Trends in Submarine Development and Technology

Across generations of submariners there's long been a joke that there are really only two types of ships out there: submarines and targets. For the better part of a century at this point, submarines have made the world's oceans a pretty dangerous place for surface ships. But as we covered in a previous episode, some nations are looking towards new technologies to potentially strip submarines of some of their advantages. It's becoming clear that the submarines of the future should expect to be hunted by a new generation of manned and unmanned platforms equipped with cutting-edge technologies. But rather than give up on the submarine, major navies around the world are doubling down and pushing ahead with new and improved submarine designs. It's a race that arguably exemplifies the technological, industrial and military competition between the world's great naval powers. And today we are going to talk about it. To do that, I'm going to look at some of the factors that might be driving countries towards investment in new generations of submarines. Some of the potential areas of technological improvement, and why these sort of investment decisions can be a really big deal. Then we'll look at three main submarine fleets, their inventories, and plans for the next generation. To illustrate very different force design approaches, those will be the nuclear-only US force, the mixed nuclear/conventional Russian force, and the conventional-only Japanese force. In the interest of time I'll really only be looking at manned submarines this episode, but we will return to unmanned underwater systems in the future. Finally, having gone over some of those ambitions and plans, we'll pivot to the question of risk. Including some of the main threats to these development and building programs that, if not probably managed, may end up sinking far more of these submarines than enemy action ever could. But before we jump into it, a quick word from a sponsor. Major international events can often drive an avalanche of reporting. But with so much information coming out, it might be useful to have access to a tool that tries to give you a fuller picture and more balanced perspective. That's part of why I've long appreciated Ground News, they are a website and app that gathers related articles from more than 50,000 sources around the world to enable you to more readily compare how a given story is being covered. If you look at some reporting on this issue for example, the Ukrainian decision to suspend the transit of some Russian pipeline oil across its territory and the subsequent dispute with one of the main buyers of that oil, Slovakia. Then as with all Ground News stories, you'll be able to quickly see key information on those covering it, things like ownership information, political lean and assessed factuality. All backed by ratings by 3 independent news monitoring organisations. 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That'll get you 40% off the Vantage plan, which is the one I have, and gets you unlimited access to all the Ground News features. So with my great thanks to Ground News as always, let's get back to it. OK, so let's start by talking a little bit about equipment generations in general. And why the decision to switch over to a new submarine design might be a little different than it is with certain other platforms. If you think about why nations might make the potentially very, very expensive decision to switch over to building a new generation of boats for their fleet, I think it might be useful from the start to think about it in terms of almost push and pull factors. With push factors being those that arguably make the status quo and existing designs less and less tenable, and pull factors relating to some of the improvements that a new design might be able to offer. Even if that means a lot of your workforce and crew have to go back to school, and your learning curves get reset. An example of a pull factor then might be a technological development that informs a new potential capability, but one that isn't really suitable for the existing fleet. When major powers started developing nuclear propulsion plants for submarines in the 1950s for example, it would have been apparent even before the first pencil hit paper that they weren't going to be suitable for World War Two hull forms. Meanwhile we've looked at some potential push factors in our previous episode on anti-submarine technology and the potential future of the submarine. If anti-submarine options like unmanned systems or sensors are improving, there's probably going to be a pretty strong imperative for the submarines to improve too. For many nations there are also going to be pressures that have a lot to do with industrial capacity and the inevitable crushing passage of time. There are a lot of countries out there with old boats in the fleet that are approaching retirement, but which aren't in active production. In very basic terms, that sort of ageing out scenario really only gives fleets a couple of core options. You can just give up on having submarines, which for some reason tends not to be very popular as an option with naval planners. You can try and find a way to extend the lifespan of your platforms even more, although that isn't always cost-effective or even viable. You can start pulling people out of retirement and try to figure out a way to restart production of a design that might be decades old at this point. Or you can use the opportunity to make a clean-slate transition to something new. As you can probably imagine based on that, new submarine generations don't exactly come around every day. Even nations that tend to retire their submarines relatively quickly, like Japan, still tend to keep boats in service for north of 20 years, meaning you don't exactly need a replacement tomorrow. And of course you probably want to manufacture multiple boats of the same class in series so that you realise at least some learning curves. A fleet made up entirely of artisanally crafted, unique prototypes probably isn't going to win you any friends among the people that have to maintain the things. And so while some system types may lend themselves to being procurement flings, a submarine program is probably a non-starter if you are not willing to commit and put a ring on it. There's also another differentiator from a procurement and planning perspective that makes submarines different from some other platforms. And it has to do with the basic fundamental question of how easy it is to upgrade existing systems as opposed to building new ones. In many cases, before a force signs off on a requirement for a new piece of equipment there's going to be an investigation into whether existing equipment can provide the requisite capability with sufficient upgrades. Sometimes the answer is "yes", sometimes the answer is "no", sometimes the answer is, "We think it's yes, but once the upgrade package fails we'll design something new anyway." General rules in this field are always dangerous, but intuitively you can imagine why some platforms might be more receptive to easy and cost effective upgrades than others. At the extreme end of the spectrum you might have something like a technical or other truck-mounted systems. If you invent a new heavy machine gun or light missile system, it's probably not going to take a huge amount of work to just bolt it to the tray of a UTE. A step up might be something like a main battle tank, but it's worth noting that a lot of the most advanced tanks out there are actually built using hulls that were constructed during the Cold War. If you compare an early model Abrams to the most recent versions, you will see this effect in action. And while this has made the vehicle considerably chonkier than it was back in 1991, and has required some engineering and modification, it is still at its core an Abrams. Compare an early model T-90 to a T-90M and again you'll see the same phenomenon. And indeed armoured vehicles with their powerful engines tend to be so tolerant to relatively (and I stress the word "relatively" there) simple methods of modification that the war in Ukraine has been able to show us an incredibly wide variety of - upgrades. But while a tank might tolerate this sort of evolutionary approach, something more like a 5th generation fighter won't. If you come up with a new radar that doesn't fit in the F-22's nose, or a new weapon that doesn't fit in the weapons bay, you may well be looking at a new aircraft, not an upgrade program. On that sliding spectrum, submarine upgrades are possible but tend to be towards the more complex side. You don't really want to cut them open more than you absolutely have to, and in terms of maintaining the maximum possible level of stealth these things do tend to be fairly finely designed to begin with. Yes, there are times where nations have taken the approach of just strapping additional shit to the outside of a submarine hull. But there can be a lot of payoff to starting with a clean, purpose-designed slate. Which brings us to some of those newer technologies that recent and future submarines might be seeking to leverage. And to keep things tight in terms of timing here, it's probably best to group them into categories rather than explaining each individual innovation. But when you break it down, a lot of them are going to be trying to move the needle on one or more key factors, think things like the ability of a submarine to survive in an increasingly dangerous underwater environment. To be effective or irrelevant lethal in its core mission. And then finally the kind of factors you might gloss over in a data sheet, but which can be really important if you are running a submarine force. Think things like service life, maintenance requirements, and likely availability. For hopefully relatively obvious reasons, detectability is often a key consideration in future submarine design. And particularly if you are interested in building submarines that can access highly protected enemy waters for example, not having sufficient stealth to realistically make it in, complete the mission, and make it out again may just be disqualifying. To the point where your potentially still very expensive submarine cannot do the job that you want it to do. Back in 2016 for example, the US Director of Undersea Warfare, Rear Admiral Charles Richard, reportedly said, "Stealth is the cover charge, stealth is the price of admission, and while we have great access now we don't take that for granted either." Some innovations to reduce submarine detectability can be added to existing designs, but in a lot of cases they are probably going to be more practical to add to a new build. If you come up with stealth boosting technologies like quieter machinery or a new nuclear reactor for example, new construction might be an attractive alternative to upgrades. Propulsion and manoeuvrability is also an area of constant evolution. Countries are probably going to want their submarines to be capable of high levels of performance, which probably means modern power plants. And in the case of conventional boats, things like enhanced energy storage and Air Independent Propulsion systems. But they also generally don't want that to come at the cost of the factor we just talked about, which is detectability. To that end we've generally seen submarines move from classic propellers towards propulsors. And the specific design of those propulsors tends to be so sensitive that when you see photos of submarines in dry dock for example with their tails exposed, you'll often see a covering placed over them to conceal the arrangement from prying eyes. The R&D contracts that go into things like these propulsors are no joke, and the underlying technologies can be pretty cool. Another desirable aspect here is agility. And partly to that end we've seen a number of new and planned submarine designs move away from that cross-form rudder arrangement you can see on the bottom right there, towards the X-form arrangement you can see on the top right. That might not seem like that much of a visual difference, but it can have performance implications. From a control perspective the cross form is probably more intuitive. You have one set of rudders controlling pitch and another set of rudders controlling yaw. For a human operator that makes the question of up/down, left and right fairly simple. In that X-form arrangement however, all of those surfaces are being used for all manoeuvres. That suggests that all else being equal, you are either going to get more manoeuvrability out of the same surface area, or the same manoeuvrability with less surface area. As we will see in a moment, the US and several other navies have moved towards this configuration with manoeuvrability front and centre of the stated justification. As one US Navy official reportedly put it, "The X-shaped stern will restore manoeuvrability to submarines. As submarine designs progressed from using a propeller to a propulsor to improve quietening, submarines lost some surface manoeuvrability." Going over to the X-form configuration might be one method designers used to address that loss. In some respects you could describe submarine sensors as the direct counterpart to submarine stealth. That's particularly the case when you are discussing potential