"Poseidon" Nuclear-armed Underwater Drone

GunshipDemocracy wrote:Let's agree to disagree. To me CSGs are viable targets and 100mt is not only option.

I tend to agree. Consider the catastrophic damage done to a destroyer size vessel when a single torpedo denotes under the hull and uses the cavity-collapse phenomena to double-tap the hull with blast/hydraulic hammer. The unfortunate recipient gets virtually (and literally) cut in two...

Now consider what would happen if a Posiedon with a HUGE conventional warhead does the same to a carrier...

The best way to deal with a CBG is to attack simultaneously from multiple vectors with a variety of different weapons. Surface & land launched hypersonic/supersonic AShMs (and guided ballistic weapons if you have them), air launched equivalents, plus sub launched with torpedos to follow once subs close in after defenses are degraded... PLUS a few huge carrier-killer nuke-propelled torpedo with conventional warheads big enough to break a CVN in half... Yep, thats a nightmare for the USN planners.

Co-ordination would be an issue however as you would need to synchronise your attacks to coincide with the Poseidons end-run (could be problematic for a weapon designed to run deep and quiet?).

I wouldn't be surprised if a boat like Kharbarovsk is a preliminary carrier, and that a future variant of Husky (or Borei) will be the serial carrier (its not hard to envision the replacement of SSBN missile pack with launch bays for Poseidon).

Ture about PR but who told us that 100Mt is the only option? CSG is viable target. Cost is billions of USD and thousands of people with strategic value. Costs are almosgt 2 orders of magnitude less... I still dont buy only 100MT option + coastal stuff.

For a carrier group target it would probably be easier to set up nuclear mines in certain locations and choke points... when the group crosses x spot boom.

Plus 100MT is a bit over kill... the fireball would have a radius of 6km... in water that means a ball of water 12km across would be turned into superheated steam... any sub or ship within that sphere would be totally destroyed, and there would be a lot of radioactive material blown up into the air...

A mine of perhaps 2KT to 10KTs would be more likely used, and it would still be effective...

Its always better to lose one carrier group than you entire country.

You are assuming common sense during a crisis from Trump?

I think we are getting away from the point of Poseidon... it is a revenge killer... it is supposed to be there to ensure the enemy wont get back on its feet any time soon after taking on Russia.

Plus it would be interesting to look at where it could be used... I mean this sort of weapon could sail quite a distance up a major waterway, so it does not need to destroy a port or coastal target...

Which raises another potential option... the nose area could be lined with dumb straight running torpedoes with 50KT warheads... the drone could sail the coast of the US releasing torpedoes to attack each port with a single 50KT warhead, and a few that sail upstream in a few major rivers too and eventually the main drone enters the largest port with the biggest bomb.... say 2MT or something... perhaps 8-10 torpedoes per drone... they could be relatively short range high speed rocket powered torpedoes so that if an active enemy sonar is detected then it could launch a high speed nuclear armed torpedo towards the enemy to clear the way and then dive under the ensuing destruction...

PapaDragon wrote:

Hole wrote:......
Podmoskovye is supposed to be able to carry one under her belly instead of a mini-Sub..........

Yes but I assume it is for initial testing purposes

You can't expect dedicated spy-sub with quite a big to-do list to stand in for strategic nuke carrier, especially one with 6 times the payload capacity

One more Poseidon on it´s way.

That´s one more advantage of this weapon, the russians could use a trawler to launch it.

Source: Russian Poseidon underwater drone capable of carrying 2 megatonne nuclear warhead

The Poseidon will be approaching the target for an intercontinental range at a depth of over 1 km and at a speed of 110-130 km/h

MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. Russia’s Poseidon underwater drone currently under development will be able to carry a nuclear warhead with a capacity of up to 2 megatonnes to destroy enemy naval bases, a source in the Russian defense sector told TASS on Thursday.

"It will be possible to mount various nuclear charges on the ‘torpedo’ of the Poseidon multipurpose seaborne system, with the thermonuclear single warhead similar to the Avangard charge to have the maximum capacity of up to 2 megatonnes in TNT equivalent," the source said.

