Russia navy set to deploy nuclear submarine drones to menace US

Russia will deploy more than 30 underwater nuclear drones that Moscow claims will devastate US coastal targets in the event of an attack.

Russia will deploy over 30 'Poseidon' underwater drones. Picture: The Diplomat.

Russia is to deploy more than 30 underwater nuclear-capable drones that Moscow claims will devastate US coastal targets in the event of an attack.

The Poseidon drones, thought to be capable of speeds of more than 160km per hour, will be fitted to four submarines. “Two Poseidon-carrying submarines are expected to enter service with the Northern Fleet and the other two will join the Pacific Fleet,” a defence industry source told Tass, the Russian state news agency. “Each of the submarines will carry a maximum of eight drones and, therefore, the total number of Poseidons on combat duty may reach 32 vehicles.”

The nuclear-powered Poseidon will be able to travel up to 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles), Russian sources claim. The unmanned underwater drone is designed to be launched undetected, and loiter before being steered, at large ships or coastal targets.

A two-megatonne nuclear warhead could be used to destroy enemy naval installations, Russian sources say. One of the craft to carry the weapon is expected to be the new Khabarovsk attack submarine, which is being built at the Sevmash shipbuilding plant in northern Russia. Existing Oscar-class submarines, such as the Belgorod, may also be used. The timescale is not clear.

President Putin announced a new generation of strategic weapons in a sabre-rattling state of the nation address in March. He said that Russia had “developed unmanned submersible vehicles that can move at great depths — I would say extreme depths — intercontinentally, at a speed multiple times higher than the speed of submarines”. A Pentagon strategy document leaked two months before Mr Putin’s speech noted that Russia was working on “a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed undersea autonomous torpedo”.

Suspicions about such a weapon first emerged in 2015 when US defence sources said the Pentagon had given the code name Kanyon to a “submarine strike vehicle armed with a nuclear warhead” under design in Russia. Russian state television then “accidentally” showed a military commander examining a diagram of the 24-metre weapon.

The Times