Project 885: Yasen class #2

If what is intended is to make a smaller submarine with less displacement and length, it will also carry fewer weapons, what has been published about the Husky is that it will be the length of the Akula, about 110-115 meters, and it would carry only 16 launchers missiles (4x4)

Frankly, I doubt very much that the Russian Navy wants this, the Yasen-M is a bit longer (130m) but it carries a lot more weapons.
Anyway, less than a dozen Yasen are not going to be done.

It really depends on their goals... if the goal is to make a smaller lighter slightly less well armed submarine that can be produced and operated in much greater numbers because of a smaller crew and better automation and systems then it might be worth the reduction in weapons per boat to increase the available weapon numbers at sea per fleet.

With the Kilo to Lada move the Lada is as well armed as the Kilo, if not more so, with a lighter sub with a much smaller crew... if they can get it doing what they intend it to be able to do it is an excellent trade off in most terms.

The replacement for the Yasen is a bit like the Borey replacement for the Akula... there was little chance Borey could carry more SLBMs than Akulas, but the idea was that instead of having 6 Akulas you could have 12 Boreys.

Having more attack cruise missile subs is probably more useful than having fewer with more weapons per boat.

Some new technologies they might be able to add on to any old design, while other technologies will require to be part of the design before the sub hits the water for the first time.

Obviously without knowing what these new technologies might be this is all very speculative, but in terms of stealth you can't create a stealth fighter by adding stealth stuff to a non stealthy design. You can only get a MiG-29 or Su-27 so far when it comes to being stealthy because fundamentally they carry their ordinance externally and the lines and shaping of the wings and bits was not created originally with stealth in mind.

The first MiG-29s were criticised because the gaps between the surface panels were so big you could get your finger into them... but obviously surface drag is not effected by such things anyway so in terms of performance it didn't matter... and in terms of cost to make... it made them cheaper and easier to make because the tolerances were quite large. When stealth becomes a factor however that is a problem and a problem they sorted out.

AMCXXL wrote:
If it is only a matter of installing new technologies, they can be put inside the Yasen and make a second series of Yasen II
If what is intended is to make a smaller submarine with less displacement and length, it will also carry fewer weapons, what has been published about the Husky is that it will be the length of the Akula, about 110-115 meters, and it would carry only 16 launchers missiles (4x4)
Frankly, I doubt very much that the Russian Navy wants this, the Yasen-M is a bit longer (130m) but it carries a lot more weapons.
Anyway, less than a dozen Yasen are not going to be done.
At the moment, what Russia must do is repair and modernize the Soviet submarines that it has available and continue delivering the Borey's and Yasen-M currently projected until the year 2030 and then continue manufacturing one submarine a year until the desired number is reached.

Talking about "fewer weapons" requires a wider comment. The truth is that Russian subs usually carried more weapons than their opponents. French Rubis class nuclear attack sub carries only 14 (fourteen!) units, mixed SM39 and F17. Kilo has 18 pcs being about the same size and conventional...
Vanilla 688 carried 25 pcs, while the newer Trafalgar class - 30. Soviet 971 class carries 40 pcs, while 945 - up to 45 ...
Taking that as a base, we can inspect closer a hunter submarine of the 705 project, that carried 18 pcs indeed, but was much, much more compact rather than other nuclear subs. Equal to small Rubis...
Considering today's technology, replacing 650mm tubes with huge ammunition, and adding VLS compartments, I suppose one can get a 30-40 pcs of on board ammunition even for relatively small submarine, like 3000+ ton.

the size of the ship does not determine its cost or the complexity of construction.

So if you want a 40 thousand ton submarine you can have one for less than a 4 thousand ton submarine?

Size determines capacity and requires specific things like powerplants that are sufficient to move the sub at the speeds required so of course it will effect price.

The ideal would be a cargo ship model where most of the volume is space for cargo (ie missile tubes) with a tiny crew and the smallest propulsion that is bare minimum to move from A to B... but modern subs require rather more than that.

A Yasen and a Husky will have similar prices and build times if they carry similar weapons systems, reactor size and power, command and control, sonar, etc.

Which is like claiming the Su-35 and Su-57 can have similar prices when carrying the same weapons and engines and avionics... well that might be not far from the truth, but the Su-57 probably carries less max ordinance because of the limitations of internal ordinance, if you could fit all the Huskys systems and equipment into a Yasen for the same price then why bother with Husky... wasn't Husky supposed to be a modular sub that could be modified to do different jobs as required?

