire guided. Let it run for 50km or so to give a last guidance update before you cut the wires.
But I also don't have much respect for a modern US carrier's ASW capabilities. Georgia got pictures of the Lincoln from a lot closer than their captain was happy about, and we weren't even trying to hide.
Poseidon has a nuclear boiler next to a nuclear warhead. It's a hydrodynamic brick that probably drops like a rock if it tries to go slower than "fast" tbf. It's why it runs at like 2,000 meters depth.
If the Russians wanted to attack harbors, they'd use a mothership like USS Parche, and deploy SDVs with ADMs. Not only is that harder to detect but it's what they actually trained to do in the Cold War with the PDSS assault troops and their massive hollow charge limpet mines and Cluster Bay nuclear rocket mines. The Belgorods aren't minisub motherships so I think Pearl and Bangor are safe.
If the Russians wanted to strike U.S. ports they'd use RS-24 with the Vanguard hyperglider. They have a 1950's style SIOP now that integrates everything into mass strategic attack plans because the Russians evolved back to Massive Retaliation after 2003 or 2008 or so, whichever you think was the major watershed moment (Iraq War or Kosovo independence speech).
Evidently they don't think the Type 65s are worth it. Maybe they're not as efficient as advertised. Maybe they're old. Maybe major subcomponents were only available in Ukraine or Estonia and have since vanished.*
*The production center for the Type 65-76A, the last major version of the Type 65, was the S.M. Kirov Machine Plant in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and has since been closed down since the dissolution. All capacity for producing new war shots has been gone for decades and any left in service are approaching 30 years of age.
For real I think Poseidon is just spooky to Westerners, because it's really big, and they don't know why Russia has to have a big torpedo to be purely tactical or "just" equal 100 kilometer range or whatever.
That's because Western countries haven't faced serious economic turmoil in nearly a century or more that requires actual sacrifices in capabilities. One of which is "physical volume". When you can make whatever you want by outsourcing to anyone in the world and instantly building a factory anywhere you forget that some people have to make choices based on scarcity of resources. In Russia's case this would be obvious: high performance electric motors, compact electric batteries, and high temperature turbines. All things very important for torpedo propulsion, Russia lacks.
If Russia had to build a long-range conventional torpedo today from scratch to fit in the 533mm or 650mm tubes, it would need to make it running a diesel boiler or something and probably go only about 30-40 knots. It would be like interwar British torpedoes I guess. This is because Russia is poor and the Dissolution was HIGHLY traumatic for the USSR's most top 3 important industries: nuclear weapons, high performance turbines, and oil refining. All important for undersea propulsion industry.
The most modern in service torpedo, UGST/Fizik, uses Otto Fuel II, but it's not particularly stupendous in performance, being worse than some ADCAPs and definitely worse than the contemporary Spearfish. The newest torpedo for the Boreis is a slightly improved Fizik/UGST with a much better range but little else different. I suspect this is to cover the gap between the older Fiziks and the retirement of the Type 65, but it is only marginally capable of this.
Poseidon seems to be nuclear powered to equate Type 65's general performance characteristics, in that I think you're correct that Type 65 can "basically" cover the same general utility: killing carriers, albeit a bit worse. Since it is conventionally powered and can be literally outran by an alert and astute BATGRU pulling a fat >30 kts with a frigate tailing the HVU, it needs to be fired closer for one thing. Poseidon fixes this.
Poseidon's just big because it's nuclear powered, but making a nuclear reactor that boils water directly and drives a turbine is extremely simple, as it's literally 1950's technology, so it's very cheap and very easy to do for Russia given their lack of major factories which were in the other SSRs, relative inability to produce major production lines, and success of the OKBs in producing hand-made high quality products.
I don't know if that's actually true FWIW, but it makes the most sense factoring in Russia's post-Soviet economic situation, and post-2014 sanctions on dual-use technologies. I'm sure Russia would love some DM4A2 Seahakes but it can't have them.
Poseidon is just the poor man's Type 65-99 or whatever they'd call a super duper Whale. It's not actually cheap per unit, but given what Russia has to work with (limited throughput ateliers), it's a lot cheaper in total cost. The nuclear propulsion gives it a very good chance of killing the carrier provided the torpedo itself isn't killed too. If the "collision avoidance sonar" includes a spherical or horseshoe dome, it might even be capable of detecting and classifying targets on its own, but I doubt this is the case.
Poseidon has a nuclear boiler next to a nuclear warhead. It's a hydrodynamic brick that probably drops like a rock if it tries to go slower than "fast" tbf. It's why it runs at like 2,000 meters depth.
