Russia’s latest nuclear-powered ballistic missile sub taken design cues from Western submarines, improving the sub’s efficiency and ability to stay undetected. The result is a submarine that will be better able to protect its deadly cargo of 16 nuclear missiles from U.S. and NATO hunter killers in wartime.

The Borei-class subs are simply enormous. Each one is 525 feet long, 45 feet wide, and displaces 21,000 tons fully submerged. A single OK-650B 190-megawatt nuclear power plant drives the sub to speeds of 15 knots on the surface and 29 knots submerged, and allows the submarine to cruise underwater indefinitely, its range restricted only by the food supply.

The Borei subs are some of the deadliest ever built. Each carries sixteen RSM-56 Bulava ballistic missiles, allowing it to strike targets worldwide with nuclear weapons. This makes the submarines an indispensable leg of Russia’s nuclear triad, providing a powerful second-strike retaliatory capability against any country that launches a nuclear attack on Moscow.

Count Vladimir at launching ceremony, November 12th, 2017. Note the pumpjet covered for security purposes while the submarine is out of the water. Getty Images

Russia’s first submarine of the class, Yuri Dolgoruky, was laid down in 1996. Becaus of funding woes, it wasn't commissioned into the Russian Navy until 2014. According to submarine authority H.I. Sutton, author of , the fourth boat, Count Vladimir, was recently launched and incorporates some design features borrowed from U.S. and other NATO submarines.

According to Sutton, “The tail features all-moving rudders and end-plates on the horizontal stabilizers just like the US Navy’s Ohio class ballistic missile submarines.” The subs also feature a pumpjet propulsion system instead of a typical submarine propeller. “Pumpjets were pioneered by the Royal Navy but have also been used on US Navy submarines since the Seawolf class in the 1990s. The Borei class were the first Russian nuclear-powered submarines to be fitted with them.”

“The smoothly faired base of the submarine’s sail is another Western influence and looks a lot like US Navy submarines, although it is still much longer. The original Borei class submarines had an unusual raked leading edge to the sail.”

All that said, the new version of the Borei class isn’t entirely Western in design influence. Sutton says the Count Vladimir has “a traditional Russian double-hull construction which has an outer casing over the occupied part of the hull. Western boats are single-hulled meaning that there is only one layer of steel between the crew and the ocean.”

Another unusual aspect of the Borei submarines: their high number of torpedoes and torpedo tubes. Ballistic missile submarines operate defensively, spending all of their time at sea hiding. Typically they only have four torpedo tubes. According to Sutton the entire front-end of the Borei Class was taken from unfinished Akula class attack submarines and have eight torpedo tubes, “an unusually high complement of torpedoes for a ballistic missile submarine.”

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