Sea God: how the Poseidon spacecraft was tested

Russia now has a full arsenal of strategic deterrence. On Wednesday, October 29, President Vladimir Putin officially announced the successful testing of the Poseidon unmanned underwater vehicle, a unique weapon that has no analogues in the world. In his speech, the head of state noted that the characteristics of the new development are capable of changing the strategic balance of power and strengthening the country's defense potential. Poseidon became part of the triad of the latest Russian strategic systems, along with the Sarmat intercontinental missile and the Burevestnik cruise missile of unlimited range. About what is remarkable about the new device and how it fits into the general concept of modern weapons in Russia — in the material of Izvestia.

Tests of the Poseidon spacecraft: prospects for the development of the fleet

On Tuesday, October 28, Russia conducted tests of the Poseidon unmanned underwater vehicle. On October 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the results during a visit to the P.V. Mandryk Central Military Clinical Hospital in Moscow.

"Yesterday, we conducted another test of a promising complex, the Poseidon unmanned underwater vehicle equipped with a nuclear power plant," the Russian leader noted.

According to the head of state, during the tests, for the first time, it was possible not only to launch the device from a launch vehicle using a launch engine, but also to activate a nuclear installation that ensured the operation of the device for a certain time. The President stressed that the test was a significant success, and Poseidon has no analogues in the world in terms of speed and depth of movement.

Putin paid special attention to the power of the device. According to him, the Poseidon's power significantly exceeds that of even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental missile. At the same time, the president noted, the reactor of the underwater vehicle is 100 times smaller, and no analogue in the world has the capabilities in terms of speed, depth and methods of interception.

Poseidon: a new generation of underwater strategic weapons

Poseidon (formerly known as Status-6, NATO code name Kanyon) is a Russian unmanned underwater vehicle equipped with a nuclear power plant and capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

The Poseidon concept goes back in many ways to the T-15 project, a giant Soviet torpedo designed to strike the coast of the United States. The development was carried out at KB-11 in Sarov. It was supposed to create a special carrier submarine capable of launching only one such torpedo. However, the project was abandoned in 1955. At that time, the Navy considered it impractical to create a submarine with limited capabilities.

The idea of returning to the concept of autonomous underwater strategic weapons has received a new development decades later. President Vladimir Putin first mentioned Poseidon on March 1, 2018, in his message to the Federal Assembly, along with other promising weapons systems — a nuclear-powered missile, a laser system, and hypersonic weapons.

Poseidon has a number of unique parameters that make it a fundamentally new type of strategic weapon:

• Unlimited range. Thanks to the nuclear reactor, the device is able to stay in autonomous navigation for weeks or even months, following a predetermined route and waiting for the command to use.
• Deep water. The underwater vehicle can dive to depths of over 1,000 meters, making it virtually invulnerable to existing anti-submarine defense systems.
• Ultra-high speed. According to various estimates, the speed of the Poseidon can exceed 100 knots (about 185 km/h), which makes it extremely difficult to intercept.

In addition, the device has two main areas of combat use:

• Strike at coastal targets. Equipped with a megaton thermonuclear warhead, the Poseidon is capable of causing a powerful artificial tsunami when detonated off the coast, destroying coastal infrastructure and creating a zone of radioactive contamination over a wide area.
• Defeat of aircraft carrier strike groups. The device can be aimed at destroying large enemy naval formations, against which traditional torpedoes and missiles are ineffective.

Poseidon poses a fundamentally new threat to a potential adversary that has no solutions in the foreseeable future. Traditional anti-missile and anti-submarine defense systems, both land and sea, are not able to effectively counteract an object moving at high speed at considerable depth.

Long—term autonomous duty makes the device almost elusive, and its possible use is unpredictable. According to experts, the Poseidon strike is not local, but continental in nature, which in fact makes it pointless even to attempt the first disarming strike.

Burevestnik: aerial installation

If Poseidon is a deep-sea platform for destroying coastal infrastructure and naval groups, then Burevestnik remains a key aerial carrier of nuclear potential. Last week, on October 26, the President of the Russian Federation was informed about the successful missile test.

The device is launched from a ground-based launcher on a solid-fuel accelerator. After gaining speed, it is assumed that the main air-jet engine with a nuclear heater will be turned on, in which heat from a compact reactor is transferred to the atmospheric air flow through a heat exchanger. In theory, such a scheme provides an almost unlimited flight time and gives the missile the ability to stay on duty in a selected area for a long time before receiving an order to hit a target.

President Vladimir Putin mentioned the existence of such developments in a message to the Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018, at the same time the idea of a missile with an "unlimited" range and a nuclear power plant capable of bypassing existing missile defense and air defense systems was announced. Official sources also report that a successful test launch of such a system took place at the end of 2017.

The long-term duty and maneuverability of the Burevestnik make it difficult to detect and intercept it. The rocket can change course and use low-altitude flight, and if satellite communications are available, it can quickly receive updated target data. At the same time, such a scheme theoretically remains vulnerable to improvements in early detection, space surveillance, and missile defense systems — the development of these technologies can shorten the window of surprise and complicate the operation of such systems.

Sarmat: a new generation heavy intercontinental missile

The Sarmat system was developed as a replacement for the Soviet R-36M2 Voevoda ground-based missiles. Work on its creation began in 2023 at the Uzhur Rocket Compound in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Sarmat was designed as a rocket with high capacity and flexibility of use. It is designed for at least 10 warheads and, with reduced combat equipment, is capable of flying along "bypass" trajectories, that is, launching along routes that do not coincide with the shortest path.

In the future, the Sarmat is planned to be equipped with hypersonic guided warheads with high maneuverability and speed, which will make it even more difficult for them to intercept modern missile defense systems.

Thus, the Poseidon, Burevestnik and Sarmat missiles will form a large and important part of the retaliatory potential of the Russian nuclear missile forces.