"Poseidon" Nuclear-armed Underwater Drone

For something like the Poseidon, the ball bearings can be truly exotic and common ones are not necessarily good point of reference.
I wonder if dry bearings are possible where the lubricant is some graphene powder. Exposure of bearings to ocean water
is dicey since the water is not pristine setting aside the salt and dissolved mineral issue. The Poseidon does not need
to worry about compromised seals since it is not planned to gouge ice or the seabed with its propeller. So oil filled bearings
are viable. But they have to be zero maintenance. This is not such a challenge considering that people drive their cars
for years without maintaining the bearings.

Yeah, I said they "will" use water-lubricated bearing when I should have said that such tech is plausible. Too much haste in commenting I fear... In any case I don't see the engineering difficulties in lubricating Poseidon motor/turbine shaft bearings (and shaft seals) as any more problematic than for electric slow-speed propulsors on SSN/SSBNs.

In fact, Poseidon can be launched from the shore from naval bases.  Is it somewhere in Actica or in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.  This unlimited range drone will reach its target anyway. You don't even need a ship.

1 launcher every 200km on the northern cost would allow a secondary nuclear strike possibility. It would be very hard to attack many launchers spread accross the country at the same time.

They also have plenty of military islands there where they could put Poseidon launchers.

Exactly though Poseidon is a second-strike weapon. So it's safe on submarines. Although in some bases it should survive the first US strike. In addition, they can fire them from bases before a nuclear strike occurs. They will be on standby in the bases.

Arrow wrote:  Exactly though Poseidon is a second-strike weapon.  So it's safe on submarines.  Although in some bases it should survive the first US strike.  In addition, they can fire them from bases before a nuclear strike occurs.  They will be on standby in the bases.

ICBM generally fly for 30min before reaching their targets. Plenty of time tobput Poseidons into water and get to a safe distance where they can wait for orders at the surface.

It is a safe reprorgrammable second strike option.

The Poseidon drone has an enormous payload capacity for megaton bombs and a 1 km diving capability - perfect for a cable cutter.

Russia would get a lot of utility by holding the submarine cables that the western world relies heavily for communications hostage. If the west threatens sanctions - cut some cable, and watch them soy sperg over billions of dollars per hour in financial losses.

Best part is this vulnerability is entirely asymmetrical: Russia is not as reliant on underwater cables as the collective west does since it sits on the largest contiguous landmass on the planet. Cut some overland fiber optic cable and some dude in a van would be splicing that shit in an hour. Underwater cables under a km of water, not so much.

Its also almost entirely unfeasible to stop. There's not nearly enough hulls in the collective western navies that you can tail every Poseidon drone - and you can't even think about patrolling the thousands of kms of cables.

Lastly, physically turning off the internet should be one hell of a good card to play in trying to avert WW3. Bombers aren't nearly as useful as a signalling tool compared to literally pulling everyone off the matrix. That should at least get some people to think about their impending mortality and actually do something about it, like overthrowing their governments.

Cable cutting being disruptive would be precisely the point.

Disruptive w/o directly killing people or destroying anything on land.

The adversary not being able to respond symmtrically would put them in a difficult position.
Russia does not even have any other kind of infrastructure that could be attacked in a similar
manner w/o going for all-out nuclear war. The problem for the adversary is that it's all on land.
Trying to do something equally disruptive to the power grid or similar would require far greater
resources than just a few missiles or so, and it would incur gigantic collateral damage.
Retaliation to the collateral damage would be guaranteed.

The undersea communication cables are the West's achilles heel. Cutting them would collapse
the financial system immediately. Lights could go out quite literally. The West is not prepared for
any of the hardships that would bring, not at all. Western societies are also social powder kegs
far more than Russia is. With a collapsed economy, rioting would occur all over the place. It would
be uncontrollable. Cities would burn w/o Russia firing anymore missiles.

Already happening in the US without cable cutting.

What you write would apply in the early stages of a conflict where Russia's Internet access, for instance, hasn't already been severed. At such a stage, the cost/benefit would probably speak against attacking undersea cables, and thereby crippling the Western financial base aside from depriving the masses of Netflix, social media and Internet porn.

Russia has some undersea assets too, no doubt, but to a far less extent than the collective West. It's clearly the West that's far more vulnerable. The West used to have it as a strength that its constituents were located at strategically secure locations like North America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand. Even many of its post-WWII allies like Japan and Taiwan occupy similar positions. Nowadays, with a globalized, light-speed economy connected by undersea cables, and powder keg social relations, this disposition has become a grave liability. It would be foolish not to exploit it.

