Russia doubles down on submarine arms race. The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, announced this Wednesday that his country has managed to carry out a successful test of the unmanned atomic submersible Poseidon. “Yesterday we carried out a new test of another promising system, the unmanned Poseidon, also nuclear-powered,” he said in a meeting with soldiers injured in the conflict with Ukraine, which was broadcast on state television.
According to Putin, the Poseidon, also known as Status-6 or with the code name “Kanyon” according to NATO, activated its nuclear propulsion in a sustained manner, traveled kilometers under the sea and demonstrated that its autonomous navigation system works perfectly. “For the first time it was possible not only to launch it from a carrier submarine using an auxiliary engine, but also to launch its nuclear propulsion system, with which the device sailed for a certain period of time,” he added.
Russia’s new submarine nuclear bet
The Poseidon submersible is a nuclear-powered autonomous unmanned vehicle (UUV) and is located designed to carry nuclear or conventional loads and operate at great depth underwater, which would allow it to attack coastal or strategic targets from the sea.
The Poseidon can be launched from specialized submarines, such as the Belgorod (K-329), considered the longest in the world, built especially to carry these nuclear drones. The device is about 24 meters long, can reach speeds of between 100 and 185 km/h underwater and operate at depths of up to 1,000 meters, far beyond the range of conventional submarines. Additionally, they are designed to cause radioactive tsunamis in the event of an attack, turning coastal cities into lethal targets and extending their destructive influence to enormous bodies of water.
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