Can Yasen do that?

In fact the first 3 Boreys were made from sections of Akulas, the difference is the length of the submarine, the section has a similar width in the AKulas, Yasen and Boreys
The Akulas are 110 to 113 meters long, the Yasen-M 130 (The first 139 m.) and the Borey 160 m. the first three and 170 m. the Borey-A.

So you are assuming the Husky will be the same width?

If you make a submarine similar to the Yasen-M with the length of an Akula, you only lose weapons capacity, you cut the missile launchers VLS in half. In the rest the submarine will be fundamentally the same and will have a price and construction time not very different

The internal volume of the Akulas was huge and was not really very efficiently used... I would suggest as you have practically already said a Yasen diameter sub the length of an Akula would be a Borey wouldn't it? And it can carry 12 or even 16 missiles which is not really a lot less than the 20 the Akula carries.

The point is that with SSBNs they are not interested in carrying lots of missiles in each sub, it is more useful to have 12 subs with 12 missiles than to have 6 subs with 24 missiles each, especially if those 12 subs are smaller and disperse over a greater area.

With SSGNs on the other hand it is a balance between stealth and weapon capacity, really big subs are not so stealthy or so manouverable.

As you say, length is the key where modules can be added like AIP systems or VLS systems etc etc, so for a new sub one way of improving capacity would be to make it wider.

For example, the difference between the first Yasen and the Yasen-M is that they are more modern and automated , which reduces the crew from more than 90 to only 64 people, therefore the reduction in the need for crew living space determines a decrease. in the size of the ship with the same features, being able to reduce the length from 139 to 130 meters.

Yes, I understand... and not even just living area but also food store capacity can be reduced or even kept the same to allow for longer trips... food doesn't take up an enormous amount of space, though freezer space is often limited.

Submarines of previous generations had different widths because they had a different structure, about 10 meters in the 2nd generation and 8 meters in the 1st generation.

So there is a trend for new generations to get wider... not just with humans...

Close range combat between submarines in the middle of the ocean is a thing of the past that rarely happened in reality beyond movies like "The Hunt for Red October".
In addition, Russia can use the Varshavyanka and Lada for this purpose in areas near the coasts.

Well to be fair submarine on submarine combat is actually rather rare, though they have been practising all this time... without launching anything of course.

The US Virginias have grown from 115 meters and a VLS for 12 missiles to 140 meters in the V block, adding an additional VLS section for 28 more missiles, totaling 40 missiles plus 25 weapons in the torpedo compartment in both cases.
However the Virginia width is only about 10 meters, similar to Victor class of 2nd generation
Surprisingly, it has an astronomical crew of 135 people, more than double the crew of the Yasen-M.

It also has four McDonalds, a KFC and a Burger King... Pizza Hut are in talks with the Navy...

AMCXXL wrote:

That is not possible nor will it happen, submarines will grow in weapons capacity and length. You are not going to build a nuclear submarine the size of a conventional one so that it carries few weapons.

The question is if we are talking about the technical or doctrinal side of the issue.
Technically, it is possible to construct a submarine of 3000+ displacement and around 40 weapons on board. P-800 container in 720x8900 mm. The hull diameter of 705 was 9.5 m in the thickest part, and 6.7m on average. It has a bulky and short hull.



The answer to compact size of this boat is its crew size. Half of the boat was de facto unmanned, with TV controlling system only and rapid reaction teams only intervening in a case of emergency. This was the first submarine having a rescue chamber, too.
Just take a look at this beauty. It is a bloody racing car ...



I will just remind you, that 705D modified project was on the table, extending the length of the sub hull and sail to accommodate 30 pcs of torpedos and 6 cruise missiles in the conning tower.

It was 50 years ago ...

Automatics developed further, and Russkie has been a class of its own in that matter. Their missile carriers have half of US attack sub crew ...

Now about the doctrine .. well ... Russkie seems to be devoted to distributed lethality concept for a while. Small missile carriers with are a good proof of that. Why do we consider they won't follow the same concept for submarines? Reducing the crew means you can make the nuclear powered boat much smaller without compromising range and endurance ...
Losos class subs were manned by 9 people, two four officers shifts and the commander ... and carried the very same tasks, had torpedo tubes, sonar/recon suite etc ...

