Project 945: Sierra class

Yasen M can go down to 600m, but this is probably the maximum depth.  The hulls are made of HY 130 steel. A titanium hull costs as much as two steel ones.  I think that if it would give such an advantage, Russia could perform, for example, Yasen with a titanium hull.  However, they gave up on this.I do not know if the costs are decisive here, or if the descent to much greater depths alone does not give so many advantages to build titanium hulls. Russia could afford such ships and they have a lot of titanium.

That is not a matter of the material price per see, but the technology involved, and the cost of that technology.
The main issue is that titanium reacts with steel acting as a cathode when steel is the anode.
So it increase the corrosion of steel elements, forcing the designers to replace the steel from the whole structure with titanium or other non-reacting materials.
Every single bloody pipe must be made of titanium. That requires a whole new business, alongside the steel one, so functionally doubles the cost of the industrial base you must create to deal with that.
And that is only the beginning.
Welding of Ti is performed in a neutral gas atmosphere because it's melting point is below the ignition point.
So you need big size gas chambers at the yard facility and a specially trained crew with all the skills&approvances for special welding.
It is close to impossible to make a chamber big enough to weld the whole hull section, you can't weld the blocks on the slipway, so a brand new method of combining the blocks must be mastered. You can't weld the whole length piping system, so you need to combine them again and use a different method of sealing the system.
That is a huge mess in the supply chain, a giant additional industrial base needed to be created and sustained along with the traditional one, a huge human resources requirements, and needs extremely solid supervision.
That all combined makes them "golden fishes", not the price of the metal itself

The two 945A's can serve for a long time to come. They first need to get the Laika's (Husky's) in the water before they should think of some super titanium sub.

They have all 4 on hand, but the main issue is the cost of any modernization/repair.
It used to be questioned long time ago, and I would say that this questioning came from the less expected direction - a then director of Zwiezdoczka shipyard, Siergiej Mariczew.
He claimed that those boats won't present any serious improvement over the much less expensive to modernize 971 project.
But as Russians seem to increase the pressure on the deep diving pieces, having 4 such hulls to be transferred for some kind of special operation units can be a really tasty option ...

ALAMO wrote:They have all 4 on hand, but the main issue is the cost of any modernization/repair.
It used to be questioned long time ago, and I would say that this questioning came from the less expected direction - a then director of Zwiezdoczka shipyard, Siergiej Mariczew.
He claimed that those boats won't present any serious improvement over the much less expensive to modernize 971 project.
But as Russians seem to increase the pressure on the deep diving pieces, having 4 such hulls to be transferred for some kind of special operation units can be a really tasty option ...

It will be great if they can upgrade the two older Baracudas but when I last looked there was very little progress made?
It is perhaps true that in overall combat capability they wouldn't offer anything better than the 971's but no other attack subs can come anywhere near their deep diving capability - which is an enormous advantage out in the deep. They can use the oceans layers to their full advantage without ever being detected.

The formal contract for repair and modernization was signed in 2012 but put on hold shortly after. Mariczew claim is from a few years ago either, and back then he confirmed all works to be suspended. So if there anything happened, it would be the post-2018 period only.
And that is why it is unbelievable waste, those things are hunters. Even the 40+ pieces of weaponry on board were unmatched until Seawolf appeared to the scene.

Big_Gazza wrote:One advantage of titanium that people usually forget is that it is immune to seawater corrosion.  Titanium hulled boats simply don't corrode.  Steel boats.... not so much  

I am pretty sure Russia would have figured out a steel grade by now which does not corrode in sea water.

They can use the oceans layers to their full advantage without ever being detected. wrote:

True, the deeper, the less cavitation but a lot of progress has certainly been made in the last 40 years in silencing nuclear powered submarines.  The precision of material processing has increased, as well as new materials, and computer-controlled vibration and noise reduction techniques.  Better screws and coatings.  Russia has certainly made good progress in silencing its submarine.
Besides, not only Russia.  France used an electric drive on Le Triomphant.  In the sense that the turbine drives a powerful electric motor that drives the shaft and the propeller.  Thanks to this, it eliminates many gears.  The US also wants to apply this to the Columbia SSBN submarine.

Of course I think Sierra clas should be modernized.  Compared to the 971, the ship is also better automated.