The question is, how and at what stage during a conflict this vulnerability could be exploited. Yes, to be absolutely clear about it, it would not make sense to do it more or less out of the blue.

The technical problem that must be mentioned is that undersea cables run at oceanic depths, out of reach for most submersibles let alone any conventional weapons. Some stretches necessarily run on continental shelves at shallower depths but these stretches are relatively easy to survey and defend.

That's where Poseidon comes in. I am assuming that Poseidon with its operational depth and multi-megaton warhead has the ability to cut cables at basically any depth. Just position it above a cable or preferably at a location were several cables run close to each other and detonate it. The cables will be cut. There will be a tsunami but it will peter out before reaching any coast line.

Let's say a conflict has broken out and tactical nuclear weapons have already been used. Russia would like to bring the conflict to an end, yet it has to reckon that escalating would just lead to total annihilation. In such a situation attacking undersea cables using Poseidon drones might make sense. The adversary has its economy crippled but nobody has been directly killed. That would leave the choice of going for total annihilation to the adversary and chances are that it will not take this choice, instead backing down from the conflict.

I'm not buying the argument that widespread and uncontrolled rioting due to a crippled economy would benefit the oligarchs. We have seen the BLM rioting but that was clearly controlled and died down as soon as the presidential election drew near. With banks having shut down for extended periods of time, the situation would present itself in entirely different terms. Attacking the financial system would actually hurt the oligarchs where it hurts them most.

When it comes to the Poseidon torpedo, an interesting issue is whether, despite the fact that Poseidon certainly has a lot of autonomy and is programmed to reach the target, it is possible to communicate with it and change, for example, the route or target.
It is obvious that, being 10,000 km away from Russia, there are few ways of communication.
The first is satellite communication, in this case communication with a torpedo at a depth of 1000 km is difficult. The torpedo would have to drag a cable behind it, which would have to rise to the surface to reach the satellite range.
This can increase Poseidon detection and has the advantage of a rather deep depth where detection is very difficult.
Another HF communication. In this case, you also need to expose the antenna to the surface
And the third option is ELF communication, just like with submarines. The question is whether the ELF penetrates to a depth of more than 1000m.

Nuclear submarine "Belgorod" completed throw tests of the model of the torpedo "Poseidon"

The firing of the layout was carried out in order to clarify the behavior of the submarine at different depths after the launch, said a TASS interlocutor in the military department

MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. The crew of the Belgorod special-purpose nuclear submarine (NPS) has completed a series of throw tests of the Poseidon torpedo mock-up. This was reported to TASS by a source close to the military department.

"The Belgorod submarine has completed a series of throw tests of the Poseidon mass and size model," he said.

According to him, "the purpose of the throw tests was to check the operation of the Poseidon launch system, it has been achieved." "Throw firing of the Poseidon super-torpedo model was carried out in order to clarify the behavior of the submarine at different depths after the launch," the source said.

TASS does not have official confirmation of this information.

In June 2022, TASS, citing a source in the shipbuilding industry, reported that the Belgorod nuclear submarine was undergoing state tests in the Barents Sea.

The first carrier of nuclear underwater drones "Poseidon" - a submarine of project 09852 "Belgorod" - was launched on April 23, 2019 at the Sevmash Production Association (part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation). Her transfer to the fleet took place on July 8, 2022.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/16763771

The first Poseidon super torpedo ammunition was produced for the Belgorod submarine

According to a source close to the defense ministry, separate tests of the main components, including a nuclear power plant, were completed successfully.

MOSCOW, January 16. /tass/. The first Poseidon nuclear super torpedo warhead has been manufactured for the Belgorod special-purpose nuclear submarine. This was reported to TASS by a source close to the military department.

"The first Poseidon ammunition has been made, and the Belgorod submarine will receive them in the near future," he said.

According to the source, separate tests of the main components of Poseidon, including the nuclear power plant, have been successfully completed.

TASS has no official confirmation of this information.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/16805101

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/status/1614905653029670912?s=20&t=5PiOO-e9ezbVHEAxR0epmg

The size of this torpedo makes 100 megaton warheads easy to carry. Tsar bomba was not the smallest form factor that the USSR and now
Russia could produce for such a yield. I am sure that today the bomb can be half the size. I do not see this enormous torpedo carrying
a tiny 1 megaton warhead.

Apparently Newsweek is talking about 100 megaton warheads. But it is also drivelling about cobalt which is total nonsense. There is no
point in seeding the blast site with long-lived radiation. The value of this "doomsday weapon" is the damage to coastal cities from local
tsunami generation.

