"Russia Has a Super Torpedo That Kills Submarines..." Topic

… at 200 Miles Per Hour (And America Can't Match It)


"Imagine the sudden revelation of a weapon that can suddenly go six times faster than its predecessors. The shock of such a breakthrough system would turn an entire field of warfare on its head, as potential adversaries scrambled to deploy countermeasures to a new weapon they are defenseless against. While a lull in great power competition delayed the impact of this new technology, the so-called "supercavitating torpedo" may be about to take the world by storm.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union placed a heavy reliance on its submarine fleet to negate America's advantage in naval forces. The U.S. Navy was not only tasked to help protect the flow of reinforcements into Europe in the event of World War III, it also threatened the Soviet Union directly and would have hunted down and sunk her ballistic missile submarines. The USSR at first used sheer numbers of diesel electric submarines, then more advanced nuclear attack submarines, to whittle down the odds.

One of the most innovative underwater weapons developed by the Soviet Union was the VA-111 Shkval ("Squall") supercavitating torpedo. Highly classified, Shkval was virtually unknown before the end of the Cold War and only became common knowledge in the mid-1990s. Powered by a rocket engine, it was capable of astonishing speeds of up to 200 knots an hour. But in a world where physics ensured most ships and underwater weapons topped out at 50 knots, how did Russian engineers accomplish such a breakthrough in speed?…"
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Amicalement
Armand

It's a Romulan plasma torpedo!

A Shkval is something that you could shoot back at the submarine that just shot at you, forcing your attacker to cut guidance wires and run. Even with a low-kiloton warhead, it's unlikely to kill the submarine that launched the Shkval.

"Launch Transients" are pretty distinctive sounds, but they're not exactly directional. But every submarine has a well-drilled response to "torpedo in the water!": run like hell.

Not many course corrections for a torpedo moving that fast. Need to have a REALLY good firing sotion before you launch. Any ideas on what the time to target scenario is for something this fast?

John… you made me laught!… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

@Saber6: A Shkval will cover it's entire ~10km range in about 90-120 seconds, depending on top speed and acceleration.

The German Barracuda has a longer range, but also proportionally greater top speed, so about 2 minutes for it, too.

And I should add that your passive-sonar detection range for a US sub is likely to be less than 10km, barring someone dropping a wrench or something.