submarine-on-submarine scenarios, where one of the biggest questions is who detects who first. If you look at the US Navy's Acoustic Superiority Program upgrades to late model Virginia-class submarines like the USS South Dakota, those include both stealth upgrades like a special coating and machine quieting improvements inside the boat, but also sensor improvements. Some sensor improvements on modern submarines may be visually apparent, but I wouldn't ignore the impact of more invisible improvements as well. Even if you can't improve the physical sensors themselves on a submarine, you might be able to improve processing. And in a world where submariners are likely to be inundated with more sonar and electronic warfare data than they can manually analyse, we've seen the US Navy discuss for example the potential of AI tools to rapidly toss out meaningless data, focusing sailors on the more interesting stuff. If you want to look further into the future, it's also possible that some of those new types of sensors that we discussed as potential threats to submarines in our episode on the submarine's future, might also potentially have a role on submarines, the torpedoes they fire, or the unmanned systems that might be supporting them. Speaking of unmanned underwater systems, while they are mostly a topic for another episode, they are absolutely relevant to next-generation submarine development. On one hand that might mean equipping submarines with small, potentially disposable, underwater drones that can be launched from something like a torpedo tube in order to provide it with additional sensor, decoy or potentially kinetic options. We've seen navies around the world experiment with things like teaming concepts for manned and unmanned systems that might be familiar from our discussion of 6th generation fighters. Some future Russian submarine concepts for example involve the submarine carrying some larger, reusable underwater drones into combat. Russian sources claim these Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, or AUVs, would be able to support the submarine launching them by doing things like mimicking the signature of larger manned submarines, as well as carrying sensors of their own. Other even larger unmanned systems like the American Orca may instead be able to free up submarine assets by taking over some of their mission. For example, taking over the dangerous and time consuming task of laying mines in enemy territory. To make the most of that sort of teaming potential though, or to turn concepts like Distributed Maritime Operations into reality, you probably need submarines (like just about all modern platforms) to have really good communications technology and networking capability. You want these things to ghost the enemy, not to ghost you. Finally, when we are talking about new technological developments, especially with attack submarines, it's important not to look past the munitions they carry. After all, unless the engineers start to redesign submarines for ramming purposes, in the end submarines don't sink ships: torpedoes and missiles do. And it's very possible to have an excellent submarine hampered or a mediocre submarine boosted by the right armament. During the 1982 Falklands War, the British Royal Navy had a relatively advanced for the time nuclear attack submarine in the area. HMS Conqueror would become the first nuclear-powered submarine to sink an enemy surface vessel using torpedoes when it sank the Argentinian warship General Belgrano. It would do so using unguided Mark VIII torpedoes, the design of which dated all the way back to the 1920s. Now we are now at the point where there are no major navies cruising nuclear submarines around using World War Two torpedoes. But as we've seen a number of nations attempt to push the boundaries of submarine design, we've also in many cases seen accompanying programs for torpedo improvements. Plus in the 21st century we also see submarines carrying a lot of weapons beyond the basic torpedo. A majority of recent Russian and American designs have at least some VLS tubes for a missile armament. And even where you do have designs that only have horizontal torpedo tubes, it's usually a fairly safe bet that they can be used to launch a wide array of payloads. An interesting example of evolution when it comes to missile armament has been the deployment of the first submarine-based hypersonic missiles. Russia is reportedly already equipping some of its submarines with a limited number of the Zircon hypersonic missiles. While the US reportedly eventually intends to deploy the Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapon on board the Virginia-class submarine. The general observation here might be that new developments in longer-ranged more capable missiles might enhance both submarine survivability and the range of targets they are able to threaten. From an anti-submarine warfare perspective, detecting a submarine that has to get within torpedo range might be a very different proposition to dealing with one that may not even have to be in the same sea as you. Even though there is clearly a lot of demand in this bigger, further, faster bucket of weapon systems, there's also evidence of demand for systems that are instead smaller and cheaper. A $5 million 1.5 ton torpedo might make perfect sense if you're trying to engage a high performance enemy submarine. But if you assume the ocean of the future, like the terrestrial battlefield of the future, may end up saturated with all kinds of relatively cheap and affordable drones, then trying to service every target out there that might threaten a submarine with the existing armament might run into the Tomahawks versus Toyotas problem fairly quickly. Submarines might exhaust their weapon stocks fairly quickly if they have to take the Oprah Winfrey approach to handing out Mark 48 torpedoes (or the foreign equivalents). And one imagines treasury officials wouldn't exactly be thrilled about the whole thing either. Interest in smaller, lighter and cheaper torpedo and torpedo-like payloads extends to both offensive and defensive purposes. Smaller systems like the US Navy's proposed Compact Rapid Attack Weapon, intended to be fired from a submarine's decoy launchers rather than its full-size torpedo tubes, may be suitable for use not just in attacking targets but also defending the launching submarine against things like incoming torpedoes. The closing point here, which is probably relevant to the discussion of a whole range of next generation platforms, is that when you talk about technologies emerging that might threaten an established system, it's important to think what the potential impacts might be if anyone plays the Uno reverse card on that technology. If you say drones are going to make hunting submarines easier for example, you need to ask whether or not the submarines themselves will have accompanying drones and what that might mean for the hunt. If the hunters get longer-ranged sensors and more capable weapons, what might the submarines get? And how might that affect the dynamic of going from the stage where you roughly know where a submarine is, to successfully hitting and killing it without it killing you first? As with many platform types, the move towards next-generation submarines isn't just about developing new technology. It's about finding different ways to effectively implement and leverage those technologies on your platform of choice. And speaking of leveraging and implementing technologies, let's start to look at some actual fleets. What you can see on screen there are submarine inventory figures for the three forces we are going to be looking at today, the United States Navy, the Russian Navy, and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Forces. Those figures have been broken up into the four primary types that we're going to be looking at today: nuclear-powered attack submarines (or SSNs), nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines (or SSGNs), the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (or SSBNs) that carry a significant part of the Russian and American nuclear arsenals. And then finally conventional diesel-electric powered attack submarines, designated here as SSK. The figures you can see on screen here are taken from Military Balance 2024 with two adjustments. Firstly, while Military Balance regards the majority of US attack submarines (so the Los Angeles and Virginia-class boats) as being SSGNs because they have VLS tubes, the US Navy itself considers them SSNs, so I have redesignated them here. For consistency with other episodes I've also included all 3 US Seawolf-class submarines in the count here, despite the USS Connecticut currently being damaged after engaging in a spot of lithobraking back in 2021. Straight away you'll see the difference in hull count and composition. Both Russia and the United States have similarly sized SSBN forces for their nuclear deterrents, but the similarities more or less stop there. And as we start to dig into each of these submarine fleets individually, we'll arguably see the differences run far deeper than just the difference in composition. So working our way from left to right, let's start with the very large, very expensive elephant in the room: the United States Navy. Barring any sudden, dramatic and overly vengeful change in Canadian foreign policy, the continental United States has the advantage of being a long way from potential threats. But on the flip side, that can also mean it's a long way away from areas of American strategic interest. That means the US Navy is often going to have to project power over long distances, and the structure of the US submarine fleet certainly reflects that. With the US Navy currently operating 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, 4 Ohio-class guided missile submarines, and around 50 nuclear attack submarines of varying types at any given time. And before we start to talk about what the US might be trying to field as the next submarine generation, I think it's worth quickly looking at some of those current generation vessels and the development trends they represent. The attack submarines of the Seawolf class arguably represented the absolute apex of US Cold War submarine design. And that arguably would also end up being a defining factor in their downfall. Design work on the Seawolf class would commence in the 1980s when the Soviet Union was very much a going concern. But by the time Seawolf was commissioned in 1997, it very much wasn't. At an estimated displacement of more than 9,000 tons submerged, the first 2 vessels of the Seawolf class were the largest US attack submarines to date. They could dive deep, move quickly and quietly, and carried a massive complement of torpedoes. All of which probably seemed like massive overkill to Congress in an era where rust was making up a greater and greater proportion of Russian naval tonnage with every year that passed. In the end the US would only commission three Seawolf-class submarines, with the last one, the USS Jimmy Carter, being a bit of an interesting case. Compared to the other two boats, the Carter was significantly modified during the construction phase. The midsection was extended by about 30 metres, or 100 feet, to accommodate a so-called "Multi-Mission Platform". That modification, in the words of US Rear Admiral John Davis, was intended to allow the Carter to, "Support classified research, development, test and evaluation efforts for notional naval special warfare missions, tactical undersea surveillance, and undersea warfare concepts." Aka, the Carter probably gets to hang around the ocean floor a lot doing some very interesting things. In 2012 for example, the submarine received a Presidential Unit Citation for what was merely described as "Mission 7". All the Navy said on the matter was that the Carter had, "Successfully completed extremely demanding and arduous independent submarine operations of vital importance to the national security of the United States." The Carter then, arguably something like Russia's Belgorod, represents something of a unique asset. It can still nominally do the missions that would ordinarily be assigned to other ships of its class, but it's also there to deal with the occasional mission itch that no other submarine in the force may be able to scratch. The subsequent Virginia class then was intended to be just a bit more chill and more suitable for the post-Cold War world. Compared to the Seawolves, the first Virginias were smaller, cheaper, and couldn't dive to quite the same depth. The amount of torpedoes and missiles that could be kept in the torpedo room was slashed roughly in half, but that reduction was partially offset by the fact that the Virginias did gain 12 VLS tubes for cruise missiles. The first Virginia would be commissioned in 2004 and the class would be turned out in blocks from there on. Interestingly though, some later versions of the Virginia class seem to be going in something of a different developmental direction. Starting with the USS Arizona that was laid down in 2022, a number of future Virginia-class submarines are expected to incorporate what's called the Virginia Payload Module. This is an additional module which lengthens the submarine and adds the capacity for 28 addition cruise missiles in a Vertical Launch System. With the addition