"Poseidon" Nuclear-armed Underwater Drone

It would be more effective to contact fuze a lighter warhead over a city if they wanted to cause destruction

Poseidon IMO is for carrier work, even without nuclear warhead

Bulava and Layner are enough for coastal work, Sarmat and Yars can work for inner US and have leftover for hitting twice or three times over

Why send a torpedo for countervalue strikes when even an airburst topol would do a better job

I think it's just maskirovka to hide the true purpose of the carrier killer torpedo

A torpedo is a torpedo and it is used for what a torpedo is used for, the fact that it will generate a giant tsunami is a nonsensical idea.
The water dampens the power of the bomb, so that there is an expansive wave and the air catches fire, it must be detonated in the atmosphere.
The concept is as follows, detonate it at some depth below an aircraft carrier, which will be lifted up and split in half given its weight, and probably totally dismembered the hull.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads

Considering that a small tsunami on its own will not do too much damage the cobalt begins to make quite a lot of sense.

Not really... how much cobalt do you think you can pack around the warhead... and how much less nuclear warhead you would have if you are wasting space and weight with Cobalt dead weight?

This is a weapon intended to annihilate enemy population centres, not just to damage coastal infrastructure.

Most major population centres in the US are coastal... and for that matter most western countries too.

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

They are like SSBNs in the sense that they will be used as a deterrent but will likely actually only be used once or not at all.

They are a response to US ABM systems bringing into question how reliable ballistic weapons will be in destroying the west, so it uses non ballistic weapons to destroy and kill.

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.

Sorry I can't agree with that... US carrier groups are already taken care of with Kinzhal and MiG-31Ks around Russias borders and further afield Zircon and even Onyx are a real problem for them, to the point that single missiles can defeat targets so they don't even need to launch missiles in enormous volumes to assure a result like the west does with Harpoon and Tomahawk type weapons.

Poseidon is a doomsday weapon to prevent America think it can do a first strike and take out as many SSBN subs and ground based ICBM fields and truck mounted ICBMs in the hope they can shoot down any air launched cruise missiles with their ABM defences defeating any ballistic weapons launched at them to allow them to survive WWIII largely unscathed.

Thunderbird and Poseidon are there to **** them over even if their ABM systems even work.

Normal age old 650mm long range nuclear armed torpedoes could be used against US Naval power including ports if that was all they were for.

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

You are not getting it... Russia has ballistic missiles both land and sea launched, they have aircraft launched cruise missiles and now they can have surface launched cruise missiles too for Europe and Japan and Australia that were banned by the INF treaty... the purpose of thunderbird and poseidon is to restore the balance that is upset by the US spending trillions on ABM defence so they know even if they shoot down all ballistic weapons headed their way they are still going to get nuked... the poseidon can hit any port including many of their biggest cities BTW, and thunderbird, being very low flying and fast could attack any inland target without any warning.

The advantages of Poseidon and Thunderbird is that when they are operating the ABM system has probably already been hit and taken out but even if it hasn't it can do nothing to underwater and low flying threats.

Aircraft carriers are zero use for WWII even if you ignore Zircon and Poseidon and other types of weapons because even if a Russian carrier group survives and destroys everything that attacks it... what does it win?

It will never be an efficient way of attacking anyone in a nuclear conflict.

For a conflict like Syria then landing troops and providing air support would be valuable and protecting shipping in remote locations with air power would be valuable too... when Israelis were attacking an obviously American spy ship pretending they thought it was Egyptian they didn't stop attacking it till they heard radio calls from F-14s inbound and ready to help them...

A Russian or Russian friendly vessel under attack by British or American ships hears Su-57Ks inbound will back off too... or the attack would never happen in the first place knowing there are Russian surface ships nearby... but how do you operate world wide without air support?

Aircraft carriers for Russia defend their own shipping and their access to the global market... in a potential WWIII scenario they would likely move to the Arctic ocean to protect and extend Russian air power into that water way... and help hunt subs.

