Russian Borei class.jpg
I have been blogging lately about Soviet and Russian nuclear weapons. Today, I am going to continue that theme with a post about Russian nuclear submarines.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union began development of a fourth-generation submarine referred to as the Borei-class which would replace the aging and obsolete Delta and Typhoon classes of submarines. The Soviet Union fell but the Russian government which followed remained committed to the Borei-class of nuclear submarines which they believed would be strong leg of their nuclear triad for decades to come.
The Russians considered modernizing their Typhoon-class submarine fleet but abandoned the idea because of the expense. The Borei-class was based on a completely new design concept. The Russians intended the Borei-class to be smaller and lighter than the Typhoon-class while carrying more powerful weapons. At twenty-four thousand tons, the Borei-class submarines are about half of the weight of a Typhoon submarine. They are thinner than the Typhoons and can travel a little faster.
The weapons carried by the Borei submarines are definitely more powerful than the Typhoon submarines payload. The RSM-56 “Bulava” is ballistic missile with a five hundred and fifty kiloton nuclear warhead. It has a special inertial navigation system. They were specifically designed for the Borei-class. The Typhoon-class carried R-39 Rif ballistic missiles with one hundred kiloton nuclear warheads.
By 2006, the Russian navy had three Borei submarines in active service. In 2008, the Russian Navy announced that rest of the seven Borei submarines planned for construction by 2024 would be based on a revised design. This new Borei II design would have less noise, advanced communications technology and improved crew living quarters. There had been speculation that the Borei II’s would have twenty Bulava tube-launchers but now it appears that all of the Borei II submarines will have the same sixteen tube-launchers as the current Borei submarines in service.
The new Borei class submarines are definitely an improvement on the old Delta and Typhoon classes. However, they do have a serious problem that may ultimately interfere with their planned construction and deployment. They are very expensive. They are about half the two-billion dollar cost of the old U.S. Ohio-class submarines but Russia has a much smaller defense budget than the U.S. And, in addition, the Russians are involved in several major projects that are competing for their defense dollars.
The estimates being used concerning the cost of a Borei submarine do not include the Borei II improvements. And, they do not include the costs of research and development for the Borei-class submarines. The development of the Bulava missiles was fraught with serious problems and delays.
Military sources inside of Russia say that the next set of improvements planned for the Borei III version has been cancelled because of cost. There are also reports that the Russian Navy has halted work on the last two Borei submarine orders that were scheduled for delivery in the mid-2020s.
Making the situation even more complex is the fact that the Russian Navy is also working on the Yasen-class submarines. The cost of the first Yasen submarine was one and a half billion dollars, more than fifty percent above the cost of each Borei submarine. The second Yasen submarine is projected to cost three billion dollars.
Time will tell how the Russians will balance involvement in two separate and expensive submarine projects.