of that module and the extra weapon capacity it brings, some future Virginia-class submarines, which remember were designed partly to be smaller, cheaper and less heavily armed than the old Seawolves, will instead end up heavier, more expensive, and more heavily armed. With the planned eventual retirement of the Ohio-class guided missile submarines though, the US Navy regards this addition as a critical way to maintain the number of cruise missile tubes in the fleet. And also to provide a launch platform for certain next generation weapons, including the Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapon we mentioned earlier. Moving on from the attack submarines then, the other major component for the US is obviously the missile submarines, ballistic and guided. There are 18 Ohio submarines currently in service, each either capable of carrying 20 Trident nuclear missiles or 154 Tomahawks. Giving the US Navy the ability to launch a small fleet's worth of missile strikes with basically zero warning from almost anywhere. Compared to the attack boats these are unsurprisingly much bigger boys, getting close to 19,000 tons submerged. But they've generally provided good service to the US Navy since the first boat was commissioned in November 1981. But as you might guess from that commissioning date, they are starting to run into serious age trouble. The four guided missile boats, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Georgia, are all more than 40 years old. And while the ballistic missile versions are on average newer, the youngest version of the class, USS Louisiana, is still pushing on 27. Certainly young for a human, but pushing it a bit for a nuclear submarine. With the class beginning to age out, the US basically had three choices. Give up on its submarine-based nuclear weapons entirely, obviously unacceptable not just for strategic reasons, but because it would mean that the British and French militaries had a capability that the US didn't. Try and put a 40+ year old design back into production. Or come up with something shiny, new and very, very expensive. Given that nuclear deterrence isn't really considered an optional extra by US military planners, we got the Colombia class. While a bunch of details about the Columbia class are obviously classified, there are a couple of elements that have been publicly disclosed. We know it's going to have an X-form rudder, improvements in quieting, lethality and sensors, a common missile compartment for its SLBMs jointly developed with the United Kingdom. A variety of smaller improvements, some of which have been taken directly from later blocks of the Virginia class, and reportedly an electric-drive propulsion system. Historically, most submarine nuclear reactors have provided a majority of their energy output in the form of steam which could be used to drive the propulsion system. That works fine if you're trying to turn a propeller for example, but good luck running a sonar or a computer system using superheated steam. On the Columbia class we believe the power output is mostly going to be electrical. With that electrical energy then being available to either drive the propulsion system, or a variety of onboard electronics and systems. In a way this mirrors the development trajectory we've seen on surface warships and next generation aircraft, where there is greater and greater demand for more electrical power on board to support next generation technology. Interestingly, a lot of materials on the Columbia class also try and describe it as an efficient, cost-effective design. The Submarine Industrial Base Council for example has said, "The Columbia-class SSBN program will provide a credible deterrent at the lowest possible cost." And while there are probably some arguments you could make in favour of that statement, that doesn't mean these things will be cheap. And by not cheap, I mean the first submarine in the class, the perhaps aptly named District of Columbia, which notably gets the honour of swallowing the development cost for the class, is expected to cost US taxpayers between 15.8 and 17.5 billion dollars, depending on whether you go with the US Navy or Congressional Budget Office estimate. The subsequent submarines in the class, by contrast, are expected to cost a mere 8.4 to 9.2 billion US dollars per unit. Bringing the total CBO estimate for a class of 12 boats to 119 billion. While all my US viewers are recovering, I'll add there are a couple of silver linings to those estimates. For example, the US Navy believes it will only need 12 Columbia-class boats to replace the existing 14 Ohios. The primary driver of that is the fact that Columbia class is being designed to eliminate the expensive and complicated process of mid-life refuelling. The reactors on these things are being designed with an intended unrefuelled life of 42 years. Meaning each submarine is expected to spend more time out on patrol and less time in dry dock vacuuming up maintenance dollars. The first vessel of the class, the aforementioned District of Columbia, the stern section of which you can see on the right there, is already in construction. And the target date for her commissioning is reportedly in 2028. The current US long-term shipbuilding plan calls for a steady buy of one Columbia class per year out into the mid-2030s. At which point the Navy has indicated it wants to start switching the productive capacity that was building Colombias over to producing some other (as yet indeterminate) large-payload submarine. Essentially the US Navy has basically declared that it likes big boats and it cannot lie, and has decided to include some large submarines in its future budget planning, even if it isn't sure exactly what they are going to do yet. To quote from a Congressional Budget Office report, "The Navy would also build a new large-payload submarine starting in the 2030s or 2040s depending on which alternative was implemented. That new ship would be a large capacity submarine, perhaps built on the Columbia-class hull in much the same way that the Navy's existing SSGNs are converted from a higher class SSBN." It goes on to note that depending on what ship building plan was implemented, the Navy would seek to acquire between 4 and 6 of these things. There's plenty of things these submarines could end up being, from Special Operations platforms to drone or missile carriers. But given how far off any definitive decision around them is likely to be, I'm not sure it's worth speculating yet. Instead I'd suggest their inclusion in that long-term ship building plan probably reflects in part a painful lesson the US Navy has had to learn. It takes many, many years and extensive investment to build up the shipyards and workforce you need to effectively build large nuclear submarines. But it doesn't take very long at all to lose those shipyards and that workforce if you ever stop building. Both Russian and US industry has had to deal with that particular challenge. And with the end of the Cold War, many, many years separated the last Ohio-class submarine being commissioned and construction kicking off on the first Columbia. Committing to continue building large-payload submarines even after the Colombias are complete might represent a statement of intent by the US Navy not to allow that part of its industrial capacity to atrophy again. Moving on though, while the Columbia might be a more immediate priority given just how old most of the Ohio subs are at this point, the US Navy is also looking forward to a potential next generation replacement for its attack submarines as well. Yes, the latest model Virginias are probably some of the best, if not the best, attack submarines in the world at this point. But the US Navy, like the US Air Force, apparently has no desire to ever find itself in a fair fight. That means eventually moving past the Virginias to a new design that at this point only carries the designation SSN(X). Budget appropriations for research and design activities related to the SSN(X) have really only started to ramp up relatively recently. Reportedly aided by the fact that you are going to have some very experienced design teams rolling off the Columbia projects who are now free to work on an attack boat instead. While we might know comparatively little about the Columbia-class boats, we know even less about the next-generation attack submarine. But one thing we can try to determine using various public statements by senior US figures is what the main design priorities are. And where, if anywhere, the service is considering making trade-offs. Remember, with the move from Seawolf over to Virginia the Navy originally decided to sacrifice some features like dive performance or torpedo storage in order to embrace some slightly more humble design goals that enabled a more affordable submarine. So you might be asking what sort of humble, restrained and economical goals might the US be embracing for its next generation attack sub? Well, according to the Executive Director of the Navy's Program Executive Office for Attack Submarines, the SSN(X) design will reportedly feature, "Increased speed, an increased horizontal payload, improved acoustic superiority and higher operational availability." Admiral Bill Houston, speaking back when he was Rear-Admiral Bill Houston, Director of the Undersea Warfare Division at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, reportedly said that the SSN(X) has "Got to be faster, carry a significant punch, a bigger payload, a larger salvo rate. It's got to have acoustic superiority. And simultaneously we are going to work on operational availability with respect to maintenance and life of the ship." If you stitch together some of the various statements that have been made by US Navy and other senior US leaders about this thing, you may come to the conclusion that what the US Navy has basically said it wants is something with more speed and torpedo capacity than the Seawolf, VLS and missile capacity more akin to an upgraded Virginia, the operational availability of the Columbia class, and stealth and sensors beyond anything that's come before. As Admiral Houston reportedly put it, the US Navy is pursuing the humble goal of fielding "The ultimate apex predator for the maritime domain." Thus, while there's very little certain about the final design, it seems probable that it will be both very expensive and also potentially very large. To quote from a CRS report on the program, "These requirements will likely result in an SSN(X) design that is larger than the original Virginia class and possibly larger than the original Seawolf." The US Navy requested about 587 million for design and development work on the SSN(X) in fiscal year 2025, up slightly from 545 million it requested in fiscal year 2024. But compared to the Columbia class, construction work is still much, much further off. Originally the Navy was targeting 2031 for construction start, that date then got pushed out to 2035, and it's now looking like it might be closer to 2040. With the primary driver of that delay being the availability of funding to get the program moving. The question of how many of these things will be built in the coming decades is also still very much up in the air. The Navy's 30-year ship building plan includes multiple options, and they can vary significantly in how many of these next generation subs are called for. Option 1) for example calls for 11 more Virginia-class submarines with the Virginia Payload Module, 10 more without the payload module, and 33 SSN(X) class submarines. Option 2) by contrast, which prioritises quantity over the generational changeover, calls for an additional 48 Virginia-class submarines, 11 with the payload module and 37 without, but cuts the planned SSN(X) buy from 33 to 18. It perhaps says a lot about the US Navy that the "spam" option (for lack of a better term) involves mass producing one of the most advanced attack submarines ever designed. But this is the US military, where the cheap option often isn't. But regardless of what the composition of America's future attack submarine force looks like, there's still the question of what they are going to be armed with. And in the interest of time here, I want to focus specifically on the torpedoes. Here I think you could break some of the US programs out into at least three different lines of effort. Namely building better torpedoes, cheaper torpedoes, and smaller torpedoes. At the higher end, at least in the near term, it looks like the new US answer is going to look a lot like the old answer. The US has repeatedly upgraded its Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo, including with the Mod 7 version which was jointly developed with the Royal Australian Navy. The US actually stopped production of these heavyweight torpedoes for a number of years when it looked like high-end naval threats weren't going to be as much of a problem any more. In the 2010s it was decided that maybe that wasn't the safest assumption to make, and production was slowly restarted. Despite the original ADCAP versions of the Mark 48 dating back to the late 1980s, this is still a very dangerous torpedo by global standards. But it's limited by the fact that against a wide array of targets it's likely to be horrendous overkill. At more than 5 million US dollars per shot, there are main battle tanks out