Their value is in peace time and small scale conflicts Russia is helping out with... we see in the Middle East and also Africa the rest of the world now see Russia as a chance for peace and solutions to war and economic growth and development... the west encouraged conflict to keep the masses down and poor and weak... they make more money on destruction and don't want rivals... they will turn on each other in a heart beat... look at industry moving from the EU to the US with full US encouragement and whines and moans from the EU about it... Russia does not fear the rest of the world developing and improving and growing... the US certainly does, as does the EU which is why the third world is still poor and weak and fighting.

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

If Poseidons are being launched then it makes more sense to hit western population centres... Russia has Yasen to kill western carrier groups... even just a 650mm torpedo with a 10kt nuke warhead would do the job of taking out a US carrier group... no need for Poseidons.

When setting off nukes in water a 10MT is a complete waste of energy that will be absorbed by the water to create a hell of a lot of steam... a 10kt nuke would also destroy the ships and any subs operating nearby (within 10km), but much cheaper and easier... first of all because it will be the Yasens job to either protect a carrier group meaning the enemy carrier groups will be coming to it, or hunting carrier groups where it will be going to them.

Poseidon carriers on the other hand will be finding hidey places where no one even knows they are there... which would be the opposite of where the US and western carrier groups would be operating.

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

Any new CVNs they build will be to defend the landing force the helicopter carriers operate with, so to start with the two helicopter carriers will go to either the Northern or Pacific fleet and odds are they will be slightly different... one carrying Russian naval infantry and their armour and helicopters and landing ships and the other helicopter carrier will be helicopters and drones and possibly a hospital ship too... eventually they will make another two helicopter carriers that will be based at the other main port northern or pacific so there is a CVN and two helicopter carriers at each base.

If they do bother with mini carriers, which I very much doubt because they are still not cheap and don't offer any where near the performance of a real carrier, it will be for export.

To hunt CBG it would need a lot of equipement.

Equipment that will be otherwise useless for its primary role.

I also suspect that eventually the US will want an arms agreement to limit where they can go and how many etc etc as they are strategic weapons... eventually they might be negotiated away with ABM defences, but I suspect the Russian ABM system might actually be rather more effective than anything the west can manage so getting rid of them might not be that urgent... let them spend more before cutting.

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.

Carriers are instruments of control during peace time to control and direct trade.... who can trade and who can't etc etc.

Without air power you are vulnerable to someone who has and also less informed about the battle space around you.

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

It is a direct response to US ABM systems they think will help them not just survive, but win WWIII... letting them know they will get Poseidon and also Thunderbird attacks potentially for days and months afterwards will take the shine off that belief... and in that sense a version with hundreds of 152mm artillery shell sized nukes of 2kts that can be carried along by the drone in large numbers... say 100 of them that can be dropped out of the bottom as it cruises along with a time delay fuse to deal with any sub or torpedo approaching from behind, or just destroy stuff and heat up the ocean to a few thousand degrees C and kill lots of fish and wildlife... the greenies will go apeshit and sue for peace if they ever found out what they did... you could even programme the poseidon to navigate up substantial rivers in Europe and the US and drop nuclear mines that will detonate a week later after it has gone up and come back down and left...

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.

To be fair when has Maimi or New York ever actually been hit by a real Tsunami... at best perhaps storm surge maybe... which is obviously rather more gentle than an actual Tsunami of superheated salt water... and mud.

Poseidon IMO is for carrier work, even without nuclear warhead

Its purpose was to defeat ABM systems by bypassing them... anti carrier roles would be a long way down the list for any use of them.

Bulava and Layner are enough for coastal work, Sarmat and Yars can work for inner US and have leftover for hitting twice or three times over

Ballistic weapons the US thinks they will be able to shoot down with their amazing high tech ABM networks they wont know don't work.