16 missiles which is not really a lot less than the 20 the Akula carries.

The difference is in the size of the missiles. The R-39 weighted some 90t, more than double the weight of the Bulava.

The R-39 weighted some 90t, more than double the weight of the Bulava. wrote:

Yes, the R-39 was a powerful missile. It also had a large throw weight of about 2.8 tons. His modification Grom was supposed to have a throw weight of 3 tons.
Buława is currently one of the smallest SLBMs in current arsenals. It has a small throw weight of only 1.15 tons. It is enough for 6 MIRVs but it will hold less decoys and decoy warheads.

They can simply go for one hull structure, as they did for 677.
And yu have half of your questions answered.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure about the direct correlation of increasing length with the number of weapons.
Keep in mind, that the 688 was a project with hot beds. Sounds crazy even for the 70s, yet that was the truth.
Virginia is nothing more than an evolution of it, and the crew numbers haven't changed much.
So I would place the crew comfort increase higher in the dimensional changes rather that anything else.
You know what is the catch, to drive an old Chevy and advertise it as better than your neighbour's vanilla fresh Infinity
NATO subs have been severely inferior with all the principal parameters, so the propaganda was a solution. Always has been.

Besides, considering that in one of the last surveys it turned out that half of the US Navy personnel has problems with understanding commands in English, maybe they need translators on board Navaho Indians or something

They are useless for open ocean conflict 

Depends on the range of the missiles they carry. 

IF you want a submarine that only launches missiles from the TLT, 

The good old "Yankee Notch":

All cruise missiles coming from torpedo tube-like launchers.

The difference is in the size of the missiles. The R-39 weighted some 90t, more than double the weight of the Bulava.

That is true, but air breathing scramjet powered missiles could be a fraction of the weight and size and still have enormous range, or nuclear propelled cruise missiles with unlimited range could be launched in any direction to reach any target.

Oscar class subs could only carry 24 supersonic carrier killers, and the same sub could now carry 72... but then the Orlan class ships with 20 of the same supersonic anti ship missiles could be fitted with 10 x UKSK launchers which means 80 missiles ready to fire.

Most importantly a sub intended to carry missiles of enormous range don't really need to be super fast, getting to their launch positions and then sneaking around at very low speed being very quiet and changing depths and directions all the time to evade any trackers is their job so having an extra wide body with a slim central manned area with missile tubes down each side between the inner and outer hull that might also be pressurised to reduce noise, but equally be packed with noise dampening material and decoys and all sorts of drones and other equipment, the manned portion could be extra small and perhaps even made of spheres so the diving depth of the sub could be over 1km with the missile compartments pressurised but able to be pressurised and depressurised much farther and further than manned areas could safely be changed.... no people means no chance of the bends... it is just about whether the hardware can take it...

You could even design the manned section to detach with its own propulsion and small power supply as its own rescue boat....

Akula can carry 40 weapons (torpedoes and cruise missiles) but the surface displacement is 8400, the difference with Victor´s or previous classes with 4000 tons is the hull structure , and this will not change.
The inner space is ablout the same except for the length of the ship

Fully automating the torpedo room and increase the number of external tubes that are loaded in port and are ready to fire at any point in the mission would also reduce the requirements for crew...

The only reasons Russia makes small missile boats is because they are good for coastal defence and for a time were a loophole in the INF treaty. They are useless for open ocean conflict and defending trade or far away allies.

Well subs are pretty useless all round except in war... as a policeman to keep trade routes open and to stop highjacking by mask wearing african pirates or non mask wearing US and British and French and other western navy pirates, you need something on the surface that your merchant fleet can call upon to assist if there is trouble.

A Yasen cannot help in such a case except over the radio to suggest those trying to seize a Russian or pro BRICS ship that they would regret it... their only other action would be to launch a missile and sink a ship... which would certainly be considered an act of war.

For a destroyer it can change direction and head towards the incident location and I would say most of the time that alone would be enough to make the western country trying it on the back the **** down.

Ironically even a Russian corvette would have the sort of missiles to make any western ship think twice when they have no idea what is in their launch tubes at the moment.

But obviously large ships make more sense further from Russian waters... and of course Russian allies will likely start buying Russian designed ships too and can defend their own merchant marine too.

All cruise missiles coming from torpedo tube-like launchers.

