A week ago, Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy, the Navy Commander-in-Chief, told journalists that the Navy intends to keep Project 941 Typhoon submarines in service. These submarines were waiting for some kind of decision about their future since at least 2004, then the Navy disbanded the division that held them.
It appears that the Navy plan is to keep the Project 941 submarines, but without ballistic missiles - as cruise missile carriers or in some other role (these options were mentioned some time ago). I'm not sure why the Navy would want to get into the trouble of converting the submarines, but this definitely can be done. Especially since the conversion would not have to involve cutting out the missile compartment as it is required by the START treaty.
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Sounds like START-plus negotiations to me. Trying to tie the “surplused” Typhoon submarines to the four USS Ohio-class submarines that have been converted to cruise missile carriers in the US Navy. These submarines have no crews and have had their reactors powered down and fuel removed according to some published accounts. How many submarines, with the exception of the TK-208 Dmitry Donskoy, survive?
Frank Shuler
USA
There are 3 Typhoon submarines currently, Severstal, Archangelsk, and the Donskoi. The proposal is to convert them to SSGNs, so they would have to go through an extensive overhaul anyway, so the fact that currently they had their fuel removed is not really an issue. As for the crews, I think they still have crews. I remember watching a documentary on the Severstal not too long ago, and it was crewed at the time, but not on duty. The crew took care of basic maintenance etc.
There were 3 others but they have been decomissioned.
Oleg
Thanks! Good information. It will be interesting to follow the progress of this.
Frank Shuler
USA
This sounds more like desire than any actual plan. We frequently get these sorts or statements from the upper echelons of the Russian Armed Forces and they rarely if ever come to anything. Given what we know about the state of the Russian defence budget it seems improbable that this will ever happen. How many cruise missiles would have to be ordered to outfit such boats...........a lot!