With its nuclear munition, the underwater drone "is primarily designed to destroy reinforced naval bases of a potential enemy," the source said.

Thanks to its nuclear powerplant, the Poseidon will approach the target for an intercontinental range at a depth of over 1 km and at a speed of 60-70 knots (110-130 km/h), the source said.

TASS has no official confirmation of this information.

As another source in the defense sector earlier told TASS, the Poseidon drone will join the Russian Navy under the existing armament program for 2018-2027 and will be carried by a new specialized submarine currently under construction at the Sevmash Shipyard.

Poseidon drone

The project of developing the Poseidon drone was unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly on March 1. The Russian leader said that these drones could be armed with both conventional and nuclear munitions and would be capable of destroying enemy infrastructure, carrier-led naval taskforces and other objectives.

Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Sergei Korolyov later said that the new weapon would enable the fleet to accomplish a broad range of missions in waters adjacent to the enemy territory. According to the chief naval commander, the trials of the drone’s basic element, the small-sized nuclear powerplant, have already been carried out.

Poseidon drones together with their carriers make part of the so-called oceanic multipurpose system. The drone got its name following the results of open voting on the website of Russia’s Defense Ministry.


More:
http://tass.com/defense/1004722

...with the thermonuclear single warhead similar to the Avangard charge to have the maximum capacity of up to 2 megatonnes in TNT equivalent," the source said....

2 megatons is a joke. Either reporters fucked up again or somebody swiped the cash and threw a lemon to a Navy.

You can put 2 megatons on anything, you don't need ship-sized nuclear torpedo for that. Whole purpose of having massive nuclear torpedo was to carry huge nuclear warheads, not these firecrackers.

Having warhead this tiny defeats purpose of the whole project.

PapaDragon wrote:

...with the thermonuclear single warhead similar to the Avangard charge to have the maximum capacity of up to 2 megatonnes in TNT equivalent," the source said....

2 megatons is a joke. Either reporters fucked up again or somebody swiped the cash and threw a lemon to a Navy.

You can put 2 megatons on anything, you don't need ship-sized nuclear torpedo for that. Whole purpose of having massive nuclear torpedo was to carry huge nuclear warheads, not these firecrackers.  

Having warhead this tiny defeats purpose of the whole project.

You are confusing with 2kt. 2 Mt is enough for every city that is on the shore.

Isos wrote:.........
You are confusing with 2kt. 2 Mt is enough for every city that is on the shore.

Not confusing anything

Pitch for this product was to obliterate entire coastline and irradiate it for decades to come not just put a crater on the beach near the city

And it would need way more than 2 Mt since it would detonate underwater

Also, largest sub will only have 6 of these, you can get 50 times better results with standard SSBN at fraction of the cost, not to mention that they could get way more Avangards (also 2 Mt) for cash they would drop on this

This whole thing is beginning to sound like a massive scam

The crucial point is the way of delivering the warhead: under water.

There was never an official talking about 50 MT warhead. It was the media and our fantasy.

They still could achieve this devastating tsunami effect, using ten Poseidons.

Hole wrote:The crucial point is the way of delivering the warhead: under water.

There was never an official talking about 50 MT warhead. It was the media and our fantasy.

They still could achieve this devastating tsunami effect, using ten Poseidons.

Max number per sub is 6 and keep in mind that not all of them might get through

Only way this makes sense now with such tiny warhead is if they pack enough cobalt on it to irradiate entire California with just one explosion

Well another option could simply be to pack 10 x 2MT bombs in each torpedo, or one 2MT and 8-10 20kt like I suggested above... several small nuke explosions can often do rather more damage than one big one.

Doubling the power of a nuke does not double the destruction... it just means the things vapourised in the middle get slightly more vapourised and the distance things get vapourised increases by a few hundred metres... it would actually be more devastating to have 8x 100kt bombs spread out around the target than to have 1x 2MT bomb even though 8 x 100kt bombs only equals 800kt which is clearly less than 2MT... less than half in fact.