If the Russians wanted to attack harbors, they'd use a mothership like USS Parche, and deploy SDVs with ADMs. Not only is that harder to detect but it's what they actually trained to do in the Cold War with the PDSS assault troops and their massive hollow charge limpet mines and Cluster Bay nuclear rocket mines. The Belgorods aren't minisub motherships so I think Pearl and Bangor are safe.
If the Russians wanted to strike U.S. ports they'd use RS-24 with the Vanguard hyperglider. They have a 1950's style SIOP now that integrates everything into mass strategic attack plans because the Russians evolved back to Massive Retaliation after 2003 or 2008 or so, whichever you think was the major watershed moment (Iraq War or Kosovo independence speech).
Evidently they don't think the Type 65s are worth it. Maybe they're not as efficient as advertised. Maybe they're old. Maybe major subcomponents were only available in Ukraine or Estonia and have since vanished.*
*The production center for the Type 65-76A, the last major version of the Type 65, was the S.M. Kirov Machine Plant in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and has since been closed down since the dissolution. All capacity for producing new war shots has been gone for decades and any left in service are approaching 30 years of age.
Poseidon is just spooky to Westerners, because it's really big, and they don't know why Russia has to have a big torpedo to be purely defensive or "just" equal 100 kilometer range or whatever. That's because Western countries haven't faced serious economic turmoil in nearly a century or more that requires actual sacrifices. When you can make whatever you want by outsourcing to anyone in the world and instantly building a factory anywhere you forget that some people have to make choices based on scarcity of resources.
Poseidon seems to be nuclear powered to equate Type 65's general performance characteristics. It's big because it's nuclear powered, but making a nuclear reactor that boils water directly and drives a turbine is extremely simple, literal 1950's technology, so it's very cheap and very easy to do for Russia.
It would be much harder to try to make a more capable 650mm torpedo because you'd need to setup a whole factory to do that in reasonable time. Poseidon can just be hand built by the OKB laboratories and put into service as a "strategic" weapon that is really just a carrier killer in disguise. I don't know if that's actually true, but it makes the most sense factoring in Russia's post-Soviet economic situation, and post-2014 sanctions on dual-use technologies.
Poseidon is just a poor man's Type 65-99 or whatever they'd call a super duper Whale.
Right. It doesn't make sense why it's that big if it's not a strategic class warhead. Or why they're making single shot disposable nuclear reactors if it doesn't have strategic range and targeting capabilities.
Oh, hell. neutron flux!!! You don't want a warhead particularly close to an unshielded reactor, the neutron flux will cause the warhead to fizzle. And the Russian nuclear scientists know this. Half the length of the torpedo must be some ridiculous neutron shielding... A nice big lug of a warhead, since you can get 1.2 megaton warheads in an 18" diameter package (B83) or a 10MT using a much older design in a 50" diameter package (B53) that's probably more efficient in using the fissionables. Put that almost all the way at the front, with only the sensors ahead of it and guidance electronics behind it. 10m of neutron shielding. Reactor, turbine using hot coolant directly, reduction gears.
But, if you just need it to be deep diving, use the Mk50 torpedo fuel: Sulfur hexafluoride and solid lithium, the reaction makes immense heat to make steam to spin a turbine, and the byproducts take up less volume than the initial components.
I didn't say Type 65 couldn't do the job, just that it would need to be fired closer, and have trouble closing with a carrier if it tried to run. It's more Type 65 isn't an option that's available. Being able to go 50-60 knots for 100 or more nautical miles probably triples the engagement window of a SSN against a carrier.
That's a very different statement from "Type 65 can't do it". Poseidon is just better. I suspect if Russia could make Type 65s, it would probably improve them along the lines of the Fizik or Futlyar, but it simply cannot. It was never a option that was available to them. Poseidon has to do it all now.
It's like how the U.S. really wants a replacement nuclear warhead for its increasingly decrepit atomic arsenal, yet cannot make them, so it will simply not replace the W88 or W76 warheads for the foreseeable future. A replacement warhead would absolutely do the job of retaining thermonuclear yields reliably and not fizzling during initiation. However, that isn't in the cards given the U.S.'s economic and industrial decline since the 1980's. It simply cannot manufacture enough plutonium and the hurdles to overcome this are far greater than simply downrating warheads' yields and improving accuracy.
It makes perfect sense if you consider that Russia has no production lines left for torpedoes that aren't the "early ADCAP" USET/Fizik and little else. Poseidon will be hand made, so it leverages Russia's industrial potential far better, as Russia can hand-make anything they want, more or less. Where Russia has trouble is establishing major production centers and large machine assembly lines.
