Typhoon class SSBNs future:

Well the whole point of an arsenal ship is large numbers of weapons on one vessel... it is not a stealthy ship... it is an overwhelm them with numbers ship, or to make all the attacks needed without needing to move the entire Russian navy into range to do so.

Very few navies have the capacity to detect let alone track such subs.... even the really big ones.

More to the point imagine operating this vessel for 2-3 months at a time in the southern oceans... it would cost the west a fortune to follow them around the place... and more to the point these subs are nuclear powered so they could sail around for two week stretches at 25 knots... how many US or NATO anti sub groups could even keep up?

Isos wrote:

Would love to see the Typhoon theme be continued in some way in the more distant future. They are amazing machines.

And they are outdated and expensive. Useless for the modern Russian navy. A smaller borei converted to SSGN would be a much better choice.

Outdated as a SSBM. But maybe have a use as an arsenal sub or test sub or some sort of transportation sub?
Excellent flag flyers too. Would be worth keeping one for something or other.

U mean well below the Equator? Their CMs wouldn't have a range to hit anything relevant from there, unless their targets r in Chile, Falklands, Brazil, S. Africa, Australia/NZ, or French Polynesia.

They are nuclear powered and could get to most conflict zones within a couple of days... they could visit Venezuela on a good will visit and Vietnam and India and Iran and any coastal place in Africa on friendly terms.

They could be fitted with 4,500km range conventionally armed cruise missiles, or 1,000km range hypersonic Zircon anti ship and land attack missiles and anything in between if needed.

Having them sail around the arctic would be pointless as Russian land based IRBMs and aircraft launched cruise missiles could be used just as easily.

Equally they could put 50 tubes especially for Burevesk cruise missiles (the unlimited range nuclear powered ones).

1-2 SSNs r enough for that.

They wouldn't carry enough cruise missiles on board for more than a couple of attacks before needing to head back to port to reload.

Doesn't make sense in any of those roles, it's twice cheaper to modify new Borei sub for any of those roles

Have you checked or are you making an assumption?

Besides... any new Boreis make rather more sense carrying SLBMs with the new START treaty not seeming to be going to be replaced then they will need as many boomers operating as they can to make the US think it needs a new arms treaty to stop them pointing so many missiles at them.

There is potential for a custom designed arsenal ship... perhaps based on the Husky design, but the Akula class are enormous and there is huge potential to place an enormous number of weapons on these vessels and to also test next generation large ship NPPs as well... If they test the NPPs and they have serious problems it would be better to find out sooner rather than later when several ships are laid down with them fitted and plans are made for EM CATS with CVNs only to find the NPPs are not up to the job. Getting them in to use now on a large heavy vessel is an opportunity and the resulting vessel can have a variety of uses... hell you could make the centre section modular and fully removable so it could be an arsenal sub or it could be a crude oil carrier that can't be stopped, or a transport vessel for sensitive materials. Hell, you could make an air defence module that has an airship attachment that attaches an airship to the rear of the vessel on a 10km tether that powers a 100m long AESA radar antenna and a 50m long AESA antenna in Ka and L band radar that can pick up enemy aircraft and missiles out to 2,500km, with upward looking radar too, and perhaps 100 x S-500 launch tubes and maybe 200 S-400 and 600 Pantsir/TOR missiles too to operate over the arctic and shoot down any US missile headed to Russia...

Very few navies have the capacity to detect let alone track such subs.... even the really big ones.

Against such small navy a barge fited with kalibr launchers and protected by a gorshkov is enough.

The problem is the navies that can track such big ships. Against them you need something stealthy. And Borei is the best choice. They could also use only kalibr in Yasen, 40 in vls and 30 in torpedo room. Nato sonars won't track them at more than 20km so at 1500km from the shores they will be safe to fire.

I like the idea of a UAV command vessel

Just release the swarm in support of any amphibious operation; with drones armed with Vikhr missiles and so on. Naturally the UAVs won't be too long ranged and the sub would have to be surfaced to launch and receive them - so the sub can only really be used in a secured maritime zone, protected by other assets

Another possibility is as a UAV carrier for fighter UAVs, to secure airspace. This can again only be conducted with protection from other naval assets.

Against such small navy a barge fited with kalibr launchers and protected by a gorshkov is enough.

Not really. A barge would be noticed and people would take interest in following its movements around the place... especially the US so any use of it wont come as any surprise and you could fit a mortar on a fishing boat and get within 5km and have a good chance of landing a few rounds before they could stop you... with a submerged submarine they would have no idea until you launched a missile... and then you could move and they would still have no idea where you are.

The problem is the navies that can track such big ships. Against them you need something stealthy. And Borei is the best choice. They could also use only kalibr in Yasen, 40 in vls and 30 in torpedo room. Nato sonars won't track them at more than 20km so at 1500km from the shores they will be safe to fire.

They don't have any spare Boreis... they have two spare Akula SSBNs, which have the size to carry a decent number of weapons and still have room for other things too.

And who is talking about NATO... Russia doesn't need an arsenal ship against NATO... hypersonic land based missiles would do the job much better and much cheaper.

