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Russia starts construction of two more nuclear-powered super-subs
The Barents Observer ^ | 21 July 2020 | Atle Staalesen

Posted on 07/20/2020 9:11:46 PM PDT by texas booster

It was a great day for the Russian Navy. On the 20th July, three shipyards laid down the keel of six new vessels. Among them were the “Voronezh” and the “Vladivostok”, two Yasen-M class submariners.

The subs are the 8th and 9th vessels of the Yasen class. Like their sister ships, the “Voronezh” and the “Vladivostok” are built at the Sevmash yard in Severodvinsk, northern Russia.

“The Navy has always staunchly protected the borders of Russia [and] in our days it plays an exclusively important role in providing Russian security, it is a firm guardian of national interests, helps support the strategic balance and world stability,” President Vladimir Putin said in a speech delivered at the Zaliv Yard in the Crimea.

While the Zaliv will build two landing ships, the Severnaya yard in St.Petersburg will build two new frigates and the Sevmash - two submarines.

According to the President, Russia has over the last eight years built as many as 200 new naval vessels. By year 2027, at least 70 percent of the country’s Navy’s will be modern ships, he assured.

The “Voronezh” and “Vladivostok” are believed to be ready for hand-over to the Navy in year 2027 and 2028. They will most likely serve in the Northern Fleet and Pacific Fleet respectively. Both vessels will be equipped with the Kalibr-M cruise missiles, as well as the Tsirkon hypersonic missile.

“Today, we are laying down the keel of ships with hypersonic weapons, on which the future of the Russian submarine fleet leans,” General Director of Sevmash Mikhail Budnichenko said in the ceremony.

(Excerpt) Read more at thebarentsobserver.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; Politics/Elections; Russia
KEYWORDS: russia; submarines; yasen
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The Russian Defense Ministry originally planned to build seven Yasen submarines, all of them to be delivered to the Navy by year 2015. However, in early 2019 Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Krivoruchko announced that another two vessel would be built.

Yasen and Yasen-M class are the first 4th generation multi-purpose submarines for the Russian navy. They are said to be both the most expensive and technically advanced in the Russian Navy.

1 posted on 07/20/2020 9:11:46 PM PDT by texas booster
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To: texas booster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasen-class_submarine

And from National Interest.org:

The Yasen class measures 390 feet long and displaces 13,800 tons. It has a crew of just ninety, far fewer than its American equivalents, suggesting a high level of automation is built into the submarine. In shape it resembles the earlier Akula class, but much longer behind the conning tower and a hump to accommodate vertical launch tubes. According to the authoritative Combat Fleets of the World, Severodvinsk has a OK-650KPM two-hundred-megawatt nuclear reactor, good for the life of the boat, which drives it to speeds of up to sixteen knots surfaced and thirty-one knots submerged. Other reports peg it slightly faster, at thirty-five knots. It can run quiet underwater at twenty knots.

Severodvinsk’s sensor suite consists of a Irtysh-Amfora sonar system, with a bow-mounted spherical sonar array, flank sonar arrays and a towed array for rearward detection. It has a MRK-50 Albatross (Snoop Pair) navigation/surface search radar and features a Rim Hat electronic support/countermeasures measures suite.

Armament for the submarines consists of four standard-diameter 5,333-millimeter torpedo tubes and four 650-millimeter torpedo tubes. The torpedo tubes can accommodate homing torpedoes and 3M54 Klub missiles, which are available in both antiship, land attack and antisubmarine versions. For even more firepower, the Yasen boats are each equipped with twenty-four vertical launch missile tubes behind the conning tower, each capable of carrying P-800 Oniks ramjet-powered supersonic antiship missiles.

2 posted on 07/20/2020 9:16:33 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster
The money quote in my book:

According to the President, Russia has over the last eight years built as many as 200 new naval vessels. By year 2027, at least 70 percent of the country’s Navy’s will be modern ships, he assured.

When you get away from the fan boi youtube junk, this is a really good submarine. While being aboard new ships no longer means what it used to, there is no denying that Putin is moving forward on multiple military fronts.

The real question is how hard do they train and how often can they put to sea. Unlike land forces, submariners need to be pretty bright and dedicated to stay alive under many tons of seawater.

That does tend to sharpen the mind.

3 posted on 07/20/2020 9:21:38 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster

From the same source, before we get the usual scoffing idiots:

In October 2014, one of the U.S. Navy’s top submarine officers, Rear Admiral Dave Johnson, the Naval Sea Systems Command’s program executive officer (PEO) for submarines, said “We’ll be facing tough potential opponents. One only has to look at the Severodvinsk, Russia’s version of a nuclear guided missile submarine (SSGN). I am so impressed with this ship that I had Carderock build a model from unclassified data.”

According to 60 Minutes, unnamed Pentagon officials claimed that Severodvinsk “slipped into the Atlantic Ocean and for weeks evaded all of the attempts to find her” in the summer 2018.

