Russia Cancels Further Borei-class SSBN Production
Russia will not build anymore Project 955 Borei class nuclear ballistic missile submarines, head of the Rubin design bureau, Igor Vilnit, told TASS on Tuesday. The Boreis are Russia’s current generation sea-based nuclear deterrent, the first built after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rubin has apparently moved onto the next generation of Russia nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines.
This termination of future construction means that only seven of the previously planned fourteen Boreis will be built. Of these seven, only four will be of the improved Borei-A subclass, known by their project number as Pr. 955A. The Pr. 955As are, like all nuclear ballistic missile submarines, shrouded in secrecy. However, it is known they have a revised hull design, and likely have improved quieting, sensors, and electronics. The Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk will complete the four that are in varying levels of completion.
Now that continued design work on the Pr. 955As has been cancelled, Rubin will begin to explore future designs and concepts. “Everything will go according to plan,” Vilnit told TASS. One is led to wonder how this will be the case when over half of the fleet will be of an increasingly obsolescent type. While Russian doctrine regarding the operation of its SSBNs is different to that of the US and allied states, it does not seem probable that the fleet of Delta IVs will be able to adequately shoulder the burden they have been given in coming decades.
An aerial starboard bow view of a Russian Navy Northern Fleet DELTA IV class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine underway on the surface, supposedly this is K-18 “Karelia”. Date Shot: 1 Jan 1994 . Author unknown.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gargantuan Typhoon class SSBNs, made famous by Hunt for the Red October and countless other media depicting “the largest submarine ever”, became far too expensive to operate. The older Delta IIIs and Delta IV class SSBNs, became Russia’s primary sea based nuclear deterrent during the 1990s. As the first of the Boreis was laid down in 1996, the surviving Deltas continued to get older. Due to economic problems, the first Borei class boat, named Yuriy Dolgurikiy, was not launched until 2008, and did not enter service until 2013.
The impact of the struggling Russian economy on new defense procurement has become one of the continuing memes of the defense world during the 2010s. The Pr. 955As are very capable submarines, likely on par or better than their American equivalents in many way, but the cost that capability demands is apparently beyond the ability of the Russian economy to support. So the older Delta IVs will soldier on long past when they should have been retired, like so much of the rest of the Russian military’s equipment.