I think it's just maskirovka to hide the true purpose of the carrier killer torpedo

Any current torpedo with a nuclear warhead could do as good a job if not better... Poseidon is too big and heavy to be a standard weapon on standard submarines... the opposite of what you want for something to take out carrier groups... a nuclear armed torpedo could do the job and be loaded into any of their subs... they could even design a super low noise torpedo that runs at 10 knots but with new lithium Ion batteries could run for days or weeks an nuclear warheads can be tiny... 20-30kgs...

The concept is as follows, detonate it at some depth below an aircraft carrier, which will be lifted up and split in half given its weight, and probably totally dismembered the hull.

A conventional 650mm torpedo can already do that... the 300-400kg warhead creates a giant underwater air bubble which rises and lifts the ship or sub above it... the lifting force being applied in one place on the hull compromises the hull integrity which is not strong enough to support the weight of the whole ship and breaks the back of the vessel, which then sinks.

Don't need a nuke to do that.

BTW that video is useful, but what you don't see in that picture is that that isn't smoke from the explosion... that is steam... steam that is thousands of degrees C... the water absorbs the heat of the detonation so a really big detonation would super heat the steam to enormous temperatures... those tests were with warheads of less than 10 kts... all of those little ships enveloped by the steam would be unable to function because every crewman inside them would be boiled alive.

I don't know whether it would create a real tsunami, but detonating a nuke in a harbour would generate millions of tons of boiling water and mud that would be devastating locally...

We don't know what warhead they intend to use or if they will carry more than one warhead... I suspect their plan is that they can avoid counting the weapon as a strategic weapon by calling it a drone... the same way the US claims a HALE or MALE with nuclear bombs is not a cruise missile and therefore would not be subject to any START treaties... Thunderbird and Posiedon can be the same and are intended to render ABM systems useless... in fact they would be very good first targets for such weapons to help more conventional systems to get through which means AEGIS class cruisers would be a higher priority target... but again Zircon and Kinzhal would be more effective in that role anyway.

With its high speed it can just jump out of water like a dolphin and explode on the beach.

Its size could also allow the use of an internal mortar to launch a dozen of small nuks while cruise like you said with a 8km range. Mining the coast with delay mines like you said is also an option.

But the most likely and safest use is to cruise it at high speed and deep down until it reaches it targets and and run on the target and explode.

Jumping out of the water and onto the beach would be much more effective than detonating underwater and a high yield cobalt bomb with perhaps a 100 mt warhead with all of the cobalt infront of it would be rather effective at depopulating costal cities.

Very important to point out that most naval detonations of nukes under water were generally several hundred metres under water... with a 10 megaton warhead even just bursting on or very near the surface would reduce the power of the warhead in terms of effect, but no more than a surface burst normally would because the ground or the sea surface reflects the blast upwards, whereas an airburst means the blast hits the ground and reflects back upwards... either way it goes up, but with an airburst it goes down first.

Surface bursts just increase the amount of vapourised material that is sucked up and forms the mushroom cloud... in the case of a ground burst that means hundreds of cubic metres of vapourised ground material, dirt and rubble and concrete and roads etc etc, but with a water surface burst the superheating of the water would absorb a lot of energy but create enormous volumes of super heated steam and vapourised mud which would be blasted out with the blast wave boiling things in its path and spreading boiling saltwater steam.

In places like New York you could sail the device up the river or detonate several devices at once in different places for max effect with interlocking blast waves leveling the place.

They could get very creative about it... I am sure they have data from sea surface and underwater blasts and can use supercomputers to model coastal cities and use weather models to determine the effects...

The posidon could fit a 100mt warhead or atleast 3 sub torpedoes with 10mt warheads, why would they ever go with a single 10mt warhead when the blast effects will be greatly diminished by the underwater or near surface detonatio.

The R-36, when it carried a single warhead carried a 25mt warhead and the UR-500 was planned to carry a warhead with well over 100mt in blast yield. Russians are no strangers to large warheads.

The purpose of those powerful warheads was not to destroy cities... cities are spread out over enormous areas, a spread of much smaller nukes in an equally spaced pattern would be more effective than even the most powerful warhead ever produced.