What Russia wants is something that can operate anywhere a group of Russian ships operate... it is the missile equivalent of an aircraft carrier... with UKSK-M tubes it might be able to carry SAMs as well.

Just release the swarm in support of any amphibious operation; with drones armed with Vikhr missiles and so on. Naturally the UAVs won't be too long ranged and the sub would have to be surfaced to launch and receive them - so the sub can only really be used in a secured maritime zone, protected by other assets

Should be OK in the rear of a land attack surface fleet... of course you could also modify the design and put a helicopter landing deck behind the sail and have the front of the vessel with the torpedo room removed and the entire front end of the vessel just filled with UKSK-M launchers able to carry anything from Zircon and 4,500km range cruise missiles through all the major naval SAM types.

Store fuel and air to surface weapons... have the rear platform for helicopters and vertical takeoff and landing drones where they can land and refuel and rearm, and have the front for launching conventional drones with a net to recover them, and of course multiple launch tubes for a variety of missiles and weapons.

You could make it modular so you can lift out the UKSK-M tubes and replace it with enormous fuel bladders and sit in the middle of the ocean to support helicopters or amphibious aircraft operating a long way from shore...

Another possibility is as a UAV carrier for fighter UAVs, to secure airspace. This can again only be conducted with protection from other naval assets.

Or massive AESA radar antennas on the sail and the entire front dedicated to UKSK-M tubes filled with SAMs of all types... or half cruise missiles and half SAMs as a sort of trap... sending out emissions to pretend to be a group of ships... launch a surface attack on the country and with the emissions luring enemy aircraft into a SAM trap... which could submerge and leave the area when needed.

Of course a dedicated recon platform with UAVs and unmanned surface vessels and unmanned underwater vessels and mini subs could be used to test defences and examine submerged objects and cables etc...

No future but what an awesome construction! Imagine what the USN must have thought the first time they got details of her.  

Sukhoi Su-57 Felon
@I30mki
·
May 8
#Soviet Project-941 "Akula Class " Nuclear Missile Cruiser Submarine!
Nato name Typhoon Class SSBN
World's largest Submarine ever Built, in making pics.

This is a sub. Where do you think more men should be?

Sujoy wrote:

Hole wrote:This is a sub. Where do you think more men should be?

My point was, are these men just there to protect the sub from small hostile boats?

No basic security detail.

The guys on the sail with binoculars can see much better than the two guys on deck... the front guy will be looking for semi submerged items in the water ahead... tens of thousands of shipping crates fall off ships every year and the weight of them means sometimes they float and sometimes they don't but they don't sink either and can be a few metres or a few centimetres below the water... which effect the waves above them.

The rear guy will be watching the props to make sure fishing nets and other crap doesn't get caught or isn't caught in them.

If a small boat or a group of boats approached the sub they could easily get a few more armed men on deck pretty quickly... including guys with RPGs if needed.

Would be pretty awesome standing on that front deck with an assault rifle in your hands... that is real king of the world stuff...

mnztr wrote:wow that thing is HUGEEEEEEEEE

No actual operational need, the sub can't stop quickly or easily change course.

Those guys standing there are only to give a sense of scale to any photographs.

The size of the sub was dictated by the size of the missile.

The size of the sub and the special shaping of the sail meant it could surface through 3 metres of ice to launch its missiles.... it has a very high freeboard... ie it sits very high in the water when surfaced so when it surfaces through ice it is actually rather hard to hit with torpedoes and the ice sits 1/3rd above and 2/3rds below the water.

It would carefully pick its launch position as being in a thin area of ice so all around there will be much thicker ice hanging lower and blocking torpedo shots to the hull of the sub when surfaced and launching missiles.

The Los Angeles class SSBN had 24 missiles each armed with 6 warheads as standard, so it carried 144 warheads, but the Akula carried 20 missiles each armed with 10 warheads each... 200 warheads...

It very much had a purpose during the Cold War...

There was also speculation in the west that it might be intended to operate in southern waters because of its size internal conditions on the sub were excellent... there were like 5 libraries and four swimming pools and three gyms and even an aviary with live birds and wall art depicting forests and pleasant scenes...

They thought its size might allow much extended journeys and having it in the southern oceans would seriously complicate US defence which has no southwards looking defences for SLBM attack...

The funny thing is that the west was always going on about how unsafe Soviet liquid propellent missiles were regarding handling, but as far as I know the only major handing problem they had was loading an SS-N-20 solid fuelled missile into an Akula... it was dropped and of course exploded because that is what solid fuel is supposed to do... burn vigorously.... It is my understanding the burnt and damaged external tiles were not replaced and that sub got the nickname Red October because of the fire damage to its exterior....

GarryB wrote:The Los Angeles class SSBN had 24 missiles each armed with 6 warheads as standard, so it carried 144 warheads, but the Akula carried 20 missiles each armed with 10 warheads each... 200 warheads...

Sorry to nit-pick but I think you mean the Ohio class? The LAs are attack subs.