Russia simply cannot produce machine tools. It isn't the Soviet Union anymore, it's more comparable to France or Italy in this regard, and so every modern weapon must be very high performance using very simple engineering methods that are supportive of low rate orders and hand building.
Here is HI Sutton's translation of the Status-6 cutaway diagram:
The vast bulk of the torpedo is the propulsion system, which it is shrink-wrapped around, and a large "nuclear warhead" which could literally be anything. Perhaps it is nothing but shielding to protect a relatively small warhead. Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps it really is a 100 megaton bomb, but that seems unlikely given its design.
The Russians have hypersonic glide vehicles. Why would they need an intercontinental torpedo too? Just nuke San Francisco with the unstoppable Vanguard hyperglider. Done and done.
No one really answers that question, possibly because Western militaries are compartmentalized, or because no one who has knowledge of SIOP who weighs into these conversations? Russia has a General Staff which tells all the other branches (Army, VKS, Navy, Strategic Rocket Forces) what to do, what to buy, and how they're going to fight. America has nothing similar and lets the branches fight their own little wars instead, which is a large reason why it hasn't won any major war its fought since 1945.
This results in a great waste of potential by the U.S. but a very high level of efficient uses of resources by Russia. It's probably the main reason why Russia can actually maintain a credible superpower capability. Since America in contrast doesn't have a SIOP anymore, it forgot how to fight integrated, nuclear wars.
Poseidon is not a replacement for the SLBMs or ICBMs to destroy cities. It seems optimized for tactical-operational use. That sonar might very well be a high power spherical bow dome. Perhaps the size of Poseidon is to facilitate submarine-like autonomous attack-navigation? We don't know. I personally doubt it but the RuMOD can be surprising sometimes. It would be one of the first truly automatic attack systems in undersea realms, but the Russians also introduced one of the first fully automatic reactors in the Alfa-class, something the U.S. has yet to replicate at any notable scale.
Given Russia's precarious situation regarding mass production, and desire to attack American supercarriers from far away with as little manpower committed as possible, Poseidon makes perfect sense. If it's a truly autonomous, truly artificially intelligent torpedo it would be able to sprint-drift, listen for carriers, pickup their acoustic signal, sail towards the carrier rapidly, literally chase it down if it flees, with little to no capacity to stop it for the BATGRU.
The only way to avoid it would be to station large ASW screens along a potential threat axis of incoming nuclear torpedoes. This is challenging. Far more than aviation strike defense, due to as you said, the limited ASW capabilities of U.S. carriers. They're excellent at detecting Soviet-era submarines in open ocean with SURTASS-LFA and destroying them, but they would struggle with Poseidon.
In that sense, Poseidon isn't an alternative to "nuclear Type 65" or Bulava or RS-24 or any of that.
It's an alternative to rebuilding the disestablished S.M. Kirov Machine Building Plant, regenerating productive potentials for the Type 65 series torpedo or equivalent, and making the several thousand rounds needed for the Russian Navy in a timely manner...
That is the impossible challenge. Just look at the Kurganets-25's recent death by industrial sabotage and the T-14's X-block engine troubles. In that sense, making the 30 or so nuclear reactors by hand and putting them into shells is utterly trivial. It would be trivial for the United States, that is if it had a sizable stockpile of plutonium or HEU sitting around, too. Trading a disposable nuclear reactor and large warhead for a carrier battlegroup is a really good trade, in any case. When the U.S. still had a vibrant and capable nuclear industry, it was discussing similar weapons as Storm Petrel and Poseidon anyway.
Russia simply inherited an obnoxiously large stockpile of refined radioactives from the USSR and has little to do with it besides make disposable reactors.
Welcome to the state of European military industries in the XXI century. Britain is little different in how it builds the Astutes by hand FWIW.
I didn't say Type 65 couldn't do the job, just that it would need to be fired closer, and have trouble closing with a carrier if it tried to run. It's more Type 65 isn't an option that's available. Being able to go 50-60 knots for 100 or more nautical miles probably triples the engagement window of a SSN against a carrier.
Type 65 on high speed is still a 50-60 knot torpedo, but it's currently not believed to be able to reach 100km at that speed.
The catch is that a carrier can and likely will be some 60 nautical miles from the position it was at when the Status-6 was fired at it (1-2 hour travel time), which is a very large search area. I'm not sure you can hear a carrier on sonar at that kind of range.
The vast bulk of the torpedo is the propulsion system, which it is shrink-wrapped around, and a large "nuclear warhead" which could literally be anything. Perhaps it is nothing but shielding to protect a relatively small warhead. Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps it really is a 100 megaton bomb, but that seems unlikely given its design.