When you double the power of a nuke you don't double the area damaged... the area in the centre is generally vapourised anyway so a more powerful warhead would just vapourise it slightly more.

If the tsunami thing does not work... you can't really test it properly... then a small rocket motor to boost a 10MT warhead 500m into the air would effectively make it an airburst nuke that was pretty potent... but as I was saying the 10MT an the 20MT nukes fitted to their heavy ICBMs (SS9 and SS18) were intended to hit the Pentagon and Cheyanne mountain (SG-1 base in the TV series).

They were intended to defeat deeply buried targets with a direct penetrating ground hit, where the extra power would increase the size of the cavity of vapourised rock... creating a land tsunami... otherwise known as an earthquake to collapse any nearby tunnels and bunkers.

Using multiple smaller nukes would be better for destroying area targets, but a single very powerful nuke would also be devastating too...

This is not the only tool, they will also be launching thunderbird and their conventional nuke weapons will probably get through anyway.

The 2M39 "Poseidon" is a HUGE nuclear-powered nuclear-armed torpedo and given its size it is undoubtedly capable of great destructive power - making the Poseidon and its selection of potential targets multi-purpose.

Size available ?

That's his own microsoft paint drawing. This not the official design which is secret.

The space available can be big or can be small. The nuclear power plant and tge pipes must take plenty of room though.

100mt is also useless. The Tsar bomba was supposed to be 100kt but they calculated that atmosphere height is high enough to reach such power making them go for 50Mt.

They could probably fit seven 2 mt warheads on short range ballistic missiles in that thing.

Though I prefer the idea of a high yield cobalt bomb, you could have a 100+ mt warhead in with a few tons of cobalt infront of it, have the poseidon pop out of the water at full speed, face the target and detonate "salting" the whole province for the next few centuries.

Dr. Strangelove called, he wants his US cold war propaganda supervillain schemes back

Poseidon is a 200 MT yield monster. This isn't so much as a weapon of war but a terraforming tool. Nations can survive massive depopulation events but destroy the land and they won't be coming back, ever.

Dr. Strangelove called, he wants his US cold war propaganda supervillain schemes back

You are ignoring the fact that the Poseidon and the Thunderbird are doomsday devices... only to be used when WWIII has started and there is no going back, and their purpose is to ensure as many people in the targeted state are killed as possible.

They probably have large nukes set aside to hit fault lines and the super volcano in Yellowstone park...

In terms of devastation air burst multiple smaller warheads will destroy over a much larger area, but for hard targets like Cheyanne mountain facility (SG-1 base in the star gate series) or to damage underground facilities then you need a ground burst to create an artificial earthquake, but also in the process this vapourises enormous volumes of soil and material on the ground which then spreads radiation over a wide area.

The source spoke about the plans for the first tests of the Poseidon drone
The first sea tests of the Poseidon drone are scheduled for this summer

KRONSTADT, June 23 - RIA Novosti. The first tests of the Poseidon underwater drone are scheduled for this summer from a naval carrier, the Belgorod nuclear submarine, a source in the military-industrial complex told RIA Novosti on the sidelines of the International Naval Salon in Kronstadt.
As the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov, told RIA Novosti on Thursday, the experimental nuclear submarine Belgorod (project 09852), the carrier of the Poseidon marine drones, will be put into service with the fleet in 2023.

According to him, first of all, the tests will affect the operation of the Poseidon nuclear power plant.
According to open sources, Poseidon (formerly known as Status-6, NATO code designation Kanyon) is a Russian project of an unmanned underwater vehicle with a nuclear power plant. In fact, it is a nuclear torpedo: the main task of the apparatus is the delivery of a nuclear weapon to the shores of a potential enemy in order to destroy important coastal elements of its economy and inflict guaranteed unacceptable damage to the territory by creating extensive zones of radioactive contamination, tsunamis and other destructive consequences of a nuclear explosion.
The Poseidon is 20 meters long, 1.8 meters in diameter, and weighs 100 tons.
https://ria.ru/20230623/poseydon-1879901413.html

I've read before they can use an reactor cooled with sodium or its salts ( or mixture of potassium fluorides , lithium and sodium ) with a heat source capable of quickly heating the coolant of this reactor before launch , with a thermonuclear charge in front you will get free sodium bomb without sacrificing the power of a thermonuclear explosion.

