I have written in recent blogs about the recent aggressive nuclear stance of Russia. Major upgrades of Russian nuclear weapons have been announced and substantial funds allocated. Russia has been invading other countries airspace with nuclear-capable bombers lately. The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has bragged about Russian tactical nuclear weapons and said that Russia might respond to a conventional attack by NATO with tactical nukes. There are sources that say that Putin and his advisors believe that in a battle with NATO, if they exploded one nuclear device in Easter Europe, NATO would stop fighting and retreat.
Recently, there was a report on the government television Channel One about Putin meeting with military high-command in the city of Sochi. One of the generals was seen to be studying a diagram of a new "devastating torpedo" system. The torpedo would be launched by submarine and would cause "wide areas of radioactive contamination."
The new torpedo was called the "oceanic multi-purpose Status-6 system" and the report said that it would "destroy important economic installations of the enemy in coastal areas and cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country's territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time."
The torpedo was said to be a "robotic mini-submarine" that could travel at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour and that it could avoid all acoustic tracking devices. There was mention of a one hundred megaton nuclear warhead which would be about twice as big as the largest nuclear warhead ever detonated. Detonation of such a bomb could cause a tsunami over sixteen hundred feet high which could travel as much as a thousand miles inland.
A Russian government newspaper has reported details of the Status-6 torpedo without showing the diagram that was seen in the television report. The article contained speculation about some sort of cobalt device that was "super-radioactive." A cobalt bomb would be a nuclear warhead design with a layer of cobalt-59. On detonation, the cobalt-59 would be transmuted to cobalt-60 which is highly radioactive and has a half-life of more than five years. The newspaper said that such a bomb would guarantee "that everything living will be killed" and that even people in underground bunkers would not survive.
There have been recent reports in the U.S. media of some sort of robotic Russian nuclear-armed drone submarine that could travel undetected to U.S. coastal cities and cause wide-spread devastation. Apparently these reports were references to the new Status-6 torpedo.
Lately, Putin has been complaining about the U.S. Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system being developed to counter short and medium range ballistic missiles. The U.S. has stated that the system is intended to defend Europe against the type of missiles that could be launched by Iran or other hostile Middle East countries. When fully developed, the Aegis BMD is slated to be installed in Poland and Romania.
Putin has responded to the development of the Aegis BMD system by saying that the "real" purpose of the system is to neutralize the capability of Russia to employ tactical nuclear ballistic missiles in a conflict with NATO in Eastern Europe. He said that Russia would continue working on advanced ballistic missile systems that could penetrate any anti-missile defense system.
The U.S. Department of Defense would not comment on the torpedo reports except to say that it would defer to the Russian navy with respect to the question of authenticity. There has been speculation that the revelation of the Status-6 torpedo diagram was deliberate. The Russians have engaged recently in what is being called "hybrid warfare." This includes propaganda and disinformation. Perhaps the Status-6 torpedo does not really exist and is just being tossed out to confuse and intimidate our military.
Putin may believe that "leaking" information about an imaginary undetectable Russian nuclear torpedo would cause the Pentagon to divert resources from the development of the Aegis missile shield. In any case, the Russians already have over four thousand nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at the U.S. I would think that these new "super" torpedoes, if they exist, would be redundant and unnecessary if a nuclear war broke out between the U.S. and the Russians.