It would be interesting to see the effect of 2-3 square kms of sea water vapourised and irradiated has on a city port... the other thing is that the radiation from smaller explosions has greater effect compared with blast than with bigger weapons.

A 1kt bomb might irradiate to 500m and the blast kills to 400m, whereas a 10MT bomb might irradiate to 1.5km but the blast kills to 4 or 5km or so... which means the smaller warheads are dirtier... and kill over a much longer period, whereas with the bigger bombs most of the people that would have been killed by radiation are killed by blast anyway.

Modern nuclear warheads for 152mm artillery shells are as small as 40kgs, so you could put dozens of such warheads in a Poseidon to really shake things up... and as I said.... imagine a Poseidon sailing up the Mississippi river... dropping a 5kt bomb every 20km or so... that is a few cubic kms of irradiated superheated water that is going to fall on the US somewhere... in many ways this is like the Japanese fire balloons from WWII but likely more effective.

1. Poseidon is a way to make the Ami Missile defence useless.
2. 130km/h submerged is not slow. The only thing that is faster is the Skhvall, which is also russian.
3. Do you have a source for the "lot of noise" part?
4. Poseidon will travel in a depth of 1.000m. Until now there is nothing to reach it at that depth. Pretty hard to destroy.

PapaDragon wrote:2 megatons is a joke. Either reporters fucked up again or somebody swiped the cash and threw a lemon to a Navy.

You can put 2 megatons on anything, you don't need ship-sized nuclear torpedo for that. Whole purpose of having massive nuclear torpedo was to carry huge nuclear warheads, not these firecrackers.  

Having warhead this tiny defeats purpose of the whole project.

Well 2Mt is two orders of magnitude larger than the 23kt Baker test, so its not a damp squib. The effectiveness of larger warheads would be limited anyway, since most harbours have relatively shallow drafts. Most of a 50Mt warhead's energy would be wasted, vented upwards when the 50-100m or so of water above it was vaporised. So smaller warheads actually work better by containing the blast subsurface, thereby converting its full energy release into wave generation.

However I think you are missing the point, which is Poseidon has different strategic level objectives than a cheaper ICBM/SLBM strike.

1) It opens up a completely new direction of attack, against which the US has no defence - in order to reset MAD doctrine.
2) It prompts the US to open up yet more hyper-expensive R&D projects in a scramble to defend against it - with probable intent to accelerate US economic collapse.
3) It long-term (1 year+) irradiates harbour infrastructure - thereby cutting mainland US off from imports of raw materials and emergency foodstuffs, causing considerably more secondary deaths than just the loss of the port itself (which could be recommissioned far quicker if just hit by an airburst).
4) It sinks a significant proportion of global container shipping vessels, further hindering US recovery efforts (most of which would be largely intact after an airburst).

So it does have a role. Whether or not it is worth the investment to manufacture and deploy is another question.

@Hole && @Teshub
+1000


BTW according to this American research paper about underwater explosions 1MT can make 36m high wave in5 radius of 5 nautical waves. 10MT 136m.

Arrow wrote:Poseidon is a weak idea  better to invest in ICBM and SLBM. Poseidon will swim slowly to the target, giving a lot of noise. Easy to detect and destroy.

what you country did to stop it? dotn be shy tell us

@Teshub: Your 2. point is really important. The mindset of the politicians in Amiland of today can´t accept vulnerabilities. Because of this long-range underwater drones they will start a myriad of new programs, waisting billions. Their is already talk of buidling new ASW frigates.

Hole wrote:@Teshub: Your 2. point is really important. The mindset of the politicians in Amiland of today can´t accept vulnerabilities. Because of this long-range underwater drones they will start a myriad of new programs, waisting billions. Their is already talk of buidling new ASW frigates.

They will only have to make other countries pay double for the f-35, and everyone here know they will pay, and get back those billions lost in the programs you are talking.

Trying to hit US with economy is useless. They are too good at that.

Only way this makes sense with 2Mt is if rest of the payload is nothing but cobalt that would be used to salt the warhead

Giant dirty bomb

Otherwise waste of time and money

It is supposed to be very fast so it can jump out of water and explode in the air. In this scenario even smaller warhead is enough.