BTW, the Chicxulub impactor produced a blast of about 1000 megatons. Basically all the kinetic energy of the 10 km meteor went into
producing the crater. The tsunami reach 200 m at the coast of present day Mexico and 50 m at the Gulf coast of the present day US.
So the Poseidon will need to be detonated within an appropriate distance from any target.

The Poseidon will be able to take out any US carrier battle group.

Considering that a small tsunami on its own will not do too much damage the cobalt begins to make quite a lot of sense. This is a weapon intended to annihilate enemy population centres, not just to damage coastal infrastructure.

GarryB wrote:The interesting thing is that these subs will be like SSBNs except instead of needing to loiter in positions that put their targets in missile range, these Poseidon carrying subs would be better to disappear to the farthest corners of the globe because their weapons can reach their targets launched from anywhere so spreading out and scattering would actually benefit them more than operating in protected areas (protected by friendly SSNs or whatever) to launch ballistic missiles.

Belgorod are not "like SSBN", actually it is a totally new type of submarine

I would dare to call it SSTN (Submarine Ship Torpedo-Nuclear) or "Submarine of Nuclear Torpedoes" or whatever it is how to write correctly in English

Contrary to what has been written in this thread, the main purpose of this type of submarines is not the destruction of the East coast of the USA, but to end the dominance of the American aircraft carrier in the oceans.

Now any American aircraft carrier can be attacked anywhere in the ocean at any time with no chance of surviving the explosion and no chance for the Yankees to attack the launcher beforehand since they don't know where it is, which they would if they had fixed launching bases on the coast

As the launching submarine is hidden and prepositioned anywhere in the ocean, the Yankee aircraft carriers are vulnerable at any time after they leave port.

In addition, this submarine drones can preposition and hibernate in advance on passage routes of Aircraft Carrier Combat Groups.

So I wouldn't expect Russia to build large attack carriers in the future, it's as outdated a concept as battleships were in 1941, especially since Russia doesn't need to attack anyone across the ocean.

In modern naval warfare there are only two types of ships, submarines and floating targets.

AMCXXL wrote:Contrary to what has been written in this thread, the main purpose of this type of submarines is not the destruction of the East coast of the USA, but to end the dominance of the American aircraft carrier in the oceans.

Now any American aircraft carrier can be attacked anywhere in the ocean at any time with no chance of surviving the explosion and no chance for the Yankees to attack the launcher beforehand since they don't know where it is, which they would if they had fixed launching bases on the coast

CBGs are already impossible to defend against Tsirkon armed SSGN. The really unprecedented and utterly destabilizing use that such a vehicle may allow would be to shadow and disable enemy SSBN and SSN, which remain otherwise unchecked and are being accordingly pursued by the West in a preferred way with the AUKUS deal, the accelerated construction in US and further initiatives. Without the submarine element and in the context of S-550, A-235, Avangards etc, the West can find themselves soon in checkmate.

As to the radioactive tsunami use, it is fine, all Russian weapons are double or triple purpose, so this is certainly possible and for sure eye-catching for the public as nothing else. But the utter destruction of the enemy in case of a nuclear exchange is already ensured with a handful of Sarmats per attacked country, all the rest of the nuclear arsenal being just additional degrees of certainty

BTW I wonder how all those guys in twatter have such precise information about ultra-secret weapons like Poseidon...

I agree Poseidons most immediate practical use would be hunting CBG in transit to a deployment point

Zircon of course would be useful, but hitting them while they are unaware of the sub presence is key

Carrier fleet would need serious ASW ships to picket the carrier and even then if it's nuclear armed the water and explosion damage will be enough to incapacitate the fleet

As for CBG I don't think they are useless, they can conduct air defense for a fleet and provide long range AD

Zaliv builds 2 helicopter carriers, and I'm sure 2 CBG will be announced soon to match

One for Pacific , one for Northern, and one for BSF along with an accompanying helicopter carrier, 3 gorshkov destroyers, and some 20380 for added ASW capabilities that can work with Ka29 from the priboy/lavina carrier

To hunt CBG it would need a lot of equipement.

It is operating at high speed making any onboard sonar jammed by its own noise. It is operating to deep to be remotely controled. The low number of poseidon would make it a very bad weapon. Carriers aren't targets during an all out nuclear war. No one cares if they survive. They will have nowhere to go after eating all their food and will die after 1 month.


This thing is deasigned for a second attack to get ride of all the US coasts. Destroy coastal cities and ports making the life impossible after the nuk exchange even if their population survives. It makes me feel it is carrying a very dirty and radioactive warhead for that purpose.

Tsunami are useless against Miami or New York buildings. It barely destroys a city for few weeks at best. That's a dumb speculation. This is a second attack nuckear weappn design to blow up off any big city. Blast and radioactivity are what destroys the targets.