12:22, Mon, Jan 16, 2023
UPDATED: 14:42, Mon, Jan 16, 2023
Speaking to Express.co.uk in 2019, Iain Ballantyne, the editor of Warships IFR magazine, told Express.co.uk: “The new variant of the Oscar II, the Belgorod – which is to start sea trials next year - can reportedly carry and launch the large Poseidon nuclear-powered and nuclear-tipped Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV).
“Looking like a massive torpedo, the Poseidon has a top speed around 100 knots, a range of several thousand miles and can supposedly go as deep as 3,000ft."
He continued: “With a 100-megaton warhead it can be fired from secure zones in the Arctic – what Russians call Bastions – to potentially hit targets in the USA or Europe.
“It can detonate in civilian ports and naval base harbours and render them completely useless for a long time, while killing many people.
“It could also cause serious harm to a carrier battle group, which would be hard pressed to defend itself and fend one off before it detonated.”
Mr Ballantyne nevertheless stressed that there was some scepticism in the West about whether Mr Putin’s “so-called wonder weapons” were “practical weapons in reality”.
He explained: “Just as in the latter part of the Cold War, when NATO submarine forces had to counter very advanced submarines, such as the famed Alfa attack boat, the West will have to formulate strategies and introduce new technologies just in case Putin’s wonder weapons, including Poseidon, do work.
“A lesson from the past for the Russians, is that for all its fearsome qualities of being very fast and deep diving the Alfa attack submarine was in the end very tricky to operate and, ultimately, an experimental dead end.
“It did cause quite a few sleepless nights for NATO during the Cold War, however, and that is the Kremlin’s aim today - to keep the West off balance, and to deter NATO from making any moves Putin considers counter to Russia’s interests at home or abroad.”
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