Submarines are actively used by all leading military-political blocs. Every day, submarines loaded with nuclear weapons are on vigilant watch off the coast of a potential enemy. The development and creation of a new type of submarine is an extremely costly enterprise, although it is vital. Ash-class low-visibility submarines are one of the latest domestic developments. What are they and how cleverly do they hide in the water column?
The history of the Ash project began long before today. Already the Soviet Union was faced with the problem of too large a variety of types of submarines used. The wealth of the nomenclature presented a huge number of economic problems. It was extremely costly to repair, maintain and equip fundamentally different submarines, even for the country of the Soviets. Therefore, in the late 1960s, the idea of a universal nuclear submarine (nuclear submarine) was born, which could perform a wide range of tasks.
The development of the fourth generation nuclear submarine began in 1977. The project received the code designation 885 "Ash" and was a plan for the overhaul of the Soviet submarine fleet. The development was headed by the design bureau "Malachite" from Leningrad. The Yasen was based on the Lira and Shchuka-B submarines. The first series was supposed to be 30 submarines. At the same time, many technical solutions were used in the Yasen, which had never been previously used in Soviet submarines. Only the crisis of the 1980s and the subsequent collapse of the USSR made their own "adjustments" to the project.
We returned to the Yasen nuclear submarine project only by 2009. Until 2023, Rossi plans to receive half of those submarines that were planned back in the Soviet Union. It should be noted, however, that the initial project was refined several times during this time, and most of the submarines belong to the Yasen-M class. The first submarine was commissioned in 2021.
A domestic submarine with a displacement of 8.6 thousand tons and a length of 139 meters operates on a pressurized water reactor OK-650V. The submarine is driven by one shaft and one propeller. The maximum underwater speed reaches 31 knots. Duration of autonomous sailing - 100 days. The submarine is armed with Onyx, Zircon and Caliber missiles. Air defense is represented by Igla-S and Verba MANPADS. The torpedo-mine armament consists of ten 533-mm launchers capable of sending Fizik homing and guided warheads to the enemy. In addition to torpedoes, the TA can fire mines.
The modern Yasen-M differs from the original project Yasen primarily by the optimization of the bypass and the replacement of a significant part of the submarine's equipment to further reduce the visibility of the nuclear submarine. For the same purposes, the hull of the submarine was reduced by 9 meters. The American submarines Virginia and Seawolf are direct analogs of the Russian submarine. At the same time, neither domestic nor foreign experts, comparing the submarines of reduced visibility of Russia and the United States, do not give clear preference to any of the groups of nuclear submarines in the issue of stealth. Today, submarines are considered generally comparable in their characteristics.
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