You DO NOT want a nuclear warhead being exposed to all that neutron flux, it will literally break the warhead and prevent it from going prompt critical and getting anything other than the chemical explosion.
Takes roughly 35cm of water to stop Themal Neutrons, (edit) and/or 37cm of lead, 10 half-values. Half-values because I found that before tenth-values. And that would need to be the full diameter of the warhead.( /edit)
Poseidon is not a replacement for the SLBMs or ICBMs to destroy cities. It seems optimized for tactical-operational use. That sonar might very well be a high power spherical bow dome. Perhaps the size of Poseidon is to facilitate submarine-like autonomous attack-navigation? We don't know. I personally doubt it but the RuMOD can be surprising sometimes. It would be one of the first truly automatic attack systems in undersea realms, but the Russians also introduced one of the first fully automatic reactors in the Alfa-class, something the U.S. has yet to replicate at any notable scale.
Given Russia's precarious situation regarding mass production, and desire to attack American supercarriers from far away with as little manpower committed as possible, Poseidon makes perfect sense. If it's a truly autonomous, truly artificially intelligent torpedo it would be able to sprint-drift, listen for carriers, pickup their acoustic signal, sail towards the carrier rapidly, literally chase it down if it flees, with little to no capacity to stop it for the BATGRU.
The only way to avoid it would be to station large ASW screens along a potential threat axis of incoming nuclear torpedoes. This is challenging. Far more than aviation strike defense, due to as you said, the limited ASW capabilities of U.S. carriers. They're excellent at detecting Soviet-era submarines in open ocean with SURTASS-LFA and destroying them, but they would struggle with Poseidon.
In that sense, Poseidon isn't an alternative to "nuclear Type 65" or Bulava or RS-24 or any of that.
It's an alternative to rebuilding the disestablished S.M. Kirov Machine Building Plant, regenerating productive potentials for the Type 65 series torpedo or equivalent, and making the several thousand rounds needed for the Russian Navy in a timely manner...
That is the impossible challenge. Just look at the Kurganets-25's recent death by industrial sabotage and the T-14's X-block engine troubles. In that sense, making the 30 or so nuclear reactors by hand and putting them into shells is utterly trivial. It would be trivial for the United States, that is if it had a sizable stockpile of plutonium or HEU sitting around, too. Trading a disposable nuclear reactor and large warhead for a carrier battlegroup is a really good trade, in any case. When the U.S. still had a vibrant and capable nuclear industry, it was discussing similar weapons as Storm Petrel and Poseidon anyway.
Russia simply inherited an obnoxiously large stockpile of refined radioactives from the USSR and has little to do with it besides make disposable reactors.
Given Russia's precarious situation regarding mass production, and desire to attack American supercarriers from far away with as little manpower committed as possible, Poseidon makes perfect sense. If it's a truly autonomous, truly artificially intelligent torpedo it would be able to sprint-drift, listen for carriers, pickup their acoustic signal, sail towards the carrier rapidly, literally chase it down if it flees, with little to no capacity to stop it for the BATGRU.
The only way to avoid it would be to station large ASW screens along a potential threat axis of incoming nuclear torpedoes. This is challenging. Far more than aviation strike defense, due to as you said, the limited ASW capabilities of U.S. carriers. They're excellent at detecting Soviet-era submarines in open ocean with SURTASS-LFA and destroying them, but they would struggle with Poseidon.
That operation model would require being less than 200ft deep, to get above the major thermocline to track surface targets. It would also require slowing down to less than 20 knots for sonar to be effective, and you don't think it can go that slow because it would sink out.
As you point out, it's got a nuclear reactor, steam turbine, reduction gears, and a very large (physically) warhead. A US B53 would physically fit in the bow of Poseidon, and that's a 10-megaton-class boom. The B53 is also a 1958 design, so well within the capabilities of just about anyone to make, if they can get the fissionables.
But let's say that it's programmed to pop up to 150ft every 15 minutes and as it starts the pop up it throttles down. When it gets to 150ft it's doing 15 knots and is ready to sink out. It's coming from such a distance that it's unlikely to be wire guided, so it will either have to go active and reveal its position or stay passive and try to detect a carrier some 100nmi away. And keep in mind, the carrier is doing 25-30 knots for flight ops, so over the course of the hour plus run of the Poseidon that carrier is somewhere in a 60nmi circle. Yes, assuming steaming into the wind is a fairly safe bet, but a relatively low breeze can allow a carrier to sail with the wind and still have 20 knots wind over the deck. Which means that typical proper zigzags will mess things up greatly for a torpedo attack.
Getting all those pieces together is a stretch for the US tech base. Or for a manned sub, honestly. Getting close to a carrier is a pain.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
www.navalnews.com