Soviet used to deploy artillery nuk shell. This thing could carry many of them and attack many target by deploying them on the cost. Just need to make them float on the water.


Anyway 2kt or 2 Mt I don't think anyone would want this to explode near its shores ... that's the goal of the weapon.

As a Tsunami wave generator this weapon makes zero sense as it would lead to many neutral countries being hit too.

flamming_python wrote:As a Tsunami wave generator this weapon makes zero sense as it would lead to many neutral countries being hit too.

This is nuclear war between top 2

Neutrals are irrelevant in that scenario

What concerns me here is minuscule payload on very expensive platform

2MT would destroy most of New York City.

@Isos: Yeah, Amiland is really good in economy. Debt and liabilities: 250 Trillion.

Hole wrote:2MT would destroy most of New York City.

@Isos: Yeah, Amiland is really good in economy. Debt and liabilities: 250 Trillion.

And still the best economy in the world. They don't care about debt. Debt is part of their lives.

Isos wrote:
And still the best economy in the world. They don't care about debt. Debt is part of their lives.

Then they invented perpetum mobile        money are out of  nowhere. Nope this is possible only when world uses $ as reserve currency. Means - you have to buy USD and transfer your wealth to US at price they set...

Once there will be option to change to say Renminbi world it could be interesting to see how much of this remains...

Isos wrote:Trying to hit US with economy is useless. They are too good at that.

They think they are indeed. But history proves otherwise. Hittites lasted ~1500 years now almost nobody knows such empire existed... Rome ~ 1000 years and III Reich 12. US somewhere in between.
There is limit to any power. Current world looks like limit is reached. No not immediately but China is not to be stopped IMHO. US cannot force others to pay if thy dont use USD and are military protected against US aggression (by alliance with China && Russia) . With enough fiscal weight on tis shoulders empire collapses.  Do you really think Japan pays because is wants? or Germany? and Saudis will not switch to Renminbi if they cannot be endangered by US? Then Poland, Ukraine and Baltics remain to pay for US debts. PEhaps Sweden too. A bit too little dotn you think?

The funny thing is Tramp seems to speed up US erosion. His hysterical economical war on the world opens eyes more countries . And Us is perhaps stronger  then any of alone state but not groups thereof...[/quote]

flamming_python wrote:As a Tsunami wave generator this weapon makes zero sense as it would lead to many neutral countries being hit too.

and those countries could be different than those hit bu nuclear winter?

PapaDragon wrote:

What concerns me here is minuscule payload on very expensive platform

how do you know its more expensive then ICBM? it is enough to kill Diego Garcia or Hawaii not to mention any of CSGs... as stand off weapon. Forcing enemy to spend billions on defense.

The purpose of Poseidon is to have a different way of delivering a nuclear weapon to the US... if they launch it in southern ocean waters that means US sea defences have to be created and built up around all of US territory and US bases in other countries... they are prepared to spend trillions on ballistic missile defence are they prepared to spend a lot more protecting their shores... they want to feel safe... and the purpose of Poseidon and other weapons is that they never feel safe... that is the basis of MAD, which has worked fine for so long but the US is destabilising it with ABM sites around the place...

BTW operating at more than 1,000m of water means it will be the fastest thing there.... deep diving subs move at between 3 and 7 knts... this will be going at 60-70knts...

BTW good post Teshub... I would add to that.... many ports are dredged and relatively deep so an enormous volume of water is going to be turned into super heated salt water... that is very radioactive.... the water will absorb a lot of the energy of the explosion so you really could not compare it with an air or even a surface burst.... but depending on which way the wind blows we are talking about terrible fall out potential downwind... and as mentioned you could sail up the Mississippi as well so your options for fallout are increased...

With a normal port an underwater 2MT explosion would basically vapourise all the sea water and a lot of mud and debris would be superheated... I don't think there would be a huge mushroom cloud.... that is normally created by superheated air rising so superheated salt water would not rise as far or as fast so a low flat cloud of superheated radioactive salt water and mud.... if it blows inland it will not be good for living things...

