Russia Is Building New Subs to Launch Its Terrifying Apocalypse Torpedoes

Even as Russia’s military continues to struggle in Ukraine, the country’s plans to deploy a unique sea-based form of strategic nuclear deterrence are apparently proceeding. Russia’s TASS state new agency reported on Monday that its Pacific Fleet was moving forward with plans to activate a new division of submarines specially designed to launch an intercontinental-range nuclear drone-torpedo called Poseidon, which could be used to attack coastal cities.

This follows Russian media reports from January that delivery of the first production batch of Poseidon drone torpedoes—formerly known as the Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System or Kanyon—had been successfully completed.

Not only does each Poseidon torpedo carry a big nuke—approximately a 2-megaton-yield—it’s propelled by a liquid metal nuclear reactor, giving it essentially inexhaustible range and endurance, and likely high sustainable speeds.

Russia has been happy to threaten the use of this weird weapon of mass destruction prior to its operational deployment. It has been showcased in prominent TV appearances by Putin, and a commentator on state TV eagerly suggested the torpedoes could be used to flood the entire United Kingdom in a radioactive tsunami.

Allegedly, the new submarine division will become active at a base on the Kamchatka Peninsula in either late 2024 or the first half of 2025, according to TASS. The division seems likely to eventually encompass four or five submarines in total, with 30 Poseidons between them. If production stops at 30, that would imply there would be no bothering with reloads after the doomsday torpedoes are launched.

The hulls of least two of the planned four drone torpedo-carrying nuclear-powered submarines were laid down in 2014 and 2017: the Khabarovsk and Ulyanovsk. These are supposedly set to be for commissioned in 2024/2025 and 2027. Also designated Project 09851 submarines, they appear to be significantly shortened (down to 120-meters length) derivatives from Russia’s latest Borei-class ballistic missile submarine, and include that submarine’s quiet pump jet propulsion system. (For more, check out submarine expert H.I. Sutton’s well-illustrated article on this new submarine class.)

However, sanctions resulting in decreased access to microelectronics could impose delays on production and commissioning. It’s also worth recalling that in November of 2022, there were reports that an apparent test of Poseidon in the Arctic Sea had to be aborted for technical reasons.

Basing the Poseidon and its Project 09851 carriers in the Pacific makes sense—the ocean’s deeper waters would give the torpedoes greater freedom of maneuverability to evade detection with fewer chokepoints. There, however, it seems likely to pose a particular threat for naval bases in the Pacific and to U.S. West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco—though in theory, it has the endurance to go anywhere, undersea geography permitting.

At present, only two unique ‘special projects’ submarines can employ Poseidon. The first was the B-90 Sarov, based on the ubiquitous Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine which, unusually, has a nuclear reactor used only for electrical generation instead of directly turning the propeller. Given its experimental role, it seems less likely Sarov will be permanently assigned to the new division.

Russia subsequently built the much larger K-329 Belgorod ”special mission” sub, which also plays a research-and-undersea-hacking role, serving as the mothership for the Klavesin under-water drone and Losharik mini-submarine. Based on the Oscar II-class cruise missile submarine, the 10,000-ton Belgorod (AKA Project 09852) can carry up to six Poseidons in its oversized tubes, and was commissioned in June of 2022.

At 24 meters long and 1.6 meters in diameter, each Poseidon is roughly three times wider than a standard heavyweight torpedo, and has practically unlimited endurance with which to drive its quiet pump-jet propulsions system, thanks to its nuclear reactor. It can also allegedly dive deeper than the crush depth of U.S. Mark 48 torpedoes at 1,000 meters, and may be able to do it faster at 56-70 knots—depending on which Russian claims you believe.

But because the torpedo will be detectable from far away when traveling anywhere near maximum speed, it is likely to cruise much slower until ready to make a final dash or evade enemies.

The possibility of static deployment of these strategic weapons to launch containers on the ocean floor has also been explored. In such a configuration, the container would be deposited and recovered by cranes on special icebreakers.

ICBMs, but underwater and on robots

Russia still retains older, anti-ship or anti-submarine tactical nukes, which aren’t subject to restriction under the New START arms control treaty. Because Poseidon didn’t exist when New START was signed, it doesn’t neatly fall into its specified categories of strategic weapons—though, as they are clearly long-range strategic weapons, they should fall under that rubric.

