![]() ![]() The torpedo had been due to be tested in the Arctic on the Belgorod - which, at 178 metres long, is the largest submarine in the world.īut the vessel returned to port at Severomorsk, the Russian Northern Fleet base, without any evidence the Poseidon had been tested, according to reports. In November last year, US intelligence officials reported that initial sea tests had failed. The weapon is expected to enter into service around 2027, but has reportedly been blighted by technical difficulties. The US Naval Institute, a military think tank, said the development of Poseidon turned assumptions about submarine-launched nuclear weapons upside down. ![]() The 24 metre long torpedo was designed to travel up to 80mph underwater carrying a two megaton nuclear warhead - more than 100 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.Ĭhristopher Ford, then US assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation, warned in 2020 that the weapons were being designed to “inundate US coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis". Since the war in Ukraine began, Kremlin propagandists have often threatened to destroy London using the torpedo.įirst unveiled by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in 2018, both US and Kremlin officials believe that the torpedo is a new breed of retaliatory weapon. ![]() The Poseidon nuclear torpedo has its roots in Soviet plans for a weapon that would be able to render coastal cities on the shores of the United States uninhabitable. "The first set of Poseidons have been manufactured, and the Belgorod submarine will receive them in the near future," Tass, a Russian state news agency reported, quoting an unnamed defence source. Russia has built the first examples of an “unstoppable” nuclear torpedo intended to devastate coastal cities by creating radioactive tsunamis, state media has claimed. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |