According to Russian media reports, on June 1, local time, the Russian Navy's latest 955A "North Wind God M" strategic missile nuclear submarine "Grand Duke Oleg" sailed out of the "North" shipyard in Severodvinsk and began its first sea trial mission in the White Sea.
If all goes well, the Grand Duke Oleg will be officially delivered to the Russian Pacific Fleet submarine team later this year, and this will also be the fifth "North Wind God" class and the second "North Wind God-M" strategic missile nuclear submarine obtained by the Russian Navy. The previous four submarines were К-535"Yuri. Dolgoruky ", К-550" Alexander. Nevsky", К-551"Vladimir. Grand Duke Of Nomomah" and К-549"Konyaz. Grand Duke Vladimir, the last К-549, was the first boat of the 955A "God of the North Winds-M".
So, compared with the previous 955 "North Wind God-M" class strategic missile nuclear submarine, what makes it more "A" and an "M" and "Grand Duke Oleg" how powerful is its ability, and what kind of improvement will its existence bring to the future sea-based strategic nuclear deterrent of the Russian Navy?
How does the 955A "North Wind God-M" class perform?
As we all know, the 955 "North Wind God" class strategic missile nuclear submarine, as the fourth generation of strategic missile nuclear submarines scheduled by the Soviet Red Navy, was first prepared to replace the 941 "Shark" class and part of the 667БДРМ "Dolphin" class strategic missile nuclear submarine in the 1990s.
However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's domestic underwater warfare, surface warfare equipment research and development is chaotic, coupled with the domestic economic situation is also a mess, so the Type 955 strategic missile nuclear submarine from 1991, research and development has entered the stage of "three changes in one day", has experienced many downgrades, but even so downgraded, the "North Wind God" class of the first boat has been delayed until 1996 officially started construction.
955 "North Wind God" class performance
This kind of "downgrading" to the end, the result is the 955 "North Wind God" class nuclear submarine the first three boats in the performance of the extremely good:
In terms of hull, the three type 955 partial hulls, mainly the bow part and the stern part of the rear section of the missile bay, even directly used the remaining 971 "Pike" nuclear submarines in the "North" shipyard have been built and thrown there in most of the ready-made sections, such as the aft of К-535 is directly used К-337 parts, К-549 uses the aft and stern of К-333, and К-551 directly picks up some of the 971 type "second-hand hulls" that have been decommissioned;
From the perspective of the hydroacoustic system, the three Type 955 underwater acoustic and ship electrical systems are said to have directly picked up some of the unfinished 971 type leaks, and even the torpedo tube system and the 971 type are exactly the same, only the central module, especially the missile cabin, and the missile-related servo system, communication system, guidance system, etc. are completely new. This also made the construction of the three Type 955s intermittent, especially the first boat "Yuri. The Dolgoluki was riveted in 1996, built until 2008, and towed into service in 2013;
Finally, from the perspective of submarine-launched strategic missiles as the main combat equipment of strategic missile nuclear submarines, the Russian Navy's plan to develop the P-30 "Булава" missile was also extremely unsmooth, and 12 failed 12 test launches from 2004 to 2009, and even put the director of the Moscow Thermodynamic Institute into it, until the development of the "Булава" missile was on the right track in 2010.
In general, the three 955 "North Wind God" classes of the Russian Navy only solve the problem of "presence or absence" of the Russian military's fourth-generation strategic missile nuclear submarines, and it is far from being "usable" to "easy to use".
955A "North Wind God M" class performance
Therefore, just like the Russian Navy's 885 "Ash Tree" became the 885M, the Russian Navy finally "calmed down" after starting three consecutive 955s, upgraded the 955s, and after six years of improvement work, in 2012, the first 955A "Konyazi. Construction began on the Grand Duke Vladimir, and in 2014 the second boat, the Grand Duke Oleg, was started. After seven years of construction and sea trials, the К-549 "Konyaz. The Grand Duke Vladimir was officially delivered to the Russian Navy in 2020, and the Grand Duke Oleg is also scheduled to be officially delivered to the Russian Navy this year.
Compared with the basic type of 955, the 955A "North Wind God-M" type strategic missile nuclear submarine can be described as a complete improvement:
First of all, of course, the hull, compared to the 955 type picking up the "North" factory 971 type tattered hanging wire behavior, the 955A type finally became a newly manufactured hull, while further optimizing the linear structure of the hull:
For example, the bow, missile cabin and bow part of the 955 type that transitioned very stiffly have been handled very well on the 955A type, and the whole boat line is as smooth and smooth as Mao Mei, which looks much smoother than the US Navy's "Ohio" class strategic missile nuclear submarine;
At the same time, the 955A type also modified the control tower shell and the stern control rudder surface, and the inverted command tower shell on the 955 was replaced with a right angle shell with an angle filler, which seems to have a poor mute effect of the former command tower shell;
The aft rudder surface has been replaced with a full-motion, horizontal rudder surface with two vertical stabilization surfaces, which should be an improvement that also draws on the useful design experience of the Ohio-class strategic missile nuclear submarines.
