BySTEPHEN BRYEN
What was the submersible doing at the time of the fatal fire, and what will future versions of this type of vessel get up to?
The July 1 fire on board the Russian “submarine” Losharik has raised many questions about its mission, but few definitive answers. The Losharik is a nuclear-powered deep-underwater submersible vessel (known to NATO as Norsub-5) that allegedly can stay on mission “indefinitely” – but that raises other questions. The Losharik is carried underneath a highly modified Delta III-class Russian submarine (the BS-64 Podmoskovye), so it can be transported to where it is most needed fairly quickly. But what would it be doing?
In all, seven of those who died held the rank of captain, and two of them previously earned the Hero of Russia award. There were five survivors, ranks unknown.
The submersible experienced a “short circuit,” most likely in the battery compartment. The type of batteries on this vessel isn’t known for sure – what seems to be unique is that the batteries were in the forward section, and the nuclear reactor in the rear.
The fire happened not too far from the vessel’s home base of Olenya Guba, in a remote part of the Kola Peninsula. For many years the Soviet Union kept strategic missile forces on Kola and also ran an aggressive naval campaign, including submarines focused on their NATO and non-NATO Nordic neighbors and also on keeping the northern sea lanes open and as clear as possible of NATO (including US) submarine patrols and their ASW (anti-submarine warfare) operation.
It is important to emphasize one undisputed point about the Losharik: That sub reports directly to GUGI (the Russian main directorate for deep-sea research), which answers to Russia’s military intelligence organization, the GRU. Gathering intelligence on US and NATO underwater sensors as well as cabling systems and on the location of vital fiber-optic trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific Internet and telephone cables, especially those dedicated to military use, is a crucial responsibility for Russia’s defense establishment.
It isn’t known if the Russians have the ability to tap into fiber-optic cables, but the US reportedly can.
The Losharik no doubt plays a significant role in the Russian effort to identify US underwater capabilities clearly. Whether the Losharik can plant underwater mines, cut cables or track US underwater activity is not clear because we know very little about its capability, but given its design it appears that it is more likely a hub from which other systems launched from the surface can be managed.
The Russians aren't saying but this might be a clue:
Russian servicemen ‘averted planetary catastrophe’ during nuclear submarine accident, military official claims at funeral...Kremlin refuses to reveal mission of vessel, citing state secrets.
That's from The Independent over the weekend (HT: ZeroHedge)
The Barents Observer has been doing their best to figure out what's going on, starting from their first report:
The fire started in the battery compartment, but did not affect the reactor, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reports to Vladimir Putin...Tragic, and potentially disastrous for the immediate area if the reactor casing had opened but not something you'd call "a planetary catastrophe".
Among other reports we've seen (not verified so grain of salt) is that seven of the dead were captains, meaning whatever they were up to was pretty important.
The fact the Russians are repairing and returning the boat to its mission would also point in that direction.
So what was the submarine or its submersible - capable of 20,000 foot dives - carrying?
The best guess I've seen is a high-yield, 100 - 200 megaton, cobalt thermonuclear bomb.
A bomb that size, two to four times more powerful than the biggest ever exploded, the Soviet Tsar Bomba (limited to 50 MT to allow the delivery plane a chance to escape) a bomb that size is awful enough but if it is encased in cobalt it becomes the most lethal munition ever built.
Here's MIT physicist Max Tegmark at the HuffPo in 2015: Dr. Strangelove Is Back: Say ‘Hi’ to the Cobalt Bomb!
I must confess that, as a physics professor, some of my nightmares are extra geeky. My worst one is the C-bomb, a hydrogen bomb surrounded by large amounts of cobalt. When I first heard about this doomsday device in Stanley Kubrik’s dark nuclear satire Dr. Strangelove, I wasn’t sure if it was physically possible. Now, I unfortunately know better, and it seems like it Russia may be building it.
The idea is terrifyingly simple: Just encase a really powerful H-bomb in massive amounts of cobalt.
When it explodes, it makes the cobalt radioactive and spreads it around the area or the globe, depending on the design. The half-life of the radioactive cobalt produced is about five years, which is long enough to give the fallout plenty of time to settle before it decays and kills, but short enough to produce intense radiation for a lot longer than you’d last in a fallout shelter. There’s almost no upper limit to how much cobalt and explosive power you can put in nukes that are buried for deterrence or transported by sea, and climate simulations have shown how hydrogen bombs can potentially lift fallout high enough to enshroud the globe, so if someone really wanted to risk the extinction of humanity, starting a C-bomb arms race is arguably one of the most promising strategies.
Not that anyone in their right mind would ever do such a thing, I figured back when I first saw the film. Although U.S. General Douglas MacArthur did suggest dropping some small cobalt bombs on the Korean border in the 1950s to deter Chinese troops, his request was denied and, as far as we know, no C-bombs were ever built. I felt relieved that my geeky nightmare was indeed nothing but a bad dream.
More recently, June 14, 2016 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Volume 72, 2016 - Issue 4: Security at sea, and under it published: Would Russia’s undersea “doomsday drone” carry a cobalt bomb?
Following the November 2015 “leak” of a classified slide purporting to show a Russian nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered drone intended to create long-lasting “zones of extensive radiological contamination,” both Russian and Western observers have suggested that Moscow may be developing a cobalt bomb.
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