Akula Class Submarine - Here's what you need to know: Despite their low level of readiness, Akula boats continue to make up the bulk of Russia's nuclear attack submarine force.
The Soviet Union produced hot-rod submarines that could swim faster, take more damage, and dive deeper than their American counterparts, but the US Navy remained fairly convinced that the Soviet submarines were superior because they were all extremely loud. . If the superpowers clashed, the quieter American submarines had a better chance of spotting their Soviet counterparts first and greeting them with homing torpedoes. But that trust was shattered in the mid-1980s when the Soviet Navy launched its Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarines. Thirty years later, they are still the mainstay of Russia's nuclear attack submarine fleet, and they are quieter than most of their American counterparts.
Akula Class Submarine
Intelligence provided by spies John Walker and Jerry Whitworth in the 1970s convinced the Soviet Navy that it needed to get serious about acoustic stealth on its next attack submarine. After the opulent Victor class and the expensive titanium-hulled Sierra class, construction began in 1983 on the first Project 971 submarine, the Akula ("Shark"). The new design benefited from advanced milling tools and computer controls imported from Japan and Sweden. , which allowed Soviet engineers to produce silent seven-bladed propellers.
Bronco Models Nb5020 Russian Akula Ii Class Attack Submarine K335...
With a displacement of almost thirteen thousand tons underwater, the Great Akula featured a steel double hull typical of Soviet submarines, allowing the vessel to absorb more ballast water and survive greater damage. The attack submarine's propulsion unit was floated to muffle sound, and its outer and inner surfaces were covered with anechoic tiles. Even the suspension holes that allowed the passage of water in the outer hull of the Akula had retractable covers to minimize acoustic return. The 111-meter vessel featured a sleek aquadynamic conning tower and a drop pod on the tailfin that could deploy a towed passive sonar array. A crew of about seventy people could operate the ship for a hundred days at sea.
She could cruise at a speed of thirty-three knots (thirty-eight miles per hour) and operate at a depth of 480 meters, two hundred meters deeper than the current Los Angeles-class submarine. However, more concerning to the US Navy was the Akula
Stealthy like the class in Los Angeles. American submariners could no longer take their acoustic superiority for granted. On the other hand, it was believed that Akula's own sensors were inferior.
Akula I submarines, referred to in Russian service as Shchuka ("Pike"), were designed primarily to hunt US Navy submarines, especially ballistic missile submarines. Four 533mm torpedo tubes and four 650mm large tubes could deploy up to forty long-range SS-N-15 Starfish and SS-N-16 Stallion wire-guided torpedoes, mines or anti-ship missiles. Akula could also carry up to twelve Granat guided missiles capable of hitting ground targets up to three thousand kilometers away.
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Soviet shipyards pumped out seven Akula Is, while the US Navy tried to build an even stealthier Seawolf-class submarine to compete. However, even as the Soviet Union collapsed, it launched the first of five Project 971U Improved Akula I ships. The heavier and slightly longer 971A-class Akula II continued in the form of
In 1995, which featured a two-layer noise reduction system for the powertrain, damped powertrains, and new sonar. Both variants had six additional external tubes that could launch rockets or decoy torpedoes, and the new Strela-3 surface-to-air missile system.
But the biggest improvement was stealth: The new Akulas were now significantly quieter than the upgraded Los Angeles-class submarines, though some analysts say they're still stealthier at higher speeds. You can view the Office of Naval Intelligence Underwater Acoustic Stealth Comparison Chart here. The US Navy still operates forty-three Los Angeles-class submarines, though fourteen of the newer Seawolf-class submarines and the Virginia still beat the Akula in stealth.
But Russian shipyards have had trouble completing the new Akula II ships, which aren't cheap: One claims a price of $1.55 billion in 1996, or $2.4 billion today. Russia's struggling economy can barely afford to keep completed ships operational. Two Akula IIs were decommissioned before construction was complete, and three were converted to Borei-class ballistic missile submarines. As for Akula II
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It was struck by tragedy in 1998 when a mentally unstable teenage sailor killed eight crew members in port and threatened to blow up the torpedo room before killing himself.