So it does have a role. Whether or not it is worth the investment to manufacture and deploy is another question.

They could make lots of them and in peacetime use some to map the seabed as an UUV... being nuclear powered they could send them all over the place...

They could even be used to monitor sea currents... once they have detailed maps of sea currents they could use that to use in their mission to destroy food stocks near the US and her allies...

Hell they could get into Greenpeaces' good books and escort whales... those feckin Japs and Norwegians had better watch what they are harpooning in the south seas... something might turn and bite them back...

They will only have to make other countries pay double for the f-35, and everyone here know they will pay, and get back those billions lost in the programs you are talking.

You make it sound like the US is good at business... they are not.... when everyone trades in US dollars it creates an international demand for US dollars... as more and more countries drop the dollar the worse it will be for the US because without being the international currency they are fucked. They will have to work for the money... and they aren't used to working that hard.
(Ironically the people that work the hardest often do it in 2-3 jobs, but for minimum wage...)

Trying to hit US with economy is useless. They are too good at that.

Even if it wasn't useless... the US is using sanctions against Russia to stop it from developing and progressing, so at the very least it should do everything it can to return the favour.

But at the end of the day this is not a commercial thing.... it is a deterrence thing... the idea is to make war unappealing.... which is no small thing when you are talking about a war economy like America... they thrive on wars.

The purpose is not to make them poor, but to make war with Russia not an appealing or even sensible option... MAD... mutually assured destruction...

Only way this makes sense with 2Mt is if rest of the payload is nothing but cobalt that would be used to salt the warhead

Giant dirty bomb

Otherwise waste of time and money

Not a waste of time and money... as I mentioned these could be the basis of very deep diving long range UUVs that could map and explore the sea bed... there is no reason for a UUV to move at 60-70 knots, so heavy payloads could be attached and it would still be useful... it could take samples at different depths continuously for weeks... never getting tired or bored... just set it a grid pattern to operate in at 1km deep or more...hell you could use it for all sorts of things...

You could use to to look for oil in the water, or scan the bottom with sonar or radar... a nuke propulsion means plenty of electricity available...

2MT would destroy most of New York City.

Not an underwater burst... water would absorb a lot of the energy... still would not be nice though...

And still the best economy in the world. They don't care about debt. Debt is part of their lives.

Debt has become part of their lives and the only ones who get debt relief are the richest banks that are too big to fail... how about that for irony...

Poseidon on its own is not the solution but added to other pieces it becomes a web that ensures Russia will damage the US to an unacceptable level if the US wants to start something.

Sounds like value for money to me.

Once there will be option to change to say Renminbi world it could be interesting to see how much of this remains...

When that happens then the US wont have so much money available to it... just like everyone else and will have to make serious cuts in spending.... which is going to be tremendously painful... will the MIC accept not having cash thrown at them... is a coup possible... would it even be likely... the MIC seems to be in bed with the US media, so they have the tools to manipulate the population... they certainly love to get them excited about new cruise missile attacks and invasions....

The funny thing is Tramp seems to speed up US erosion. His hysterical economical war on the world opens eyes more countries . And Us is perhaps stronger then any of alone state but not groups thereof.

Indeed Trumps bullyboy tactics might work in the boardroom of his own company, but I don't think even North Korea or Iran are impressed let alone the EU...

how do you know its more expensive then ICBM? it is enough to kill Diego Garcia or Hawaii not to mention any of CSGs... as stand off weapon. Forcing enemy to spend billions on defense.

Indeed, ASW systems are bloody expensive.... and having to set them up in the south pacific and south atlantic would be expensive enough but also having to patrol down there too is going to push them past the trillion dollar a year defence budget... of course new US navy access bases down there will become necessary too... I doubt they will consider Africa, so south America and perhaps New Zealand or Australia... they already have a US base at Christchurch airport to support their operations in Antarctica... perhaps they might want to rent some space in the port at Invercargill or Dunedin or Christchurch.... of course we have a no nuke policy so that rules out all their subs and most of their ships from operating here anyway... Aussie?