there that are cheaper than the most advanced versions of the Mark 48. And in a world where not every target is going to be a fast-moving deep-diving decoy-equipped Russian submarine, the US Navy looks to be trying to develop something a little more affordable to complement the Mark 48. While we don't have many details yet, that's likely to be where the Rapid Acquisition Procurable Torpedo, or RAPTOR, is likely to come in. We should probably expect that program to use a lot more commercial off-the-shelf technology that can be obtained and stockpiled quickly. As well as performance characteristics that are at least a little bit more humble. As well as cheaper, there's also a question of whether or not torpedoes should be made smaller. While the nearly 300 kilogram warhead on the Mark 48 is no doubt likely to provide a very satisfying bang every time one is fired, against a lot of likely future threats like incoming torpedoes or small surface and underwater drones, it's kind of like taking a shotgun to a sand-fly. There have also been questions asked around how economically US submarines could potentially engage masses of surface contacts, like commandeered civilian ferries and transports, in any hypothetical future escalation scenario where those sort of vessels might make a significant appearance. One potential answer here might be so-called "very lightweight torpedoes". This is the potential domain of systems like the US Compact Rapid Attack Weapon. The piece you see on the right there by Lieutenant Commander Patrick Rawlinson of the US Navy hypothesises that with a weapon like that you might be able to pack as many as 10 per torpedo tube. He notes that the use of these sort of very lightweight torpedoes as defensive weapons might be critical for submarines in the future. But they might also provide a mechanism to give attack submarines much greater magazine depth when engaging lighter or less demanding targets. Suggesting as an illustration, that instead of carrying 26 heavyweight and 14 defensive lightweight torpedoes, a Virginia-class submarine in the future could carry 10 heavyweights and 160 lightweights. With all the potential implications that might have for how many targets a submarine could potentially engage before having to go back to reload. But while the US is undoubtedly pushing forward with these next generation designs and potential weapon upgrades, other powers aren't exactly sitting still. And so to illustrate the direction that another major player might be taking, let's talk about Russia. For the Cold-War Soviet Union, submarines were one of the cornerstones of its naval power. They were both a vital part of the country's nuclear deterrent and also an asymmetric counter to NATO's much greater naval power. The successor Russian submarine force of the 1990s would face a number of tough battles against foes that have felled many a navy: namely serious underfunding, rust, and occasionally catastrophic maintenance standards. With the help of new funding though, the Russian Navy would start to regenerate in the 2000s. And while there are several fields of military technical development where Russia has arguably fallen behind the international curve, its submarine force arguably remains the cornerstone of its naval power. And its latest submarine models tend to be described by NATO and other foreign commentators in very respectful terms. It's also worth noting that over the last 2.5 years, some of Russia submarines have been engaged in an active shooting war. With the success of Ukrainian anti-ship missiles, drones, and in particular naval drones, Russian surface warships in the Black Sea are having a pretty hard time. At this point Crimea, which has been hit on a number of occasions by things like air-launched cruise missiles, has basically been emptied of major naval warships. And Ukraine's grain exports on the Black Sea are now above what they were during the Black Sea grain deal. But despite all of those changes, Russia's submarine force is still largely immune to Ukrainian area denial efforts. Yes, one Russian submarine, the Rostov-on-Don, was previously hit by Storm Shadow missiles, and just in the last day at time of recording, Ukraine now claims to have hit the submarine again. The submarine was actually in dry dock when it was hit by that first missile strike. And most submarines do tend to fail their stealth checks when there's no water around. Russian submarines in the water part of the Black Sea have so far proven to be much harder targets. And they continue to make an active, if not particularly decisive, contribution to the war effort by flinging cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets. In terms of force composition, the Russian force is arguably the most diverse of the three we are going to look at. They have both the nuclear-powered component of the fleet, as with the United States Navy, while also maintaining a conventional submarine force as well. I'll note up front that when we are talking about Russian submarine evolution as well as their recent and next generation designs, most observers seem to agree that they are very roughly one generation behind the Americans. When the US Office of Naval Intelligence released estimates for how quiet various classes of submarines were more than a decade ago at this point, they estimated that Russia's latest and greatest attack submarine was going to be quieter than the improved Los Angeles-class boats, but still short of the stealth levels achieved by the USS Seawolf, first commissioned in 1997. That perhaps 10 to 20 year performance gap obviously favours the American designs, but it's perhaps a tad understandable when you think about the state of the Russian submarine industrial base from the 1990s through to the early 2000s. With that context in place, let's look at some programs. The current fleet of Russian ballistic missile submarines is divided between older Delta IVs from the Cold War and the new Project 955 boats. Design work reportedly began in the 1980s but construction work stretched a bit. Having started construction in 1996, the lead ship of the class would be commissioned in December 2012. It's worth noting that while the 955s are much smaller than the old Soviet Typhoons, at approximately 24,000 tons displacement whilst submerged, they do displace nearly 30% more than their American equivalents in the Ohio class, despite carrying 20% fewer SLBMs. Russia currently has 7 active boats of the type divided into two flights, 3 of the base 955 design and 4 of the improved 955As. Ever since the first the 955A boats, the Prince Vladimir, was commissioned in 2020 the rate of commissioning has been relatively impressive by international standards. One submarine was commissioned every year between 2020 and 2023, another one is expected this year in 2024, with further commissionings expected in 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2031. Overall, if nothing changes (noting that isn't a particularly safe assumption to make when it comes to Russia these days) the construction plan for the class will probably extend out into the 2030s. Because the current generation Russian SSBN is in active production, unlike the American one, and doesn't have a level of acoustic subtlety only a couple of steps removed from a heavy metal band, unlike those belonging to a certain other naval power, Russia arguably doesn't have as much immediate imperative, nor as much immediate funding, to roll out a next-generation design. As a result, what we've seen from the relevant design bureau so far isn't so much an official project as a design concept. In 2022 the Rubin Design Bureau showed off their concept for the so-called "Arctic-class" submarine. This appeared to include a couple of interesting features including some very large conformal sonar arrays, including one in the chin position. A pair of flooded hangers to accommodate two large autonomous underwater vehicles. As well as a fairly unique rudder shape. Interestingly, the concept shown also seemed to lean into the apparent trend of Russian submarines designed to carry nuclear missiles carrying fewer missiles than their American counterparts. The USS Ohio carried 20 tubes to the Project 955's 16. With the follow on Colombia class that we'll look at, America appears to be dropping down to 16 tubes themselves. But if it was built as presented, the Arctic class would preserve the margin by going down to 12 tubes. All in all, it looks like an interesting design that has a lot of the hallmarks we associate with the next generation. But at this stage it remains very much a concept, and I'm not sure I'd be willing to put significant chips down on Russia's eventual SSBN successor class looking anything like the concepts we see today. Moving on from the nuclear missile carriers to the conventional missile carriers then, Russia started commissioning a new class of SSGNs from 2013 onwards. You'll often see the Yasen-class boats referred to as SSGNs, guided missile submarines. But it's important to note there are some very significant differences in capability and mission between this family of Russian boats and what America often calls an SSGN, which is the converted Ohio boats. This class of Russian submarines is arguably much more analogous to something like the Virginia class equipped with a Virginia Payload Module. It's a capable attack boat with a significant missile armament. And like many Soviet and Russian designs before it, those missile tubes can accommodate not just land-attack missiles, but anti-ship options as well. Think things like the supersonic Onyx or the hypersonic Zircon. The submarines likely combine high performance with an ability to skip mid-lifetime refuelling, as long as you limit the lifetime of the boat to 25 to 30 years. Based on what's available in open source, you could probably argue that even though the 885s may not represent a next-generation submarine, they do probably represent Russia coming out with a very capable current-generation submarine. The commander of US naval forces in Europe reportedly described the class as, "Very quiet, which is the most important thing in submarine warfare." And various sources credit the submarine with a silent running speed of between 20 and 28 knots, something which would put it squarely in the domain of the public figures available for the American Seawolf and Virginia classes. A RUSI report arguably states the submarine's capabilities in even clearer terms, "In principle, the Yasen and Yasen-M class pose a substantial risk to Western forces. The combination of quietness and long-range strike capabilities poses a novel challenge to Western defenders, both at sea and on land. The range at which the two submarines can strike targets on land means they would not need to run the gauntlet of the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap in order to disrupt the effective mobilisation of Western forces in wartime." The report also notes that the submarines could potentially open the way for other older Russian designs to break into the Atlantic by threatening NATO surface vessels patrolling the gap. That sort of evaluation highlights the heavy armament of the Russian design. Yes, it looks short on missile count if you compare it to something like an Ohio SSGN. But if you compare it to something more like a Virginia, then suddenly the Russian design, which has the benefit of a wider beam (meaning it's girthier for those of you who are not navally minded) starts to look pretty good from an armament perspective. So all in all on paper, the Yasen-class boats look relatively fast, heavily armed, stealthy, and they even get a couple of respectful nods of approval from NATO sources. Now, yes, there are always going to be questions about a range of things, from construction techniques to whether the submarines will remain as quiet after several years in service. Noting that one of the great potential threats to the stealth of a submarine is poor maintenance. Leading to things like worn out components and the associated acoustic indiscretions they can cause. If you have things like dodgy valves, pumps or rusted control surfaces, you might see a difference between the on-paper performance of a sub and its actual performance. Fortunately, we all know the Russian military has never, ever, had systemic problems with maintenance. But whatever the case may be, and whether or not you think the glowing evaluation of some Russian submarine designs by Western naval officials represents a straight evaluation of their capabilities. Or are potentially tilted a little bit towards the more optimistic side for reasons that I'm sure have everything to do with risk mitigation and absolutely nothing to do with budget requests. Most sources seem to agree that as far as submarines go, the Yasen-class boats mean serious business. They do however have at least one clear weakness that the Russians may try to offset by introducing yet another new class, they are very expensive. And with that elevated cost, combined with their recent development has come relatively limited inventories, at least so far. As good as the Yasen-class boats are believed to be, they represent at least for the moment, a minority of Russian nuclear submarine strength. What you can see on screen there are Military Balance 2024 figures for a range of Russian SSN and SSGN types. As you can see, the most common type isn't the Yasen or Yasen-M, although I'll note a third Yasen-M has now entered service, instead it is the much older Oscar II, a type that was first commissioned in the 1980s. While the US submarine force also has its own division between legacy and more recent designs, with a lot of improved Los Angeles-class boats still remaining in service. When it comes to Russian nuclear-powered attack and missile boats, the balance is even more heavily weighted towards the older materiel. Over time that's expected to change, partly because more Yasen-M boats will continue to enter service. But the sheer scale of the problem, coupled with the diversity of types currently in service, might explain why the Russian Navy might be somewhat interested in combining the Yasen-M with another modern design. In 2018, Russian state media reported that a new 5th generation nuclear attack submarine would be completed by 2027. At the time it was referred to as the Project 545 Husky. From what little we've been shown, including the model you can see on screen there from a 2020 demo, the 545 seems less like a direct successor and more like a cheaper alternative. Compared to the older sub, the Husky is expected to displace more than 2,000 tons less when submerged, have a lighter armament, and a lighter sticker price. In a sense there might be a little bit of a Seawolf/Virginia dynamic going on here. Although the two submarines are also potentially going to replace different older platforms. It's also worth noting that Russian sources claim to be leaning into modularity a bit more with the Husky. I'm not sure if taking notes from the LCS is the best approach for any naval program, but we'll see how that goes. A final interesting observation related to the design is that in a lot of the concept art released by the design bureau, and the model you can see on screen there, the submarine appears to use an old school propeller, not a pump jet propulsor. That's interesting because Russia clearly does have that sort of technology and some of their existing submarine designs use them. One potential explanation may come down to good old-fashioned design bureau competition, even if both are ultimately owned by the Russian state. Russia currently has two submarine design bureaus, one of which seems comfortable designing vessels with pump jet propulsors, and the other designed the Husky. What impact, if any, that ultimately has on the stealth of the final design only time will tell. Alongside its core force of large nuclear powered missile and attack submarines, Russia also still has a number of diesel-electrics. This force is still overwhelmingly made up of various versions of the old Soviet Kilo class, although there have been attempts to modernise. There was an attempt at what the Russians called a 4th generation design with the roughly 2,700 ton displacement Project 677. The program was first jinxed when someone decided to call the thing the Lada class, and then distressed when the first version didn't exactly work as hoped. The lead ship of the class, the St Petersburg, was commissioned into the Russian Navy in 2010, found to be a little disappointing, and decommissioned in 2024. And while significant redesign and construction work on the class did continue, it's fairly telling that even in November 2023 a report came out that the Russian Navy had commissioned yet another 3rd generation Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine into the Pacific Fleet. I'll also note that the Russian state media article on the right there describes the improved Kilo-class submarines as the "most noiseless in the world". Which on one hand is definitely attempting to throw some pretty serious shade on various Western submarine designs, but on the other hand sort of undercuts the Russian design that is supposed to be a generation ahead of this thing. Despite the partial false start with the 4th generation Lada, for a number of years now we've been hearing about Russian proposals to push ahead with a 5th generation non-nuclear design. That said, like many Russian development programs, determining its exact status isn't simple. In 2016 for example there was reporting that the first experimental work on the new class could commence as early as 2017. But in September 2021 Russian state media reported only that the relevant design bureau had presented several options to the Navy, and indicated that, "The projects of the latest 5th generation submarines, the Husky nuclear project and the Kalina diesel-electric project, are no longer funded by the Ministry of Defence. And United Shipbuilding Corporation is developing them at its own expense." And, yes, the nuclear-powered Husky design just mentioned as not being funded by the Russian Ministry of Defence anymore, is the Project 545 boat that we discussed just a little earlier. The one you remember that was totally going to be delivered by 2027. What that article seemed to suggest is that as of 2021 the status of both future submarine programs was highly uncertain. It's still obviously possible that eventually one or both of these designs ends up being built, at least in some numbers. Although one imagines there are a couple of facets of the current international situation that might make getting new development funding a little more difficult than normal within the Russian military at the moment. In terms of weapons to pair with its current and future generation submarines, the Russian Navy is arguably a bit more diverse than the US one. There are systems that are broadly comparable and fill similar roles, the Kalibr cruise missile for example is broadly analogous to the American Tomahawk. But the Soviet and later Russian navies have also maintained some weird and wonderful systems that don't have direct American analogs. The VA-111 for example is one of very few super-cavitating torpedoes ever developed. In very crude terms, this is essentially a rocket-powered torpedo that forms an air bubble around it as it travels in order to enable underwater speeds of more than 200 mph. That obviously gives it a much shorter potential time to target compared to conventional torpedoes in exchange for a range of drawbacks, including most notably, significantly reduced range. Russia has however developed and fielded new conventional heavyweight torpedoes, as well as a range of new missile systems, many of which are intended for submarine use. The Soviet Navy placed significant emphasis on the value of long-range submarine-launched anti-ship missiles to attack NATO targets. The Russian Navy has arguably continued that trend and built on it by fielding systems like the Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missile. I've talked about hypersonic missiles and Zircon specifically before. But I bring them up again here to demonstrate that even if you presume Russian submarines on average aren't as capable platform-for-platform as their American counterparts, if they have a sufficiently dangerous armament with sufficient range and missile-defence penetration capabilities, they may end up posing more of a threat or having more impact than the performance characteristics of the submarine alone suggest. Russia also has a number of underwater drone programs that we'll pick up in future episodes, but you can't close out a discussion of Russian submarine weapons development without talking about perhaps the weirdest of the lot. In January 2023 Russian state media reported the first nuclear-armed Poseidon drones had been manufactured. The Poseidon, NATO reporting name Canyon, is believed to be a large nuclear-powered underwater drone carrying a nuclear warhead. Given its nuclear power plant, this thing could hypothetically be launched thousands of kilometres from a target, travel fast and deep towards it, and then sail for example into an enemy port and detonate the onboard nuclear warhead. Given that most existing missile defence systems are not exactly optimised for underwater operation, Poseidon would presumably be able to bypass them in order to reach its presumably coastal target. There are a lot of questions around Poseidon and its development. How many are likely to be built, how reliable is the navigation system, how large is the onboard warhead? But the biggest question that occurs to me is just: why? As far as we can tell from open source there is no other power on planet Earth that has built an equivalent to this thing, and no one seems to plan to. The reason for that perhaps is that in trade-off terms it just doesn't seem to make much sense compared to existing systems. Yes, a Poseidon nuclear torpedo could presumably bypass existing missile defence systems. But it's generally understood that Russia's existing missile arsenal could already penetrate the missile defence systems of the United States and its allies, and any future missile defence system that they're likely to develop and field in the near to medium term. Compared to an SLBM, a giant nuclear-powered torpedo would presumably take much longer to reach its target, not be able to carry MIRVs, and also come with the minor drawback of not being able to hit any target that wasn't on or near the bloody water. They also appear to be large, bulky, and intended for carriage in relatively small numbers by a specialist platform. To date, Russian sources have generally indicated that Poseidon is intended to equip the submarine Belgorod. A derivative of the old Soviet Oscar II class, Belgorod represents a massive investment of Russian resources. And for all that, it might be able to carry 6 Poseidons. Something which also presumably comes with significant opportunity cost attached. If you are out there using the Belgorod to carry out nuclear deterrence patrols using your second-strike doomsday weapon, one imagines the Russians are comparatively less likely to have it available for other potentially more useful tasks. Like for example supporting maritime special and seabed operations. For me from an investment perspective, the existence of Poseidon suggests the Russian military may have asked whether it could, instead of whether it should. For me the biggest question mark over all of this, which I started to hint at earlier, is simply resource constraints. Despite the immense demands of the war in Ukraine, so far Russia has largely succeeded in ring-fencing its submarine force. Construction activity has continued, boats have continued to be commissioned, and Vladimir Putin has suggested that that construction effort will continue. But that doesn't mean that the question is permanently settled going forward. There's going to be stiff competition for budget resources, a very tight labour market, and partly related to the above, significant inflationary pressure. With things like labour costs in Russia spiking as significantly as they have, it's entirely possible the submarine builders will need contract revisions if they are going to continue work. And that may put them in direct or indirect competition not just with other parts of the Russian government, but also just other parts of the Russian military that, perhaps understandably, might claim to have their own more imminent concerns. One imagines it might become harder and harder to justify continued investment in things like doomsday drones when Private Conscriptovic is over in Ukraine without any optics on his rifle, a Chinese golf cart for transportation, and fire support provided by only the finest artillery pieces of the 1950s. So far the budgetary walls appear to have been holding, but it's not certain they'll hold forever. Despite the lost years of the 1990s and early 2000s, Russia still clearly retains the capability to design and build nuclear and conventional submarines. Outside the bounds of the US and its allies, Russia still probably leads the field in several technical areas. And so arguably the greatest challenge for its submarine programs going forward is simply going to be the demand for everything else. From an investment perspective, the big question for me is not so much whether Russia can keep pace with the United States going forward, but whether it is in the right race to begin with. And speaking of operating within resource constraints, there's one more fleet I want to look at. Let's talk about Japan and the submarines of the Maritime Self-Defence Force. Even by the standards of some of the major military powers we've looked at this episode, Japan maintains in numerical terms a relatively large submarine fleet. It has generally remained fairly stable around its targets of 22 submarines in the main fleet, plus 2 for training purposes. Noting that for a lot of global fleets, having 2 entire hulls dedicated to the training role is pretty far along to the luxury side of the essential/luxury spectrum. But what really sets the Japanese fleet apart from the others we have looked at today is that rather than being a nuclear force or a mixed nuclear/conventional force, the Japanese remain squarely focused on conventional propulsion designs in the roughly 4,000 tons submerged range. Now those conventional designs did start to get modern Air Independent Propulsion systems, starting with the last two vessels in the Sōryū class. But in 2022 they commissioned the first of a new class of submarines that have been built from the ground up with AIP in mind. And which