Indeed.
Not sure if you have seen the interior of the titanium submarine, but the point is, it is not painted. You have flat sheets of titanium everywhere.
This is because it does not need to be painted to withstand the conditions.
One does not construct the hulk using those bizarre types of steel, because it is not needed - you can paint it, and this is a huge accompanying business.
While duplex offers better corrosive resistance for most of the substances, it is not obviously better than let's say 316L grade steel for water corrosion, while being about double in price.
It is always a kind of trade-off - are you determined enough to pay the price for something.
That is why it is used for making chemical tankers tanks and piping and is vastly used in the offshore business, where you handle other corrosive materials, like sulfur, acids etc.
But again, it requires a very strict technological regime for welding procedures, skilled personnel, and weather conditions.

Titanium passivates with titanium oxide and this is the best protection in itself, just like specialized coatings etc. Contrary to rust, it does not penetrate further into the material structure.

An interesting story happened in 1992 when the USS Baton Rouge and the B-276 Kastroma (Sierra1) collided near the Russian naval base of Severomorsk. The Baton Rouge was on a covert mission within Russian territorial waters when the accident happened. Kastroma's sail was damaged, but the boat was was laid up on 28 March 1992 and had been fully repaired at Nerpa shipyards in Snezhnogorsk by 29 June 1992 and returned to service.

The Baton Rouge was not so lucky and the sub was deactivated at Mare Island shipyard on 1 November 1993 and eventually scrapped. The Kastroma was duly decorated with a kill mark on the sail!

Folks,
There will be something nice&new for the matter, on weekend.

Just for a tase



So the first thing we can see, are 3 pieces anchored by the pier, while one of the earlier 945 series is missing. But I guess that is the one put in a dock for modernization few years ago, and left there.

I count 4 "fins".

Exactly. The last one to the camera.
We see 945 in the front, followed by 2x945A, and some 671 in the background, Moskowski as I have seen the previous material already.

BTW, it is B-239 Karp that is missing, sitting at Zwiezdoczka and waiting ...

And here you go with the full episode :

Really nice video but I hope that there will be an English version soon (rural area no good for streaming large videos). Amazing full scale training facility of what looks like the Lira submarine? The Lira was quite amazing and for many years regarded in the West as the fastest sub. It's reactor had to be "on" all the time which made it a very good "interceptor". Another Titanium sub, the much larger K-222 turned out to be the fastest to everybody's surprise!

From what I can gather most of the Titanium technologies are still in place for a future submarine. They also feature the Piranha special ops sub and the new Serval. Hopefully they will produce a good couple of Servals for the Russian Navy. Not sure if the Servals will be Titanium though but it seems like the robotic sub is?

Mir wrote:Really nice video but I hope that there will be an English version soon (rural area no good for streaming large videos). Amazing full scale training facility of what looks like the Lira submarine? The Lira was quite amazing and for many years regarded in the West as the fastest sub. It's reactor had to be "on" all the time which made it a very good "interceptor". Another Titanium sub, the much larger K-222 turned out to be the fastest to everybody's surprise!
From what I can gather most of the Titanium technologies are still in place for a future submarine. They also feature the Piranha special ops sub and the new Serval. Hopefully they will produce a good couple of Servals for the Russian Navy. Not sure if the Servals will be Titanium though but it seems like the robotic sub is?

Project 705 sums up perfectly well the things we have discussed in some other thread, about the general quality and concept behind the US vs. SU submarine fleets.
It shows perfectly well something more: how stupid is the concept of the Soviets falling behind the US in a sub race.
It used to be perfectly opposite, and the Soviet subs are considered to be racing cars compared to some sub-urban piece of crap made of wooden doors
Imagine the technical level of a submarine, that was manned by a 15 people shift only, with a crew of 31 in total. All officers and it is enough to watch some old records to be really amazed by the level of the gallantry of the crew.
Enough to see the cockpit of it, to understand that we are talking about something mindblowing, especially in the 70s.
Even those chairs look amazing, I would take one for my saloon any moment. A great piece of industrial design.
That was a killer, combined with WA-111 created an enormously potent weapon system, that could neither be chased while speeding 40+kt, nor found when diving to 700m.
The level of propaganda bullshit produced to cover that is really impressive.

Yes those chairs are amazing!

Gorby and Yeltsi caused some terrific damage - esp to the navy!

Thankfully those 945's did manage to survive - they are still real game changers.

Only thing missing is Captain Kirk.

Mir wrote:
Thankfully those 945's did manage to survive - they are still real game changers.

Now the real game changer is 885M.  Especially since they have powerful weapons.  Cirkons, Onyx, Kalibr and soon with Kalibr with a range of 4500 km.In addition, modern missile torpedoes So in the case of nuclear submarines, they are always ahead.Yasen M is overkill compare to another competitors SSN.

Yasen is clearly the best sub possible with the weapons it has. It has a perfectly balanced size, weapons carried, strike stand off range, stealth and crew.