***

Russia actually has had heavily automated (as in crew-requirement-reducing machinery, not as in unmanned operation) subs out for several decades, with the first widespread example being the Alfa class boats, which don’t seem to have had many show-stopping problems with their automation. The US, not so much.

And the Yasen-Ms are even quieter than the Yasen-class Severodvinsk. Something to think about.


4 posted on 07/20/2020 9:25:12 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: texas booster
A view of the second Yasen-M class submarine at commissioning on Dec 25, 2019.


5 posted on 07/20/2020 9:26:29 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster

Russia is NOT our friend. Remember that Obama wanted some more time before he would make new arrangements with Putin/Russia.

Wonder just what those “arrangements/leeway” were? I call it treason.


6 posted on 07/20/2020 9:37:09 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: texas booster

Also worth noting that the Russian Navy’s latest surface combatant class, the Admiral Gorshkov class frigate, had the class lead successfully circumnavigate the globe on its first try without need of a dockyard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Gorshkov-class_frigate

Meanwhile, neither of our LCS class lead ships were able to do this, and neither was the DD1000 Zumwalt class lead. All had major problems requiring dockyard work. Our second Zumwalt had total systems failure and drifted out of control in the Panama Canal before it ran aground.

Again - something to think about.


7 posted on 07/20/2020 9:40:12 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: texas booster

“...They are said to be both the most expensive and technically advanced in the Russian Navy....”

Most expensive, eh? Where is Russia getting all the money to pay for these boats?? Hmmmm??


8 posted on 07/20/2020 9:42:13 PM PDT by EagleUSA
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To: MadMax, the Grinning Reaper

Probably more things in line with killing the F-22 early and dumping money and time into boondoggles like the F-35 and the stupid LCS programs. Bush did damage of his own to our forces as well, so essentially we’ve been marking time for the better part of two decades and are desperately having to play catch-up now.


9 posted on 07/20/2020 9:43:09 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: texas booster

That is quite a tail on that beast.


10 posted on 07/20/2020 9:43:30 PM PDT by doorgunner69 (Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading - T Jefferson)
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To: EagleUSA

Expensive is relative. Their estimated unit cost is $800 million, where the crappy nearly useless LCS class ships we bought cost between $400 million and $1.8 billion apiece.

As for where they’re getting the money? Petroleum sales are going back up and they do cheerfully sell weapon systems to the world market in large numbers. They also have access to precious metals and such in Siberia.


11 posted on 07/20/2020 9:47:26 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: doorgunner69

The cover hides a pump-jet propulsion system as is used on our counterpart Seawolf and Virginias as well as the LCS. Pump-jet has become popular in recent years in civilian applications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump-jet


12 posted on 07/20/2020 9:50:20 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: texas booster

Thankfully we spend TEN TIMES AS MUCH on our military, so we’re building 10 times as many new subs and planes.

But nice try, Russia!


13 posted on 07/20/2020 10:10:15 PM PDT by BobL
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To: Spktyr

Ah, so. A submarine jet-ski water jet of sorts? A high and low speed option with prop or water jet only? Reverse does not work well for water jets as I recall.


14 posted on 07/20/2020 10:13:37 PM PDT by doorgunner69 (Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading - T Jefferson)
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To: doorgunner69

Most likely it’s a ducted propeller type. However, they’re (correctly) keeping their adversaries guessing by hiding what it looks like - because among other things, you can then computer model it based on photos and figure out weaknesses.


15 posted on 07/20/2020 10:17:14 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: doorgunner69
After all the work put into machining quiet propeller blades, the sub designers put four flat surfaces to cavitate if used more than a few degrees?

Hey, it's their billion dollars. Just drop a few of the neodymium magnet sheets onto the hull on the way out to sea.

16 posted on 07/20/2020 10:21:56 PM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: BobL

We spend ten times more - but we also buy useless crap like the LCS, cripple our DD1000 (which doesn’t have a working gun because we refused to buy ammo for it) and such like, so we pour a lot of that money down holes.

Also, we’re *not* building “ten times” as many new subs and planes.


17 posted on 07/20/2020 10:23:12 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: texas booster

Uh.... you do know we did the same on ours, right?

https://news.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/121101-N-ZZ999-205.jpg

That’s the Virginia-class attack submarine Minnesota (SSN-783) under construction in 2012.


18 posted on 07/20/2020 10:24:46 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: texas booster
This is what the back end of a Virginia looks like:

Hm, looks like flat surfaces that cavitate if used more than few degrees.

19 posted on 07/20/2020 10:27:10 PM PDT by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.)
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To: Spktyr
Wow, that is a helluva lot different than the old multiple blade screws!

I am sure it rides a lot lower in the water surfaced and underway so the fan is under water.

20 posted on 07/20/2020 10:34:57 PM PDT by doorgunner69 (Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading - T Jefferson)
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