The second is the underwater acoustic and silent design of the whole boat, and compared with the 955 type picking up the 971 type's broken behavior, the 955A type should be completely redesigned on the underwater acoustic system and combat system of the whole boat:
For example, according to the current Russian media revealed the "North" factory picture to analyze, the 955A seems to have added a sideboard sonar array compared to the 955 type, and the active and passive composite towed sonar array located in the stern, which is generally installed at the top of the rudder surface in Russian submarines, has also been moved to the right horizontal rudder surface, and it is estimated that the hydroacoustic detection system of the whole boat and the underwater warfare combat software have been fully upgraded;
In terms of the silent performance of the submarine, in addition to further optimizing the linear type of the whole boat and the control tower enclosure will further improve the silent performance of the submarine, the 955A strategic missile nuclear submarine has also optimized the drainage hole in the hull side. In the type 955, the drainage hole with a relatively large opening between the hull and the missile cabin was optimized on the 955A as a drainage hole with a longer length and narrower slit, and it is estimated that some relatively small auxiliary drainage holes were also cancelled, of course, there are some mechanical shock absorption and noise reduction measures inside the hull that are temporarily invisible outside.
After this upgrade, it is estimated that the silent navigation performance of the 955A "North Wind God-M" class is improved compared to the 955 type.
What will 955A bring to the Russians?
Of course, compared with the Type 955A, there are some subsystems that have not changed, such as the P-30 "Bulava" submarine-launched ballistic missile, which is the fourth generation of submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile of the Russian army, and it is completely sufficient to undertake the current sea-based strategic nuclear deterrence task of the Russian army.
For example, the OК-650Б type pressurized water reactor it uses, etc., due to the extreme sensitivity of the problem of the latent reactor, the implementation of the replacement needs to be fully tested, in the current situation that the main force can be used, there is no need to fully update the entire set of pressurized water reactors and steam turbine units, only need to redesign part of the subsystem components and shock absorption and noise reduction performance.
However, in any case, the 955A strategic missile nuclear submarine, which has undergone a comprehensive upgrade of hull, underwater acoustic, combat and silent performance, will certainly have a significant improvement in combat performance compared with the basic type 955, and its great ink on silent performance and underwater acoustic detection performance is also conducive to improving the survival probability of the 955A strategic missile nuclear submarine when deployed in the bastion sea area.
After all, in the current situation where the number of attack nuclear submarines used by the Russian Navy to cover strategic missile nuclear submarines is getting smaller and smaller, and a considerable number of attack nuclear submarines need to be separated to cover such as the 949AM "Antai-M" cruise missile nuclear submarines and surface ships, in order to carry out conventional surface combat tasks, there is really no guarantee that every dispatch of strategic missile nuclear submarines can be covered by attack nuclear submarines.
In the absence of underwater combat force cover, strategic missile nuclear submarines can rely on shore-based anti-submarine forces to "help the field" in addition to relying on shore-based anti-submarine forces, and in more often (such as the harsh winter in the Arctic and when the sea is frozen) they have to rely on themselves to get rid of the threat of the US offensive anti-submarine warfare forces. In this case, the "God of the North Wind" class continues to strengthen its own silent performance and continuously improve its own underwater acoustic detection performance, and the strategic and tactical considerations behind it are obviously self-evident.
All in all, with more and more Type 955A strategic missile nuclear submarines beginning to join the active service of the Russian Navy, the Future Russian Navy may form a powerful submarine-launched strategic nuclear force composed of 3 Type 955 and at least 7 Type 955A, and the 156 underwater "Bulava" missiles will also become the real "pillar of great power" of the Russian Navy.
For the Chinese Navy, the Russian Navy's 955A is actually much ahead of us. However, the maritime environment facing China is even worse than that of the Russian military: in our fortress sea area itself is almost a fully open sea area, the enemy situation is more complicated than russia's several fortress sea areas, and in the case of our forward passage is densely packed with imaginary enemy water surface, aviation, underwater anti-submarine forces and undersea sonar base arrays, the mute performance of the ideal Chinese Navy strategic missile nuclear submarine should be far more than that of the 955A type! Therefore, Xiongguan Mandao is really like iron, and we still have to step forward from the beginning.