Which is another factor... many Soviet and Russian subs seem to have their torpedo tubes in the nose, but some subs have them half way down the sides of the boat angled outwards. This frees the nose of the sub for a much larger and more effective sonar set, but having the tubes on the flanks means the torpedo room could be located where the SLBMs are on a former SSBN, you could carry enormous numbers of weapons... but I honestly think it makes more sense to use vertical launch tubes for missiles as they are ready to fire with no delay to load.

If you need more than 40 torpedos then I would say you are doing well, though I accept that there are lots of different weapon types a sub could carry so you would have a variety of weapons for different purposes, which might result in you using weapons that are not ideal for what you are using them for just because you didn't bring enough of the type you needed.

Equally there are loads like Mines that can be even more effective than torpedoes for denying access to areas or simply stopping commerce till the area has been checked and swept.

Another factor would be electric drive, which would allow the energy generation section to be located anywhere you wanted, in fact you could have two that are widely separated in the sub so damage to one wont take out all the power of the sub. No huge drive shaft or reduction gear... just a gimbled pod that can be turned in any direction. Because of this you could look at making an arsenal sub that is quite fat and quite heavily loaded with an enormous number of missiles, and with mostly external tubes for self defence torpedoes and anti torpedo torpedoes.

You could even have AESA arrays on the sail so you can surface and defend yourself with SAMs of the S-350 family and perhaps even TOR.

You could design it so it is so large and flat that it could operate drones so you have aerial radar and IIR sensors so you can sit 1,000km off the coast of a country and launch strikes, so if they launch air power to attack you they would see a ship and might launch aircraft or anti ship weapons from ships etc... you could decide to submerge and move 500km perpendicular to the coast and ambush any aircraft sent to sink you from the side... or you might launch an S-70 to go in for the kill...

The potential is huge.

Depends on the range of the missiles they carry. Wink Very Happy wrote:

Small ships can be equipped with Cirkons, so it gives them about 1000km range. Small ships can be equipped with Cirkons, so it gives them about 1000km range. This gives them the opportunity to cover all smaller seas and part of, for example, the Arctic Ocean.

The-thing-next-door wrote:Why is it that noone seems to understand that "distributed lethality" is far more expensive than effective warships. With as Yasen you need only 1 propulsion system, one set of sonars and one hull. You also need only one free drydock and 1 crew. And no 2 crews for smaller subs will not be fewer in number than a crew for one larger sub unless the submarines in question have a significant lack of parity in automation.

The only reasons Russia makes small missile boats is because they are good for coastal defence and for a time were a loophole in the INF treaty. They are useless for open ocean conflict and defending trade or far away allies.

This is what I find amazing.
While the most submarines in the world are small, with limited range, endurance, weapons load and technical parameters - you are still arguing that the sole solution is some tool of doom Akula sized.
885M isn't going anywhere, you know? It will be there well into 2050+. That is if you like a big sub with 60+ weapon load.
Smaller boats still mean double the weapon, double the dive, and 1.5x the speed of most of the submarine fleet world has, and will use in the same timetable.
Gimmi bigger gimmi gimmi!

Small ships can be equipped with Cirkons, so it gives them about 1000km range. 

Think about Kaliber-M (if it fits in the standard UKSK) and Tsirkon-M (which will be coming up in a few years).
One 22800 could attack the whole of Europe from the Black Sea with Kaliber-M and close the northern Atlantic 
from a point a little west of Murmansk.

Smaller boats still mean double the weapon

The smaller model will likely be treated like the 636.3 = the Navy will order 6 for the Northern Fleet, 6 for the Pacific Fleet... Repeat... 
Meanwhile they will continue ordering one or two 885M´s every few years.

The Yasen managed to place the missiles inside the internal hull and also reduce the dimensions and displacement of the submarine. wrote:

Yasen also carries smaller projectiles. The P-700s are huge. Currently, Cirkon is much smaller and flies at a speed of 9M for about 1000km. Much faster and farther than the P-700 Granit.

Think about Kaliber-M (if it fits in the standard UKSK) and Tsirkon-M (which will be coming up in a few years).
One 22800 could attack the whole of Europe from the Black Sea with Kaliber-M and close the northern Atlantic
from a point a little west of Murmansk.

In the same way that Kiev can torment Crimea with their new Storm Shadow missiles.

