Nuke sub armed with 'doomsday missile': That's Russia's latest

Russia has launched a nuclear submarine equipped with a ‘doomsday weapon’ designed to devastate coastal cities.

Over the weekend, Russia announced the launch of Khabarovsk, a new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine intended to carry Poseidon, a nuclear-powered underwater drone reportedly capable of generating tsunamis strong enough to obliterate entire coastal cities.

The Poseidon is one of six nuclear ‘superweapons’ first revealed in 2018.

Putin pitches Poseidon as a game-changer

Ahead of the submarine’s launch, Russian leader Vladimir Putin last week announced the successful test of Poseidon, calling it the first weapon of its kind in the world.

“There is nothing like this in the world in terms of the speed and the depth of the movement of this unmanned vehicle — and it is unlikely there ever will be,” Putin said, according to The New York Times.

Putin added that there were “no ways to intercept” Poseidon. Without giving specifics, he said the drone “travelled for a certain amount of time” during the test.

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The Times reported that Poseidon is believed to reach speeds of 100 knots (about 185 kilometres per hour).

As for the Khabarovsk submarine, previous reports suggest it can carry up to 12 Poseidons.

At the launch, Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov said the submarine, equipped with underwater weapons and robotic systems, would help safeguard Russia’s maritime borders and national interests across various regions of the world’s oceans, according to a ministry statement.

US cities on Russia’s target list?

A senior US official previously warned that Poseidon was designed to destroy American cities.

In 2020, Christopher Ford, then Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, said Poseidons were intended to “inundate US coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis”, according to The Washington Post.

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However, experts remain sceptical about whether such explosions could generate a tsunami.

“It’s worth recalling that the Soviet Union, in fact, studied the idea of using tsunami-like waves to destroy coastal facilities. Several times. And each study concluded that it won’t work. One study called the idea ‘absurd’,” Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian nuclear forces, told the newspaper.

Experts have also noted that Poseidon does not fit neatly into any existing weapon category.

The drone is designed to carry a nuclear warhead and is powered by a nuclear reactor, giving it virtually unlimited range. This makes it a ‘Franken-weapon’ that falls somewhere between a torpedo and an unmanned underwater vessel, Michael B Petersen, Principal Research Scientist at the Russia military studies programme at the Center for Naval Analyses, told The Post.