The Belgorod was delivered to the Russian Navy earlier this month in the port of Severodvinsk, according to the country’s largest shipbuilder, Sevmash Shipyard.
Experts say its design is a modified version of Russia’s Oscar II-class guided-missile submarines, made longer with the aim of eventually accommodating the world’s first nuclear-armed stealth torpedoes and equipment for pickup of intelligence
If the Belgorod can successfully add these new capabilities to the Russian fleet, in the next decade it could set the stage for a return to Cold War scenes under the ocean, with US and Russian submarines tracking each other and chasing each other with expensive tension. offs.
At 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 stand at 171 meters (569 feet).
The Belgorod was floated in 2019 and was expected to be delivered to the Russian Navy in 2020 after tests and trials, but was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported. No timeline was given for the diver’s first deployment.
‘Mega Torpedo’
What sets the Belgorod apart from any of the nuclear-powered submarines in the Russian fleet, or any of the nuclear submarines operated anywhere in the world, is its mission.
TASS has reported that the submarine will carry the Poseidon nuclear-capable torpedoes under development, which are being designed to be launched from hundreds of kilometers away and to evade coastal defenses by traveling along the seabed.
“This nuclear ‘mega torpedo’ is unique in world history,” US submarine expert HI Sutton wrote on his Covert Shores website in March.
“Poseidon is an entirely new category of weapon. It will reshape naval planning in both Russia and the West, giving rise to new requirements and new counter-weapons,” Sutton wrote.
Both U.S. and Russian officials have said the torpedoes could deliver multi-megaton warheads, setting off radioactive waves that would make stretches of the targeted coastline uninhabitable for decades.
In November 2020, Christopher A. Ford, then Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, said that the Poseidons were being designed to “flood US coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis”.
A US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report in April said the Poseidons are intended as retaliatory weapons, designed to strike an enemy after a nuclear attack on Russia.
According to the CRS report, the Belgorod would be capable of carrying up to eight Poseidons, although some weapons experts say its payload is more likely to be six torpedoes.
Sutton wrote in 2019 that the Poseidon, which is expected to be 2 meters (6.5 ft) in diameter and more than 20 meters (65 ft) long, “is the largest torpedo ever developed by any country”.
This is “thirty times the size of a normal ‘heavy’ torpedo,” Sutton wrote.
Doubts of torpedoes
The CRS reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had touted the Poseidons in a 2018 speech, saying: “They are silent, highly maneuverable and have almost no vulnerabilities for the enemy to exploit.”
If armed with conventional warheads, the Poseidons could be used against targets “including aircraft carrier groups, coastal fortifications and infrastructure,” Putin said.
But there are doubts about the weapon and whether it will eventually be added to Russia’s arsenal.
“This is still a developing technology, both the torpedo and the platform,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists.
Poseidon is not expected to be ready for deployment until the second half of this decade, he said. The CRS said it did not expect the Poseidon torpedoes to be deployed until 2027.
And Kristensen notes that the Belgorod itself is actually a test vessel for the upcoming Khabarovsk class of nuclear-powered submarines, the first of which could be launched this year.
“Ukraine is a reminder that Russia’s advanced weapons are not silver bullets but suffer from reliability problems. There is every reason to believe that an intercontinental-range nuclear-powered torpedo will have its fair share of problems,” Kristensen said .
But other experts caution against any assumption that the Poseidon submarine or torpedoes are not what they are advertised to be.
“Transposing impressions of the Russian tactical air and ground forces onto the Russian nuclear and submarine forces, in particular, impressions based on seeing the execution of a pretty bad plan in Ukraine, could lead to a dangerous underestimation of their competence Russian strategic forces. and capability,” said Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submarine captain and now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security.
“It would be like watching America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and, as a result, questioning the ability of its ballistic missile submarines to execute its nuclear mission, a conclusion that America’s adversaries would reach only at their own peril. .”
“Cat and Mouse Underwater Game”
The Belgorod may be just the first of a fleet of four submarines that could carry the Poseidon torpedoes, the CRS said, with two destined for service in Russia’s Pacific Fleet and two in the Northern Fleet.
Covert Shores’ Sutton wrote in 2020 that the next three Poseidon-armed submarines, the aforementioned Khabarovsk class, “are likely to be the ultimate submarine of the 2020s because they represent a difficult new adversary.”
“Other navies are unlikely to emulate it, but they will want to counter it,” Sutton said of the Khabarovsk class. “The undersea cat-and-mouse game where US Navy and Royal (British) Navy hunter-killer submarines pursue the Russians could be revitalized. A new cold war could be coming in the Arctic, the North Atlantic and the North Pacific,” he wrote.
While the Belgorod could be the future Poseidon test launcher, Sutton said the submarine will likely also function as an intelligence-gathering platform.
“It will be manned by the Russian Navy, but operated under GUGI, the secretive organization of the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research,” and will carry a number of submarines and midget submersibles “to carry out special covert missions,” he said. write Sutton.
In a press release earlier this month, the Russian shipbuilder highlighted the Belgorod’s non-lethal capabilities, saying it opens up “new opportunities for Russia” to conduct “scientific expeditions and rescue operations in the most remote areas of the world ocean”.