Nobody else has seriously tried to build weapons like the Poseidon, and for years, many Western officials were incredulous Russia would build weapons with such an unusual capability. But by the mid-2010s, it became clear it was very real.

The reasoning behind Poseidon is largely tied to Russia’s anxiety over the U.S.’s budding missile defense capabilities, developed after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002. In reality, U.S. defenses can muster only a few dozen shots to repel Russia’s hundreds of strategic missiles. Nonetheless, Russia grew paranoid that the U.S.’s defenses could eventually undermine their deterrence, and began developing a variety of exotic nuclear delivery systems to bypass them—a category encompassing both Poseidon and Russia’s hypersonic missiles.

Nuclear torpedoes themselves are not unprecedented, and were fielded operationally by both the Soviet Union and the U.S. in 1958 and 1963, respectively. The operational types were intended to swat ships and submarines at sea without requiring a precision torpedo intercept. Russian submariners out of communication with their country very nearly employed them against U.S. ships blockading Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

However, the initial Soviet T-15 nuclear torpedo was intended for attacks on coastal targets, like naval bases. It was a strategic nuclear weapon—but one that had to be fired within 16-25 miles of the target.

Unlike the weapons that preceded it’s development, Poseidon is designed to travel thousands of miles across the ocean—think of it as a sort of slower, underwater intercontinental ballistic missile, or a robotic nuclear-armed (and nuclear-powered) kamikaze submarine. While traveling for days to target, the drone-like torpedo will necessarily operate autonomously, relying on AI to evade defenses and stay on course.

There is some disagreement over Poseidon’s exact concept of operations. One widely recounted possibility is that it’s designed to trigger a nuclear explosion short of a coastal target, thereby generating a tsunami wave of irradiated water.

However, according to some analysts, even a big nuclear bomb exerts less energy than a natural tsunami, and furthermore disperses its energy in a circular pattern rather than concentrated more destructively in one general direction, so this concept may be less effective than it sounds. Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis has argued, however, that Poseidon could be ‘salted’ with cobalt to make it an especially lethal ‘dirty’ radiation bomb.

Perhaps instead, the nuclear warhead is supposed to trigger more or less directly on a targeted harbor or base. That may be more destructive than the tsunami approach, but still much less so than missile-delivered air-bursting warhead.

Russia has also occasionally portrayed Poseidon as useable against U.S. carrier taskforces, though getting the long-distance weapon to intercept ship erratically moving at 30 knots poses very complex challenges. As TASS describes the new Poseidon-armed division as aimed at “strategic deterrence,” we perhaps need not overthink the “how” of the technically problematic anti-carrier mode of employment.

Regardless, there’s no question the Poseidon torpedoes will take longer to target than an ICBM traveling at Mach 27. In a 2017 email, Michael Kofman—an expert on the Russian military—described them in an email to the author as “third strike” weapons promising punishment, even if the U.S. were to come out “ahead” in an initial exchange of more traditional nuclear missiles with Russia.

One notable question is to what extent Russia can communicate with, or otherwise control, this heavily automated nuclear weapon once launched—say, to cancel or redirect an attack. If controllable, that could make these weapons exploitable for nuclear blackmail. Depending on the extent of autonomy (most likely limited at present, but bound to increase) it could also pose issues related to entrusting AIs to understand when to employ nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Navy is nonetheless looking at ways it could defend against Poseidon. It seems—even using the more moderate specifications— that such torpedoes could be highly challenging to both detect and destroy due to their combination of stealth, speed and depth. Countermeasures could include faster anti-torpedo torpedoes, a more extensive static sea-bed sonar surveillance system, and development of ballistic/hypersonic missiles that can quickly release homing torpedoes close enough to intercept a Poseidon torpedo once it is detected.

Poseidon is an unnecessarily creative and Strangelovian new way to threaten nuclear devastation when the existing means are more than adequately nightmarish. Yet, it looks like the resources have been committed, and that intercontinental-range nuclear torpedoes are here to stay. Expect Poseidon to continue featuring in Russia’s nuclear threats, intended to help cover for the declining intrigue of its conventional military.

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