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). You can contact him on LinkedIn.New images appear to show final moments of Russian warship He holds a master's degree in security studies and European affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. "We do but not for 100% of the time," he replied.Ĭonstantine Atlamazoglou works on transatlantic and European security.
NATO militaries are guarded when describing their own capabilities to find those subs, but officials have acknowledged that they can't see everything they want to see.Īt a Senate hearing in February 2020, the head of US European Command was asked if US forces have "sufficient visibility" on Russian submarines in the Atlantic. While the Russian navy fell into disrepair after the Cold War, NATO's focus on finding and tracking Russian subs has intensified in recent years as Moscow has strengthened its undersea fleet and shown the ability to strike target deep inland with new cruise missiles.Įxperts have said new technologies will make detecting enemy subs more complex than ever in the years ahead. However, the North Atlantic, through which many such cables pass, "is such a deep and wide area" that even if cables were protected with sensors and an approaching threat were detected, "by the time the defending force would go to the site, the cables and pipes would have already been destroyed and the offending sub would be long gone," Pöyry, who is also a captain in the Finnish military reserve, told Insider.Ī Russian sub in the eastern Mediterranean fires Kalibr cruise missiles at ISIS targets in Syria in September 2017. Protecting that infrastructure is feasible in relatively shallow waters and close to naval bases, conditions that exist in the Baltic and Nordic seas, if sufficient submarine-detecting sensors are placed in the right areas, said Tuomas Pöyry, vice president of Image Soft, a Finnish company that develops underwater surveillance systems. "We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don't believe we have ever seen," the US Navy admiral in charge of NATO's submarine forces said in 2017.
Since then, Russian submarines have deployed more often and for longer and their activity close to critical undersea infrastructure has increased. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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