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Russia is reportedly dusting off terrifying Cold War plans to build an 80ft underwater torpedo with an 100-megaton nuclear warhead.

The weapon, by Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, would be capable of destroying enemy coastlines with massive tsunamis.

The move came as Moscow’s top modern-day missile designer hailed Vladimir Putin as the greatest Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin in his direct involvement in military matters.

Sakharov designed Soviet nuclear weapons but then famously became a dissident, demanding disarmament and human rights - for which he was repressed by the KGB.

(Image: fb.ru / east2west news)

But now his plans for devastating underwater nuclear bomb with a 31-mile range are being reexamined, according to reports on state-run news agencies.

Shamil Aliyev, 75, regarded as Russia’s top modern-day missile designer, disclosed: "There is a general tendency of reviewing the ideas that were not implemented before.

“Sakharov's ideas about making 24-metre nuclear-tipped torpedoes with a 1.5-metre diameter - and a 50-kilometre range - are being reviewed.”

The project was known in Soviet times as T-15 - a 40-tonne torpedo with a 100-megaton thermonuclear warhead.

(Image: Raigap / east2west news)

(Image: persons-info.com / east2west news)

Its aim, said Aliyev, was to “destroy coastal targets via aquatic explosion,” by triggering a monumental tsunami.

Sakharov’s plan was shelved in the 1950s due to a lack of funding - not because of an intrinsic weakness, said the scientist, who gave no further details of the new "review".

Instead the USSR pursued the far more modest T-5 with a power of a 3.5 kiloton equivalent of TNT.

Tests for the T-5 were carried out on the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya test site where the Soviets later, in 1961, exploded the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, the largest ever with half the power envisaged for the T-15, thousands of times greater than the Hiroshima explosion.

The back-to-the-future scheme is believed to be separate from, but related to, a Putin announcement in his March state-of-the-nation speech for a new sub-launched nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle developed for the Russian Navy called Status-6 Poseidon.

(Image: Makhachkala Izvestia / east2west news)

The weapon was described by Pentagon officials as a "major strategic threat" to US ports, coastal military installations and carrier groups.

Academician Aliyev hailed Putin’s support for Russia’s missile-makers.

“The fact is, that no leader since Josef Stalin got himself so persistently and consistently involved in military matters the way Vladimir Putin does,” he said.

“This is why his address sounded so in-depth, literate and professional.”

The Poseidon underwater drone is seen as being capable of unleashing a single nuclear warhead with a maximum capacity of two megatonnes.

Russian sources have said it "is primarily designed to destroy reinforced naval bases of a potential enemy" with the nuclear ammunition.

“Due to its nuclear powerplant, the Poseidon will approach the target for an intercontinental range at a depth of over one kilometre and at a speed of 60-70 knots.”