Sodium-23 becomes sodium-24 after receiving one neutron and gives more damage effect per unit of time than cobalt-60 ( 3000 times faster ) , it means a person will die from radiation from the sodium bomb in 10 minutes , and in the cobalt bomb he will get a lethal dose in a day but sodium-24 half-life is very less than cobalt-60 .

Trollstoy
@Trollstoy88
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The next stage of testing of the secret nuclear-powered Poseidon UUV torpedo has been completed in Russia.

The new torpedo has a length of about 20 m, and its nuclear engine is capable of providing a speed of about 100 knots, which equals 185 km/h.

lyle6 wrote:Poseidon is a 200 MT yield monster. This isn't so much as a weapon of war but a terraforming tool. Nations can survive massive depopulation events but destroy the land and they won't be coming back, ever.

We have no idea what weapons it will eventually carry. Sure it can easily carry a 200 MT warhead. But more intriguing to me is that they put 2-4 Tsikons in the beast and when it is in range it goes vertical and breaches the surface at 100 knots and launches its missiles in mid air, where they can deliver nuclear warheads 1-5000 km inland depending on the missile. 2-3 can also approach a CBG anywhere on the planet and deliver a bunch of Tsirkons at stand of range and then continue on and deliver a nuclear or conventional coup de gras to the flaming wreckage....or return to base for reloads.

I think you are missing the point.

Poseidon is not intended to replace ICBMs and SLBMs and aircraft released cruise missiles and ground launched nuclear powered unlimited range cruise missiles... it is to be used as well as all these weapons.

It wont be used to hit large cities inland... it will essentially be used to destroy port cities.

When killing people spread out in a field a really big bomb is not actually as effective as you might think and actually lots of very small bombs spread over a wide area are vastly more effective at doing damage and killing people over a much wider area.

The exception is protected things like silos and bunkers, in which airburst small warheads at totally ineffective and big heavy warheads become more effective.

The point of Posiedon is to vapourise sea water and mud and lift it up into the air.

Do you guys understand how a pressure cooker works?

Imagine putting an entire port city into a steam cooker... heat the water to several thousand degrees C and let that flow across the land like the pyroclastic flow of a volcano eruption... no escape... boiled to death.

Not just that but the ground and Billions of tons of water and mud irradiated... not to mention the effective destruction of shipping and port facilities which won't be back to normal for quite some time.

Cities inland can be hit by ICBMs and SLBMs and cruise missiles with multiple tiny warheads spreading the damage and making them super lethal... with a bomb you detonate underwater you need lots of energy, because it takes a lot of energy to heat vast amounts of mud and water so the huge excess of energy of a really big bomb is actually very useful for an underwater detonation.

For attacking a city it is wasted.

Double the power of the bomb and you increase the effective blast radius by a few hundred metres at best... the extra energy only expands the fireball by a small amount and everything in the centre is vapourised whether it is a 2KT or a 10MT bomb... the only real difference is the radius of the fireball which is not as great a difference as you would think.

A city spread over a wide area would be better destroyed with 3 to 5 x 20KT warheads evenly spread out than with 1 x 5 MT warhead... the extra power is just wasted because it can't do any more damage than vapourise everything near the centre. The extra power just expands the fireball by a much smaller amount that you might think.

I would expect a Poseidon might be fitted with different warheads for different jobs... most naval ports are spread out over a wide area, so having a couple of built in torpedoes would allow it to approach a port and say 10km out or where ever the defences start it can start launching nuclear armed mini torpedos like the small 325mm torpedos they have with a 152mm artillery shell sized 2KT warhead payload ahead of the weapon itself to blow through the outer defences.... and then launch a couple more to destroy further layers of nets and other obstacles and finally the main weapon gets through and sets off the big bomb that vapourises all the water and mud in the entire port... mission accomplished.