, the only completed Akula III ship, was deployed in 2001 and reportedly boasted the pinnacle of Russian stealth technology at the time. Seven years later, Moscow finally kicked up the finances to complete Akula II.
After fifteen years of failed construction. However, during sea trials in November 2008, a fire alarm was inadvertently activated, flooding the submarine with freon extinguishing gas which suffocated all twenty people on board, mostly civilians, the most serious recent incident in the long and checkered history of submarine disasters.
She was ready to go, immediately transferred on a ten-year lease to India for $950 million. NO rebuilt
Akula Class Submarine 3d Model
Guided missile due to the limitations of the missile technology control regime. In October 2016, Moscow and New Delhi agreed to lease a second Akula-class submarine, though whether it will be the former Akula I remains unclear.
Although the steep price tag of $2 billion leads some to believe it may be the latter. This year,
Also joining will be the local Arihant class, which is based on the Akula but repurposed to serve as a ballistic missile submarine.
Accounting in 2016, but only three or four are in operation, the rest are awaiting repair. However, the Russian Navy still employed their ships. In 2009, two Akulas were seen off the east coast of the United States; the closest Russian submarines have reportedly been seen since the end of the Cold War. Three years later, there was an unconfirmed claim (this time denied by the US Navy) that another Akula had spent a month wandering the Gulf of Mexico without being captured. old
Soviet Akula Attack Submarine 3d Model
He was even awarded for "following a foreign submarine for a fortnight". All of these incidents underscored concerns that the US Navy needs to refocus on anti-submarine warfare. In recent years, Russia has also upgraded the Akula fleet to fire deadly Kalibr cruise missiles, which were fired at targets in Syria in 2015 by a Kilo-class submarine.
Despite the low readiness rate, Akula boats continue to make up the bulk of Russia's nuclear attack submarine force and will remain in service for the next decade until production of the next Yasen class actually begins. Until then, Akula's powerful acoustic stealth capabilities will continue to pose a formidable challenge to anti-submarine warfare specialists.
Sébastien Roblin has a master's degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He also worked in the field of education, publishing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for Here's What You Need To Know: The Akula class was 564 feet long, just four feet longer than their American counterparts.
The largest submarines ever built were not built in American shipyards, but in Soviet ones. Named for sharks, these Cold War leviathans could devastate up to two hundred targets with warheads six times more powerful than those that exploded over Hiroshima. The Akula class submarines were some of the most terrifying weapons ever created.
Akula Class Submarine Wallpapers
The Akula ("Shark") class, or Project 941 as it was known during development, was designed to form the basis of the Soviet Union's nuclear deterrent at sea. The Soviet Union learned of the upcoming Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, which would be 564 feet long and carry 192 nuclear warheads. The Soviet leadership decided that it needed its own submarine to respond to the imminent threat, and the Akula class was born.
The Akulas were designed to launch their missiles from relatively close to the Soviet Union, allowing them to operate north of the Arctic Circle, where they could be protected by Soviet air and naval forces. As a result, the submarines were designed with a reinforced hull capable of penetrating polar ice, a large buoyancy reserve to help them emerge through the ice, and a pair of shielded propellers to protect them from collisions with the ice.
Another result was the development of a new nuclear-tipped missile with a range long enough to strike the United States from the strongholds of the Arctic. The R-39 Rif (NATO code name: SS-NX-20 "Sturgeon") was a massive three-stage ballistic missile, 53 feet long and weighing eighty-four tons. With a range of 4,480 nautical miles, the R-39 could hit anywhere in the continental United States.
The arms race during the Cold War was primarily a competition, and the number of warheads was important. Since the Akulas only carried twenty missiles of the twenty-four Ohio-class missiles, each Soviet missile had to carry more nuclear warheads than the US C-4 Trident. A single R-39 contained ten hundred-kiloton warheads, each one of which could be independently aimed, so that a single missile could hit ten different targets at a reasonably close range. This increased the size and weight of the missile, but also meant that each Akula had a total of two hundred warheads, eight more than the Ohio class.
View Of Akula Class Submarine 3d Model
The Akula class was 564 feet long, just four feet longer than their American counterparts. While the Ohio ships had a beam of forty-two feet,
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