Russia's "Severodinsk"
Disney's "Nautilus"
Nuclear Cruiser of New Generation: "While the testing of “Severodvinsk” nuclear cruiser is about to finish, many experts believe that Russia has got the superior position in the development of submarine technologies. The Russian submarine may hit enemy ships, other submarines and shore targets. It will start to operate in the Arctic soon."
Russia's "Severodinsk"
Disney's "Nautilus"
“Severodvinsk” launched cruise missile
Nuclear weapons arms control was easier in the old days when a strategic missile was the one that could hit a target far away and a tactical weapon had a near-battle field range. Not so any more after Russia’s successful launch of the submarine based Caliber cruise missile in the White Sea yesterday.
The new supersonic missile hit its target, reports Rossiskaya Gazeta. The Calibr missile has a flight range that exceeds 2,500 kilometer, according to the portal NavalToday. With such range, the cruise missile can be defined as a strategic weapon if tipped with a nuclear warhead. The new START agreement between Russia and USA does, however, not include long-range cruise missiles into account, a fact said to weaken the deal.
Another cruise missile the submarine is believed to carry has an even longer range, 5,000 kilometer according to an infographic posted by RIA Novosti.
Cruise missiles tipped with nuclear warheads were officially removed from all the Northern fleet’s multi-purpose and attach submarines in 1992. An agreement between President Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush (the older) from October 1991 stipulated such removal. This was two months before the breakup of the USSR. In January 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin confirmed the deal to remove all non-strategic nuclear weapons from naval vessels and scrap 1/3 of them. The rest were put into onshore storage facilities.
Since then, multi-purpose and attack submarines sailing in the Barents Sea and other world oceans have not been armed with nuclear weapons. At least not officially. .....
There. Now don't you feel better?
Posted by gerardvanderleun at January 22, 2014 1:05 PM
The quietest subs are diesel-electric, which are still being made. Probably the quietest such subs are German. As one submarine-officer friend of mine said, they are simply a hole in the water and no noisier.
Posted by: Donald Sensing at January 22, 2014 6:38 PMThe Russians always had good subs. They never gave up their Cold War dreams, just the way they controlled the Russian people. Now its organized crime in charge instead of socialist dictators but its the same guys for the most part and their foreign policy never changed.
Posted by: Christopher Taylor at January 22, 2014 10:16 PMOur RINO friends helped Obama pass a nuclear arms control treaty that required the US to dismantle many of our nukes while giving Russia permission to INCREASE and modernize their nukes.
Treason in a suit.
Posted by: Scott M at January 23, 2014 12:13 AMMy uncle and his son, my cousin, were on subs in WWII and in the 70's. Both told me subs are driven by electric motors. The current ones use nuclear power to run the generators that charge the battery's that run the electric motors and the older ones uses diesel fueled engines to run the generators. Which is quieter? I've heard diesel generators, they are not very quiet. What is it about nuclear generators that makes them louder?
Posted by: ghostsniper at January 23, 2014 7:06 AMGhostsniper, you've been misinformed.
Posted by: Gary in Texas at January 23, 2014 8:05 AMghost - Without research to refresh my recollection, I believe diesel-electrics can only run the diesel engines on the surface, and the fuel supply is a bulky liquid. Submerged, diesel-electrics only have the electric motors running. Nuclear powered don't have to surface to charge/re-charge batteries, and the fuel supply lasts a lot longer, which I understand are their chief advantages over diesel-electrics. Also, I believe nuclear powered subs have steam engines driving the generators, the steam being produced by the nuclear fuel. In that sense, they are kind of a throwback.
Posted by: BillH at January 23, 2014 8:32 AMI'm the son of a career U.S. Navy submariner, and am rather close to the subject.
Nuclear subs use their nuke pile to superheat desalinated seawater, flashing it into "live steam", which is then run through steam-turbines, then reduction gears to turn the propeller shaft.
The noise inherent in a nuke sub is in the various pumps to manage the water circuits, the turbine itself and the reduction gears.
A diesel-electric sub runs on it's diesels on the surface, with a significant portion of their output directed to generators, which recharge their huge banks of batteries. The diesels do NOT directly turn the shaft, but rather, those generators, and ONLY those generators. The shaft is turned by an electric motor.
When submerged, that electric motor is running off of the charge stored in those batteries.
State of the art diesel-electrics are now hybrids, with various peroxide (and other oxidants) allowing for submerged operation of the diesels, affording much greater submerged range and endurance. They're not so quiet in that mode, but it's there if they need it.
On battery alone though, they're actually quieter than the ambient background sounds of the ocean itself.
Modern ASW (anti-submarine warfare) technology is often attuned to that very phenomenon; finding that unnaturally quiet spot, moving slowly through the water.
Satellites can also track the wake of a submerged sub from space. Can't identify the sub, or pin it's location exactly, (the wake may take some tens of minutes to rise to the surface), but at least they can know what neighborhood it's recently visited.
It truly is a never ending game of cat and mouse. Sadly, our ASW asset base has been diminishing at a frightfully rapid pace. And THAT, friends, is the worry.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
VIRUS ALERT! Don't click on the link to the "New Cruiser". It goes to a US-Russia site, and it's absolutely chok-fulla-malware.
Gerard, you might want to put a warning on that one, or just strip out the link?
It's bad juju.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Thanks, Jim. Fixed.
Posted by: vanderleun at January 23, 2014 2:28 PMSomething to think about, when you consider how drastically Obama is gutting our military.
On top of the huge spending reductions, Obama is trying to demoralize the military by denying them cost of living raises — while food stamp recipients are getting a 30% raise.
Obama is continuing his treachery. We are being sold out by a true Manchurian Candidate. Nothing else explains what he is doing.
Posted by: Smokey at January 24, 2014 12:31 PMRemember the Kursk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_explosion
Posted by: Eric Blair at January 26, 2014 5:47 PM
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