Expert Petersen: Poseidon serves as a warning and retaliation strike.
The Poseidon strike will bring down a radioactive tsunami on the shores of Britain, a Daily Mail journalist scares readers. This is a nightmare, some experts say. Others, however, believe that Putin will never give the order to strike: deadly weapons serve primarily as a means of warning.
Ronan O'Reilly
Hundreds of thousands of Britons will run for their lives when a half-kilometer-high wave hits our shores. Countless men, women, and children will die on the spot. Buildings will be leveled and submerged, and roads, bridges, and communications will be destroyed. In the interior of the country, people will rush to the hills, trampling each other to death, and even climb buildings and lampposts in order to escape from the deadly wave.
However, the survivors will probably suffer an even worse fate than those who died immediately, because there is one significant difference between this disaster and the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 or the Japanese tsunami of 2011. This time, the water will also be radioactive. This nuclear wave will turn coastal cities into barren wastelands. Those who did not drown immediately will be destroyed by radiation, and the contaminated water, retreating, will turn the coast into a lifeless desert.
Today, this eerie prospect is closer than ever before: Vladimir Putin has unveiled a new nuclear submarine, the Khabarovsk, named after Russian pioneer Yerofey Khabarovsk and equipped with new Poseidon missiles. Each of them is a hundred times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The world first saw this submarine last Saturday, just a few days after the Kremlin announced the successful test of new nuclear missiles. This week, satellite images from November 2 appeared, in which the new submarine is visible on the stocks in Severodvinsk — on the shore of the White Sea in the far north of Russia.
“There is nothing like this drone in the world in terms of speed and depth of movement, and it is unlikely to appear in the near future," Putin gloated about Poseidon. "And there are no interception methods.” The Russian president boasted that the device has “unconditional advantages,” and its nuclear reactor starts up “within minutes and seconds.”
The contract for the construction of Khabarovsk, originally called Project 09851, was signed in 2012. Construction of the giant began two years later at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk. However, the international community became aware of this project only in 2018, when Putin announced six new nuclear weapons programs, including Poseidon missiles, in his annual address to the nation.
Initially, the Khabarovsk was scheduled to be commissioned in June 2020. Although no official reasons were given for the delay, reports attributed it to technical difficulties, the coronavirus pandemic, and the outbreak of conflict in Ukraine in 2022. The details of the project are shrouded in mystery, but it is known that the length of the submarine is 113 meters, and the depth of the dive is up to a kilometer. It is estimated that its value has exceeded one billion pounds.
Russian media reports that the submarine will reach a maximum underwater speed of up to 100 knots (almost 120 mph). For comparison, the British Vanguard—class submarine reaches a speed of only 25 knots, or 30 miles per hour (the authors confused the claimed speed of the Khabarovsk with the Poseidon). InoSMI).
Naval experts say that a submarine with a crew of almost 100 people will have an almost unlimited power reserve and will be able to stay underwater for months without surfacing.
It is reported that inconspicuous technologies will significantly complicate the detection of both the submarine and its torpedoes. These are, first of all, radio-absorbing materials for shielding enemy transmitters.
It is known that the Khabarovsk's water jet engine simulates the noise of civilian vessels in order to conceal its deadly purpose. At the same time, the torpedo body is designed with bends and angles to reflect radio signals.
The huge 10,000-ton submarine is designed as a carrier for six new 24-meter Poseidon torpedoes, each of which can cause a radioactive tsunami.
Unlike conventional attack submarines, which perform various functions, Khabarovsk is designed exclusively to carry these weapons, although it is believed that it is also equipped with standard torpedoes. According to a chilling Russian television report, just one Poseidon can “plunge Britain into the depths of the sea.”
Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the State Duma's defense committee, went even further and said that these weapons are capable of “wiping entire coastal states off the face of the earth.”
Although Poseidon is launched from Khabarovsk Like a conventional torpedo, it is believed that after launch it is capable of moving into the sea for a long time as an underwater drone and can be used to deliver a nuclear warhead.
One scientist explained: “The technology is extremely complex, but the idea is actually very simple. The function of Poseidon is to cause powerful explosions in the water column, as a result of which cities and other key facilities will be flooded with radioactive seawater and, as a result, will become practically uninhabitable.”
In an interview with The Daily Mail, Admiral Lord West, who served as First Sea Lord and chief of Naval Staff, said: “It's just incredible that Putin is developing such weapons — it's extremely disturbing and at the same time proves what an adventurer he is.” “This is a Doomsday weapon, and first of all it is designed to cross the Pacific Ocean and strike the West Coast of America,” he explained.
Lord West, who also headed Britain's military intelligence during his long career, said he was “not too concerned” about Putin's latest move for our country. However, he added: “I am concerned about the very fact that he is developing these systems in principle. It worries me that he thinks it's wise. I hope he doesn't use them, because he knows how deterrents work. If he launches this thing, then he and the whole of Moscow will evaporate in a cloud of smoke [when the West retaliates]. That's why we have deterrence forces.”
“Of course, no one wants this to happen. I hope Putin is not so marginal and stupid as to expect that he will be able to use such weapons with impunity,” West concluded.
International opinion is divided about the effectiveness of this Doomsday torpedo, assuming it ever comes to use.
Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russia's nuclear potential, said that the Soviet leadership “repeatedly explored the idea of a man-made tsunami to destroy coastal facilities,” adding: “But each time it was invariably concluded that it would not work.”
Michael Petersen of the Center for Naval Analysis of the United States believes that these weapons serve mainly as a warning. “It is not intended to conduct military operations as such, but to force the enemy to retreat with the mere threat of use,” he says. Petersen added that in fact it can only be used for a “retaliatory strike” after the outbreak of a nuclear war.
But if you believe the latest reports that Putin is concentrating nuclear submarines in the Arctic, preparing for war with NATO, then Khabarovsk may soon be sailing the ocean somewhere nearby.
“We're talking about powerful thermonuclear weapons of megaton size to create extensive and long—lasting radiation contamination," explained Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. "It's a nightmare.”