I think illustrates the Japanese philosophy so far fairly well. In many ways the new Taigei class feels like an evolution on the older Sōryū. It combines advancement in sensor technology, silencing, power, propulsion (including the addition of AIP as I mentioned), a slightly larger displacement, a complement of around 70 crew. And while it might have nowhere near some of the performance characteristics that the nuclear-powered leviathans we've looked at can offer, it's still likely to be very quiet, very dangerous, and very affordable. Despite being the first boat in the class, Taigei reportedly cost less than 70 billion yen. Or around 470 million US dollars. Well short of the billions of dollars you'd expect to pay for a Russian or American SSN. Being a relatively new design, you can already see evidence of some of the features we associated with next generation submarines earlier. For example, you can very clearly see that X-shaped arrangement for the control surfaces at the rear, coupled with a concealed, but one would presume rather advanced, propulsion unit. The Japanese also appear to have already made significant movements on the armament front. To date Japanese submarines only have torpedo tubes, no VLS, but they can launch some missiles, like extended range variants of the Harpoon, from those torpedo tubes. And while specifics are hard to lock down, they may actually have access to one of the best torpedoes in the world. Right at the end of the 1980s the Japanese adopted the Type 89 as their heavyweight long-range torpedo. In terms of dimensions and performance, you'll often see the Type 89 compared roughly to the American Mark 48. But reportedly in 2012 development started on something better again. The reported requirement included a range of features including greater resistance to things like decoys and defence measures. As well as improved reliability and targeting performance not just in deep waters, but also in coastal and very shallow waters. Zones of operation that might be very much front of mind for the Japanese for hopefully obvious reasons. It's worth noting that Japanese sources still refer to planned armament improvements, including torpedoes that are quieter and more difficult to detect. I'm not sure it's 100% certain whether that refers to an upgraded Type 18, a new torpedo, or both. But it's interesting to point out that despite the fact that Japan is now arguably ahead of a lot of other powers in terms of armament modernisation, it appears to already be making plans for that next iteration. But in terms of increasing the lethality of Japan's submarine force, I'd argue there are other future plans that may have even more of an impact than the new torpedoes. Because after years of building submarines that basically evolved on the same idea, we are now getting indication that Japan's next generation is going to be something different. Japan's stated intention is to build 7 boats of the Taigei class. At one boat built per year with the first one commissioned in 2022, that gives a pretty clear indication that a next generation submarine might be coming around 2030. And lo and behold, in 2023 Kawasaki Heavy Industries confirmed that it had received a research and development contract from the Japanese Ministry of Defence for a new-generation diesel-electric submarine. The details on said submarine were relatively vague, one imagines not just because of secrecy, but also because it hasn't been designed yet. But there have been a number of interesting statements on the new design from Japanese sources. And there's probably a few things we can derive from the most unimpeachable and reliable of all information sources: corporate concept imagery. A few features instantly stand out in that image on the right there. You have that X configuration, but you also have other structural changes. The sail has been moved to the aft and the dive planes been moved from the sail to the bow. But perhaps the most impactful apparent change is the introduction of VLS. That suggests both that future Japanese submarines might carry considerably more bang than previous versions, and that they may provide a much greater land-attack capability. I need to stress that by global standards this would be a fairly unusual configuration. VLS armaments are normally associated with nuclear-powered vessels. And unless you count North Korea's effort to convert a Romeo into a "tactical nuclear attack submarine" as they call it, it's relatively unusual for a power to try and up-gun a conventional submarine in this way. But if you look at Japan's specific strategic position and its available industrial and financial resources, you can probably start to see why they may have decided to go in this direction. For the most part, unlike US, Russian, French, British or to an extent Chinese submarines, The JMSDF probably doesn't imagine its submarines having to project power that far from home. The country's major stated security concerns include North Korea, which is just there, and the People's Republic of China, which is just there. Japanese submarines then arguably don't need the kind of range and endurance of America's Pacific hunters in order to reach their areas of operation. What they do need to be is relatively numerous, survivable, and lethal in an environment that is often going to be relatively shallow or potentially coastal. The decision to add a long-range missile armament is also probably a sign of the times, with Japan becoming more focused on long-range systems that enable it to exercise what it describes as a "counter-strike capability". And by extension, what missile-armed submarines might be able to contribute to the overall firepower of the fleet. And there are other factors, from the political and social to the industrial, that may have informed the decision to stick with a conventionally-powered fleet. One of the big ones here from a defence economics perspective is probably just industrial continuity and the flexibility that might come with it. Japan has been building diesel-electric submarines for a very long time at a very consistent pace and has got very good at doing it. By continuing to turn out one submarine per year, year after year, participants in the supply chain for Japanese submarines are often going to have a lot more certainty than those in other countries. And in fact you could argue that Japan has maintained that production rate and that stability even when the fleet numbers themselves don't strictly require it. If you're building one submarine per year and maintaining a force of 22+2, that means you are throwing out your submarines on average after 24 years. Which is by submarine standards a very generous retirement age. What that suggests to me is that as long as Japan maintains that one submarine per year industrial cadence, there is always going to be the possibility there with additional investment in maintenance, overhauls, crew training, munitions, etc. to steadily lift the number of submarines in the force over time to some new steady state. If you kept every submarine for 30 years for example, the force might go from 22+2 to 28+2. Certainly more easier said than done, but almost certainly cheaper than just building more submarines. I bring all this up to try and illustrate a point. When it comes to almost any field of technological development, military or otherwise, there can be a tendency to start to presume what the future is going to look like. With submarines we see countries like Russia, France, the UK and United States all pushing towards a certain apparent vision of what a next-generation submarine will look like. A nuclear-powered underwater monster with slightly less technological complexity than the Starship Enterprise, and budget line costs that could bankrupt smaller nations. Then much like 6th generation fighters in the air, those very expensive underwater platforms are meant to be augmented by all sorts of unmanned systems. For many countries, especially those with long-range power-projection requirements, that may be the right approach. But there are a wide variety of countries out there, whether you're talking about Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Egypt, or a variety of European states, and arguably with its hybrid fleet structure, the People's Republic of China, that all seem to see a place for conventional submarines in the next generation mix. These smaller diesel-electric submarines do have their drawbacks. And for a nation like the US they'd probably be a bit of a non-starter. But hunting a very quiet, modern, AIP conventional submarine in its home or familiar waters is an ASW nightmare. And given that the cost gap might be the difference between a country like Japan being able to afford 22 submarines or 2, (if you take the latest Virginias as a baseline) I think it's probably understandable that there is more than one direction of travel on submarine development out there. And I think it's important to understand from an analysis and planning perspective, that for some countries just because something doesn't look like the future, it doesn't mean it isn't the future. And so in conclusion I wanted to flag some of the major challenges these next generation programs might face, as well as the opportunities they might present. Perhaps the greatest challenges to some of these programs, and a factor we will definitely explore more in the future, is simply having the industrial capacity necessary to build them at the desired rate. Even the United States, with the largest fleet of nuclear submarines in the world, has been facing industrial constraints for years. And it's likely to take considerable further investments in the submarine industrial base and its associated workforce, if all of these new very complicated submarines are going to be built in the planned quantities on the desired timelines. Another barrier whether you're talking about Russia, the United States or many other submarine operators may simply be cost. The Japanese boats aside, most of the platforms we've talked about today are horrendously expensive. And analysis suggests that all versions of the US Navy's proposed 30-year ship building plan would require a considerable increase in shipbuilding funding just to hit the outline targets as they stand today. And even where those investments are made, technology risk is likely to follow. Both in terms of technologies these submarines are to rely on not maturing in time, and also anti-submarine warfare threats continuing to evolve. Some of the programs we have talked about today are intended to field submarines expected to serve into the 2070s or 2080s. Meaning that if we suddenly get to the 2050s, and some new unexpected technology has suddenly made submarines less viable, you could hypothetically find some very expensive investments having their values significantly written down. But what is abundantly clear is that even though next-generation submarine programs arguably represent a very expensive, very long-term bet, it's one that just about every major naval power out there is choosing to make. Whether you are talking about Russia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France or several others besides, all have apparently come to the decision that the submarine is so indispensable as a platform that it's worth making the investment. That it's worth betting on the promise of long-term deterrence and potentially underwater dominance. Even a small number of advanced nuclear submarines is the kind of threat an opponent has to take very seriously. And so in the coming years we should expect to see a range of new designs start to take shape in dry docks around the world. And OK, channel update to close out. I'll try and keep it brief. I very much hope you enjoyed the topic, which in many ways follows on from our previous video on the future of the submarine. If things go well, I would like to do a third entry specifically on US military shipbuilding, but time will tell. For patrons, as promised the charity poll should be up by the time this video goes live. And for those of you interested in Perun Gaming, that channel has resumed a regular cadence of updates now as well. Thank you very much to all of you for your support as always, and of course thank you to Ground News for their long-term sponsorship of the channel. I wish you all, and especially the bubbleheads among you, the very best and I hope to see you all again next week.

Across generations of submariners 
there&#39;s long been a joke that there are really only two types of 
ships out there: submarines and targets. For the better part of a century at 
this point, submarines have made the world&#39;s oceans a pretty 
dangerous place for surface ships. But as we covered in a previous episode, some 
nations are looking towards new technologies to potentially strip submarines 
of some of their advantages. It&#39;s becoming clear that the submarines 
of the future should expect to be hunted by a new generation of manned and unmanned 
platforms equipped with cutting-edge technologies. But rather than give up on the submarine, 
major navies around the world are doubling down and pushing ahead 
with new and improved submarine designs. It&#39;s a race that arguably exemplifies the 
technological, industrial and military competition between the world&#39;s great naval powers. 