We have no idea what weapons it will eventually carry. Sure it can easily carry a 200 MT warhead. wrote:

Can it be lifted easily? Poseidon is not big. A 200 MT warhead would weigh approximately 40 tons even assuming 5kT/kg. It's a lot. Ripple payload construction technology may offer a higher kT/kg ratio but at the expense of payload volume. The Poseidon doesn't have much place for warhead.

mnztr wrote:But more intriguing to me is that they put 2-4 Tsikons in the beast and when it is in range it goes vertical and breaches the surface at 100 knots and launches its missiles in mid air, where they can deliver nuclear warheads 1-5000 km inland depending on the missile.

This kind of stuff happens in Hollywood only, not in real life.

owais.usmani wrote:

mnztr wrote:But more intriguing to me is that they put 2-4 Tsikons in the beast and when it is in range it goes vertical and breaches the surface at 100 knots and launches its missiles in mid air, where they can deliver nuclear warheads 1-5000 km inland depending on the missile.

This kind of stuff happens in Hollywood only, not in real life.

Oh and a giant, nuclear powered Torpedo that travels at 100 knots is just ho hum?  Kaliber missiles can already be launched from torpedo tubes, they would not really have to develop any new tech to put a few missiles in this and launch them when it arrives of the coast of the usa

By the time Poseidon has arrived on target Russian ICBMs and SLBMs and even their air launched cruise missiles would have already hit their targets and done lots of damage already... their thunderbirds (nuclear propelled cruise missiles) will probably arrive last because they probably went to the US via the south pole at subsonic speeds so it might be a day or two before they start to arrive and some of them might fly around for a couple of days before heading to their target, and at 185km/h the Poseidon is going to take a while to get to its target areas... especially if they don't take a direct route... remember the US might decide to defend themselves by launching some of their ICBMs and SLBMs at open water where they think Poseidon might be passing through in the hopes of destroying them or shifting the sea bed around enough that they crash into the sea bed on their way to the US...

When Poseidon arrives the US is going to be a broken country and its only real job is to do more damage.... creating tidal waves is one thing but destroying main port facilities and irradiating millions of tons of mud and water and super heating it so it falls on the land as fallout is all they really need it to do.

In fact designing them to head to the southern hemisphere for 4 months and then go to US ports and up major US rivers to explode near major former population centres to kill people and destroy water supplies etc etc is the sort of role these weapons are intended for.

They don't create the damage of WWIII... they are a follow up attack to cause more damage...

GarryB wrote:By the time Poseidon has arrived on target Russian ICBMs and SLBMs and even their air launched cruise missiles would have already hit their targets and done lots of damage already... their thunderbirds (nuclear propelled cruise missiles) will probably arrive last because they probably went to the US via the south pole at subsonic speeds so it might be a day or two before they start to arrive and some of them might fly around for a couple of days before heading to their target, and at 185km/h the Poseidon is going to take a while to get to its target areas... especially if they don't take a direct route... remember the US might decide to defend themselves by launching some of their ICBMs and SLBMs at open water where they think Poseidon might be passing through in the hopes of destroying them or shifting the sea bed around enough that they crash into the sea bed on their way to the US...

When Poseidon arrives the US is going to be a broken country and its only real job is to do more damage.... creating tidal waves is one thing but destroying main port facilities and irradiating millions of tons of mud and water and super heating it so it falls on the land as fallout is all they really need it to do.

In fact designing them to head to the southern hemisphere for 4 months and then go to US ports and up major US rivers to explode near major former population centres to kill people and destroy water supplies etc etc is the sort of role these weapons are intended for.

They don't create the damage of WWIII... they are a follow up attack to cause more damage...

I don't think you understand the point. SLBMs and nuclear cruise missiles give the USA lots of warning. With Poseidon carrying Tsirkon, it can arrive 300 miles of the coast of the US and hit Washington  with nukes with less then 5 min warning. Its a really great decapitation weapon.