launch one of the most extreme weapons ever devised

In 1961, the US Navy lost a nuclear submarine in the Atlantic and spent years trying to locate exactly what had happened under thousands of meters of water. That search left an idea among military strategists: the ocean could hide for decades technologies, accidents or threats capable of altering the global balance without anyone really knowing where they were.

The return of weapons designed for fear. In the midst of the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union came to study weapons so extreme that they seemed straight out of science fiction: nuclear torpedoes gigantic, underwater explosions massive or systems designed to destroy entire cities from the ocean.

For decades, many of those projects remained relics of another era… until Russia decided to recover part of that logic with a new generation of “superweapons” designed to penetrate modern defenses and return strategic fear to the center of naval warfare.

The submarine created around a weapon. He Khabarovsk-class is probably the most radical example of that idea. Russia has built a nuclear submarine whose main mission is not to patrol, escort or combat like a conventional one, but to transport and cast Poseidonthat gigantic autonomous torpedo with strategic nuclear propulsion and capability that we talked about before.

In fact, everything in its design revolves around that mission. Their conventional capabilities They exist, but they are clearly subordinated to the true objective of the project: converting the submarine into a platform dedicated to deploying one of the most extreme weapons ever developed.

Poseidon and the logic of the apocalyptic weapon. The truth is that Poseidon It is not really a conventional underwater drone, but rather a huge strategic torpedo designed to travel intercontinental distances underwater and threaten coastal cities, critical infrastructure or aircraft carrier groups.

Russia presented in 2018 as an “invincible” and impossible to intercept weapon, trying to convey the idea that it can still develop systems capable of breaking any Western defensive shield. Beyond the propaganda, the concept is disturbing because forces NATO to prepare against autonomous underwater threats capable of operating over enormous distances and long periods of time.

A design built for an idea. The new satellite images and open analyzes have shown that the Khabarovsk mixes elements of Russian submarines Borei and Belgorodalbeit removing entire parts to focus almost exclusively on Poseidon.

The submarine maintains gigantic dimensions, a monster of about 135 meters longand probably carries up to six Poseidon torpedoes in huge compartments located in the bow. Among them there is hardly any room for conventional torpedoes, making it clear that Russia sacrificed versatility and multipurpose capability to prioritize this strategic weapon above everything else.

NATO still doesn’t know how much naval warfare will change. Despite the grandiloquent tone with which the Kremlin presented Poseidonthe weapon still raises many questions about its real usefulness, its operational capacity and its true strategic impact. Some analysis considered exaggerated certain Russian claims, especially those related to apocalyptic effects or absolute impossibility of interception. Even so, and as we said, NATO navies are forced to take it very seriously because it introduces an extremely uncomfortable problem: how to detect and neutralize an autonomous underwater nuclear threat capable of operating at enormous distances and for long periods.

Simply forcing the West to dedicate resources, surveillance and planning to this scenario is already a partial victory for Moscow. In the end, the Khabarovsk reflects an increasingly visible trend in Russian strategy: compensating for economic or conventional limitations by betting on radical systems, difficult to classify and designed more to alter the psychological and strategic calculation of the adversary than to wage traditional conventional wars.

Image | Andrei Luzik

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