And today we are going to talk about it. To do that, I&#39;m going to look at some of 
the factors that might be driving countries towards investment in new 
generations of submarines. Some of the potential areas 
of technological improvement, and why these sort of investment 
decisions can be a really big deal. Then we&#39;ll look at three main submarine fleets, 
their inventories, and plans for the next generation. To illustrate very different force design 
approaches, those will be the nuclear-only US force, the mixed nuclear/conventional Russian force, 
and the conventional-only Japanese force. In the interest of time I&#39;ll really only be 
looking at manned submarines this episode, but we will return to unmanned 
underwater systems in the future. Finally, having gone over some of those ambitions 
and plans, we&#39;ll pivot to the question of risk. Including some of the main threats to 
these development and building programs that, if not probably managed, 
may end up sinking far more of these submarines 
than enemy action ever could. But before we jump into it, 
a quick word from a sponsor. Major international events can often 
drive an avalanche of reporting. But with so much information coming out, 
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Ground News, they are a website and app that gathers related articles from more 
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media source takes a very different tack. Ground News also offers some interesting 
features, like the Blindspot feed. This feed tries to surface stories that are 
being overwhelmingly covered by different parts of the political spectrum, potentially increasing 
your awareness of what&#39;s being covered even if it&#39;s not covered by 
sources you normally consume. There probably is no single decisive solution 
for the problem of online echo chambers and distorted coverage, but a tool 
like Ground News may very much help. And as I have said, there&#39;s a reason 
they were this channel&#39;s first sponsor. So if you are interested, you can go to ground.news/perun 
or use the link in the video description. That&#39;ll get you 40% off the 
Vantage plan, which is the one I have, and gets you unlimited access 
to all the Ground News features. So with my great thanks to Ground 
News as always, let&#39;s get back to it. OK, so let&#39;s start by talking a little bit 
about equipment generations in general. And why the decision to switch 
over to a new submarine design might be a little different than it is 
with certain other platforms. If you think about why nations might make 
the potentially very, very expensive decision to switch over to building a new 
generation of boats for their fleet, I think it might be useful from the start to think 
about it in terms of almost push and pull factors. With push factors being 
those that arguably make the status quo and existing 
designs less and less tenable, and pull factors relating to some of the 
improvements that a new design might be able to offer. Even if that means a lot of 
your workforce and crew have to go back to school, 
and your learning curves get reset. An example of a pull factor then 
might be a technological development that informs a new potential capability, but one 
that isn&#39;t really suitable for the existing fleet. When major powers started 
developing nuclear propulsion plants for submarines in the 1950s for example, 
it would have been apparent even before the first pencil hit paper that they weren&#39;t going 
to be suitable for World War Two hull forms. Meanwhile we&#39;ve looked at some potential 
push factors in our previous episode on anti-submarine technology and 
the potential future of the submarine. If anti-submarine options like unmanned 
systems or sensors are improving, there&#39;s probably going to be a pretty strong 
imperative for the submarines to improve too. For many nations there are also going 
to be pressures that have a lot to do with industrial capacity and the 
inevitable crushing passage of time. There are a lot of countries out 
there with old boats in the fleet that are approaching retirement, 
but which aren&#39;t in active production. In very basic terms, that 
sort of ageing out scenario really only gives fleets 
a couple of core options. You can just give up on having 
submarines, which for some reason tends not to be very popular 
as an option with naval planners. You can try and find a way to extend 
the lifespan of your platforms even more, although that isn&#39;t always 
cost-effective or even viable. You can start pulling people out 
of retirement and try to figure out a way to restart production of a design 
that might be decades old at this point. Or you can use the opportunity to make 
a clean-slate transition to something new. As you can probably imagine 
based on that, new submarine generations don&#39;t exactly 
come around every day. Even nations that tend to retire their 
submarines relatively quickly, like Japan, still tend to keep boats in 
service for north of 20 years, meaning you don&#39;t exactly 
need a replacement tomorrow. And of course you probably want to manufacture 
multiple boats of the same class in series so that you realise at least 
some learning curves. A fleet made up entirely of 
artisanally crafted, unique prototypes probably isn&#39;t going to win you any friends 
among the people that have to maintain the things. And so while some system types may lend 
themselves to being procurement flings, a submarine program is probably a non-starter 
if you are not willing to commit and put a ring on it. There&#39;s also another differentiator from 
a procurement and planning perspective that makes submarines different 
from some other platforms. And it has to do with the basic 
fundamental question of how easy it is to upgrade existing systems 
as opposed to building new ones. In many cases, before a force signs off on 
a requirement for a new piece of equipment there&#39;s going to be an investigation 
into whether existing equipment can provide the requisite 
capability with sufficient upgrades. Sometimes the answer is &quot;yes&quot;, sometimes 
the answer is &quot;no&quot;, sometimes the answer is, &quot;We think it&#39;s yes, but once the upgrade package 
fails we&#39;ll design something new anyway.&quot; General rules in this field are always dangerous, 
but intuitively you can imagine why some platforms might be more receptive to 
easy and cost effective upgrades than others. At the extreme end of the spectrum 
you might have something like a technical or other 
truck-mounted systems. If you invent a new heavy 
machine gun or light missile system, it&#39;s probably not going to take a huge amount 
of work to just bolt it to the tray of a UTE. A step up might be something like a main battle tank, 
but it&#39;s worth noting that a lot of the most advanced tanks out there are actually built using 
hulls that were constructed during the Cold War. If you compare an early model Abrams to the most 
recent versions, you will see this effect in action. And while this has made the vehicle 
considerably chonkier than it was back in 1991, and has required some engineering and 
modification, it is still at its core an Abrams. Compare an early model T-90 to a T-90M 
and again you&#39;ll see the same phenomenon. And indeed armoured vehicles with their 
powerful engines tend to be so tolerant to relatively (and I stress the word &quot;relatively&quot; there) 
simple methods of modification that the war in Ukraine has been able to show 
us an incredibly wide variety of - upgrades. But while a tank might tolerate 
this sort of evolutionary approach, something more like a 
5th generation fighter won&#39;t. If you come up with a new radar 
that doesn&#39;t fit in the F-22&#39;s nose, or a new weapon that 
doesn&#39;t fit in the weapons bay, you may well be looking at a new 
aircraft, not an upgrade program. On that sliding spectrum, 
submarine upgrades are possible but tend to be towards 
the more complex side. You don&#39;t really want to cut them open 
more than you absolutely have to, and in terms of maintaining the 
maximum possible level of stealth these things do tend to be fairly 
finely designed to begin with. Yes, there are times where 
nations have taken the approach of just strapping additional shit 
to the outside of a submarine hull. But there can be a lot of payoff to starting 
with a clean, purpose-designed slate. Which brings us to some 
of those newer technologies that recent and future submarines 
might be seeking to leverage. And to keep things tight in terms 
of timing here, it&#39;s probably best to group them into categories rather 
than explaining each individual innovation. But when you break it down, a lot of them 
are going to be trying to move the needle on one or more key factors, 
think things like the ability of a submarine to survive in an increasingly 
dangerous underwater environment. To be effective or irrelevant 
lethal in its core mission. And then finally the kind of factors 
you might gloss over in a data sheet, but which can be really important 
if you are running a submarine force. Think things like service life, maintenance 
requirements, and likely availability. For hopefully relatively 
obvious reasons, detectability is often a key consideration 
in future submarine design. And particularly if you are 
interested in building submarines that can access highly protected 
enemy waters for example, not having sufficient stealth 
to realistically make it in, complete the mission, and make it 
out again may just be disqualifying. To the point where your potentially 
still very expensive submarine cannot do the job 
that you want it to do. Back in 2016 for example, the 
US Director of Undersea Warfare, Rear Admiral Charles 
Richard, reportedly said, &quot;Stealth is the cover charge, 
stealth is the price of admission, and while we have great access now 
we don&#39;t take that for granted either.&quot; Some innovations to reduce submarine 
detectability can be added to existing designs, but in a lot of cases they are probably going 
to be more practical to add to a new build. If you come up with stealth 
boosting technologies like quieter machinery or a new 
nuclear reactor for example, new construction might be an 
attractive alternative to upgrades. Propulsion and manoeuvrability is 
also an area of constant evolution. Countries are probably going to want their 
submarines to be capable of high levels of performance, which probably 
means modern power plants. And in the case of conventional 
boats, things like enhanced energy storage and 
Air Independent Propulsion systems. But they also generally don&#39;t 
want that to come at the cost of the factor we just talked 
about, which is detectability. To that end we&#39;ve generally seen submarines 
move from classic propellers towards propulsors. And the specific design of those 
propulsors tends to be so sensitive that when you see photos of submarines in 
dry dock for example with their tails exposed, you&#39;ll often see a covering placed over them 
to conceal the arrangement from prying eyes. The R&amp;D contracts that go into things 
like these propulsors are no joke, and the underlying 
technologies can be pretty cool. Another desirable aspect here is agility. And partly to that end we&#39;ve seen a number 
of new and planned submarine designs move away from that cross-form rudder 
arrangement you can see on the bottom right there, towards the X-form arrangement 
you can see on the top right. That might not seem like that much of a visual 
difference, but it can have performance implications. From a control perspective the 
cross form is probably more intuitive. You have one set of rudders controlling pitch 
and another set of rudders controlling yaw. For a human operator that makes the question 
of up/down, left and right fairly simple. In that X-form arrangement however, all of those 
surfaces are being used for all manoeuvres. That suggests that all else being 
equal, you are either going to get more manoeuvrability out 
of the same surface area, or the same manoeuvrability 
with less surface area. As we will see in a moment, the US and several 
other navies have moved towards this configuration with manoeuvrability front and 
centre of the stated justification. As one US Navy 