The problem is that a Corvette also needs to carry self defence weapons like anti sub missiles in it UKSK launcher, otherwise a sub can just sail up and take it out.

Equally that Corvette is going to have relatively weak air defence compared with any larger ships or groups of aircraft that try to go after it, so launching a dozen or more anti ship missiles at the corvette at one time would be a serious problem for it and the west has plenty of planes and a few ships too.

The point is that while one corvette would only be an inconvenience that corvette operating with frigates and destroyers and cruisers with the air cover of a carrier and pretty soon it becomes a formidable force that you don't want to provoke.

Herds of game animals like deer or bison rely on large numbers and most natural hunters will pick off the weak and the sick or the elderly from the herd which is not actually a bad thing for the herd because they can move faster with injured and elderly animals being removed.

But a navy isn't a herd of Bison, a Navy works together to combine sensors and weapons and systems and moves to defend and attack and is rather more difficult to deal with.

With the INF treaty gone they are now free to develop IRBM and MRBM and indeed IRCM and MRCM (IR is intermediate range and MR is medium range, while BM is ballistic missiles and CM is cruise missiles) for land and sea forces... who is to say that their work on long range AAMs where they say that a big heavy R-37M missile that can hit targets 400km away is good but it uses all that fuel and that big heavy warhead for destroying bombers... why not have a version that carries mini missiles... they are developing 10kg mini self defence missiles for armoured vehicles for logistics and other formations to protect from drones and artillery shells and artillery rockets... at 10kgs each you could pack at least five of them into an R-37M just to replace the 50kg HE warhead and loft it high into the air to fly to targets 400km away and then release those 5 missiles to each find and engage 5 targets instead of just hunting down one... using the same logic an IRBM could deliver 3 or more Kh-31 missiles with reduced fuel to just dive down on ship targets from high altitude.

A core problem with swarms is how do you get them to the target area because they will be relatively small so they wont have long range or high speed or high endurance... delivering them by high ballistic trajectory rocket and let them fall onto their targets with their own small rocket motors and they will arrive at enormous speeds directly above your targets where Stealth shaping is less useful and the targets sensors are not looking up so IIR seeker with passive radar sensors to detect targets using their radars to find targets with active radar if it can't find anything passively.... these mini missiles are designed for mass production and use in enormous numbers and could be used for defence and for attack... a sub could carry a 9M96 missile with half a dozen of these mini missiles mounted on it that is designed to launch straight up and climb to 20 or 30km altitude straight up and then release the half dozen 10kg missiles who then scan for surface and air targets on their way down to take out MPA and helicopter and ship threats to the sub... Or that tube could carry a bundle of the 10kg missiles itself with a small booster rocket to get it airborne in a 9M100 tube, so three missiles per 9M100 missile and four 9M100 missiles per 9M96 tube... that is a lot of missiles..

Fighter aircraft and bombers can carry the mini missiles for self defence from SAMs and AAMs. Trucks and vehicles can carry them for self defence from enemy artillery rockets and shells as well as drones... ships and subs can carry them to defend from air power and missiles and drones and swarm attacks..

They already developed the avionics these missiles need to find and assign targets within a group... their anti ship missiles have had that since the late 1970s, and they are applying it to their drones where a recon drone looks for targets and communicates with suicide drones which are launched when targets are found.

The number of submarines that the Russian Navy has tried to keep in its ranks is about 20-24 plus 12 SSBNs and I don't think that number will change.

Well that makes sense because they are for defence and attack during WWIII, and in the case of SSBNs an assurance that WWIII is less likely to happen.

But with the INF treaty gone and the potential for IRBMs then having an attack sub that has two or four ballistic missile tubes that could be loaded with anti ship missiles, perhaps with scramjet motors and enough fuel to accelerate in their dive from say mach 10 or so to maybe mach 15 or more where the ballistic rocket goes outside the earths atmosphere and the anti ship missiles are released and spread in space and then as they reenter the atmosphere they light up scramjet motors and accelerate downwards to impact to hit any ships below could be a thing....

The Yasen managed to place the missiles inside the internal hull and also reduce the dimensions and displacement of the submarine.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing... those missiles would be acting as sound dampners on the Oscar to reduce radiating engine noise, and separating fuel and weapons from crew compartments is a thing on land vehicles now...

The question is whether they will lay the keel for another 885M this year. Recently, they have not started building another 885M for a long time.