Not so long ago, the US Department of Defense made a statement that in the event of a non-nuclear global conflict, their Navy would be able to detect and neutralize all of Russia's nuclear submarines within 15-20 days. Leaving behind the brackets the political meaning of this statement and the hypothetical nature of the situation itself, attention should be paid to the timelines allotted for this task. In order to bring a rocket into combat, it takes an incomparably shorter time, measured in minutes, therefore, the discussion about the capabilities of US NAVY is purely theoretical.
The entire submarine fleet of the Russian Federation today (according to published data) consists of about six dozen units of military equipment of various displacement, purpose and type of power plant. Since the service life of ships is measured for decades, most of them were built in the Soviet years.
The basis of the defense of our country is the nuclear triad, it consists of the Strategic Missile Forces, long-range bomber aircraft and nuclear submarines of Russia. At the same time, the division is conditional, ballistic missiles are based on ships, and aircraft became carriers of winged ones.
The Northern and Pacific fleets are called upon to play a crucial role in naval strategy. This is due to their ability to virtually unlimited access to any area of the oceans. They include all submarines of project 667, which are the basis of the strategic naval nuclear forces of the Russian Federation.
Nuclear submarines of Russia are divided according to their purpose into:
- missile carriers with ballistic delivery vehicles (15 pcs.);
- carriers of cruise missiles (9 pcs.);
- carriers of torpedoes with a special charge (12 pcs.);
- special submarines (7 pcs.).
Submarine Sharks (Project 941), the world's largest submarines, carry combat duty.
The new nuclear submarine of Russia “Yuri Dolgoruky” (Borey Ave., No. 955, displacement of 24 thousand tons) is equipped with the most advanced Bulava-M missiles, as well as the modernized Dmitry Donskoy. Both ships become the basis of the series. So, the nuclear submarines “Vladimir Monomakh”, “Alexander Nevsky” and five more ships of the project 955 according to the plan should be introduced into the Northern Fleet in the next couple of years. The main feature of this series is its low noise and special anti-hydroacoustic coatings, which greatly complicate detection by sonars.
Other modern nuclear submarines of Russia are represented by the Ash project (855). The first of five, the Severodvinsk, launched in 1993, has a displacement of 14 thousand tons. Speed - 31 knots under water (nuclear submarines move faster when submerged). The main weapons of the ships of this project are high-speed rocket torpedoes.
Today, the main strength of the submarine fleet is made by the Shark project boats (Project 941), Kalmar (Project 667 BDR), Dolphin (Project 667 BDRM), Antei (Project 949A) and Schuka-B "(Project 971). Rumors spread by NATO representatives that they are easy to spot are somewhat exaggerated. Sometimes they specifically pop up in the areas of anti-submarine exercises of the North Atlantic fleets to show their ability to provide stealth.
However, this Soviet technology will be replaced in the coming decade by new fourth-generation Russian nuclear submarines of the Ash and Borey class. An update is inevitable.