official reportedly put it, &quot;The X-shaped stern will restore 
manoeuvrability to submarines. As submarine designs progressed from using 
a propeller to a propulsor to improve quietening, submarines lost some 
surface manoeuvrability.&quot; Going over to the X-form configuration might be 
one method designers used to address that loss. In some respects you could 
describe submarine sensors as the direct counterpart 
to submarine stealth. That&#39;s particularly the case when you are discussing 
potential submarine-on-submarine scenarios, where one of the biggest 
questions is who detects who first. If you look at the US Navy&#39;s Acoustic 
Superiority Program upgrades to late model Virginia-class submarines 
like the USS South Dakota, those include both stealth 
upgrades like a special coating and machine quieting improvements inside 
the boat, but also sensor improvements. Some sensor improvements on modern 
submarines may be visually apparent, but I wouldn&#39;t ignore the impact of 
more invisible improvements as well. Even if you can&#39;t improve the 
physical sensors themselves on a submarine, you might 
be able to improve processing. And in a world where submariners 
are likely to be inundated with more sonar and electronic warfare data 
than they can manually analyse, we&#39;ve seen the US Navy discuss 
for example the potential of AI tools to rapidly toss out meaningless data, 
focusing sailors on the more interesting stuff. If you want to look further into 
the future, it&#39;s also possible that some of those new types of sensors 
that we discussed as potential threats to submarines in our episode 
on the submarine&#39;s future, might also potentially have a role on 
submarines, the torpedoes they fire, or the unmanned systems 
that might be supporting them. Speaking of unmanned underwater systems, 
while they are mostly a topic for another episode, they are absolutely relevant to 
next-generation submarine development. On one hand that might mean equipping 
submarines with small, potentially disposable, underwater drones that can be launched 
from something like a torpedo tube in order to provide it with additional sensor, 
decoy or potentially kinetic options. We&#39;ve seen navies around the world 
experiment with things like teaming concepts for manned and unmanned systems that might be 
familiar from our discussion of 6th generation fighters. Some future Russian submarine concepts 
for example involve the submarine carrying some larger, reusable 
underwater drones into combat. Russian sources claim these Autonomous 
Underwater Vehicles, or AUVs, would be able to support the submarine 
launching them by doing things like mimicking the signature of larger manned 
submarines, as well as carrying sensors of their own. Other even larger unmanned 
systems like the American Orca may instead be able to free up submarine 
assets by taking over some of their mission. For example, taking over the dangerous and time 
consuming task of laying mines in enemy territory. To make the most of that sort 
of teaming potential though, or to turn concepts like Distributed 
Maritime Operations into reality, you probably need submarines 
(like just about all modern platforms) to have really good communications 
technology and networking capability. You want these things to ghost 
the enemy, not to ghost you. Finally, when we are talking about 
new technological developments, especially with attack submarines, it&#39;s important 
not to look past the munitions they carry. After all, unless the engineers start to 
redesign submarines for ramming purposes, in the end submarines don&#39;t sink ships: 
torpedoes and missiles do. And it&#39;s very possible to have 
an excellent submarine hampered or a mediocre submarine boosted 
by the right armament. During the 1982 Falklands War, 
the British Royal Navy had a relatively advanced for the time 
nuclear attack submarine in the area. HMS Conqueror would become the 
first nuclear-powered submarine to sink an enemy surface vessel using torpedoes when 
it sank the Argentinian warship General Belgrano. It would do so using unguided 
Mark VIII torpedoes, the design of which dated 
all the way back to the 1920s. Now we are now at the point 
where there are no major navies cruising nuclear submarines around 
using World War Two torpedoes. But as we&#39;ve seen a number of nations attempt 
to push the boundaries of submarine design, we&#39;ve also in many cases seen accompanying 
programs for torpedo improvements. Plus in the 21st century we also see submarines 
carrying a lot of weapons beyond the basic torpedo. A majority of recent Russian and American designs 
have at least some VLS tubes for a missile armament. And even where you do have designs 
that only have horizontal torpedo tubes, it&#39;s usually a fairly safe bet that they can 
be used to launch a wide array of payloads. An interesting example of evolution 
when it comes to missile armament has been the deployment of the first 
submarine-based hypersonic missiles. Russia is reportedly already 
equipping some of its submarines with a limited number of the 
Zircon hypersonic missiles. While the US reportedly 
eventually intends to deploy the Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic 
weapon on board the Virginia-class submarine. The general observation here 
might be that new developments in longer-ranged more capable missiles 
might enhance both submarine survivability and the range of targets 
they are able to threaten. From an anti-submarine warfare 
perspective, detecting a submarine that has to get within torpedo range 
might be a very different proposition to dealing with one that may not even 
have to be in the same sea as you. Even though there is clearly a lot of demand in this 
bigger, further, faster bucket of weapon systems, there&#39;s also evidence of demand for systems 
that are instead smaller and cheaper. A $5 million 1.5 ton torpedo 
might make perfect sense if you&#39;re trying to engage a high 
performance enemy submarine. But if you assume the ocean of the future, 
like the terrestrial battlefield of the future, may end up saturated with all kinds of 
relatively cheap and affordable drones, then trying to service every target out 
there that might threaten a submarine with the existing armament might run into the 
Tomahawks versus Toyotas problem fairly quickly. Submarines might exhaust their weapon 
stocks fairly quickly if they have to take the Oprah Winfrey approach to handing out 
Mark 48 torpedoes (or the foreign equivalents). And one imagines treasury officials wouldn&#39;t 
exactly be thrilled about the whole thing either. Interest in smaller, lighter and cheaper 
torpedo and torpedo-like payloads extends to both offensive 
and defensive purposes. Smaller systems like the US Navy&#39;s 
proposed Compact Rapid Attack Weapon, intended to be fired from a submarine&#39;s decoy 
launchers rather than its full-size torpedo tubes, may be suitable for use 
not just in attacking targets but also defending the launching submarine 
against things like incoming torpedoes. The closing point here, which is 
probably relevant to the discussion of a whole range of next generation 
platforms, is that when you talk about technologies emerging that might 
threaten an established system, it&#39;s important to think what 
the potential impacts might be if anyone plays the Uno reverse 
card on that technology. If you say drones are going to make 
hunting submarines easier for example, you need to ask whether or 
not the submarines themselves will have accompanying drones and 
what that might mean for the hunt. If the hunters get longer-ranged sensors and more 
capable weapons, what might the submarines get? And how might that affect the dynamic of 
going from the stage where you roughly know where a submarine is, to successfully 
hitting and killing it without it killing you first? As with many platform types, the move 
towards next-generation submarines isn&#39;t just about developing new technology. 
It&#39;s about finding different ways to effectively implement and leverage those 
technologies on your platform of choice. And speaking of leveraging and implementing 
technologies, let&#39;s start to look at some actual fleets. What you can see on screen there 
are submarine inventory figures for the three forces we are going to be 
looking at today, the United States Navy, the Russian Navy, and the Japanese 
Maritime Self-Defence Forces. Those figures have been broken 
up into the four primary types that we&#39;re going to be looking at today: 
nuclear-powered attack submarines (or SSNs), nuclear-powered cruise 
missile submarines (or SSGNs), the nuclear-powered ballistic 
missile submarines (or SSBNs) that carry a significant part of the 
Russian and American nuclear arsenals. And then finally conventional diesel-electric 
powered attack submarines, designated here as SSK. The figures you can see on screen here are taken 
from Military Balance 2024 with two adjustments. Firstly, while Military Balance regards 
the majority of US attack submarines (so the Los Angeles and Virginia-class boats) 
as being SSGNs because they have VLS tubes, the US Navy itself considers them SSNs, 
so I have redesignated them here. For consistency with other episodes I&#39;ve also 
included all 3 US Seawolf-class submarines in the count here, despite the 
USS Connecticut currently being damaged after engaging in a spot of 
lithobraking back in 2021. Straight away you&#39;ll see the difference 
in hull count and composition. Both Russia and the United States 
have similarly sized SSBN forces for their nuclear deterrents, but the 
similarities more or less stop there. And as we start to dig into each of 
these submarine fleets individually, we&#39;ll arguably see the differences run far 
deeper than just the difference in composition. So working our way from 
left to right, let&#39;s start with the very large, very expensive elephant 
in the room: the United States Navy. Barring any sudden, dramatic and overly 
vengeful change in Canadian foreign policy, the continental United States has the advantage 
of being a long way from potential threats. But on the flip side, that can 
also mean it&#39;s a long way away from areas of American strategic interest. That means the US Navy is often going to 
have to project power over long distances, and the structure of the US 
submarine fleet certainly reflects that. With the US Navy currently operating 
14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, 4 Ohio-class guided missile submarines, and around 50 nuclear attack submarines 
of varying types at any given time. And before we start to talk about 
what the US might be trying to field as the next submarine generation, 
I think it&#39;s worth quickly looking at some of those current generation vessels 
and the development trends they represent. The attack submarines of the 
Seawolf class arguably represented the absolute apex of US 
Cold War submarine design. And that arguably would also end up 
being a defining factor in their downfall. Design work on the Seawolf class 
would commence in the 1980s when the Soviet Union was 
very much a going concern. But by the time Seawolf was 
commissioned in 1997, it very much wasn&#39;t. At an estimated displacement of 
more than 9,000 tons submerged, the first 2 vessels of the Seawolf class 
were the largest US attack submarines to date. They could dive deep, move quickly and quietly, 
and carried a massive complement of torpedoes. All of which probably seemed like massive 
overkill to Congress in an era where rust was making up a greater and greater proportion of 
Russian naval tonnage with every year that passed. In the end the US would only commission 
three Seawolf-class submarines, with the last one, the USS Jimmy Carter, 
being a bit of an interesting case. Compared to the other two boats, the Carter was 
significantly modified during the construction phase. The midsection was extended 
by about 30 metres, or 100 feet, to accommodate a so-called 
&quot;Multi-Mission Platform&quot;. That modification, in the words of US 
Rear Admiral John Davis, was intended to allow the Carter to, &quot;Support classified research, 
development, test and evaluation efforts for notional naval special warfare missions, tactical 
undersea surveillance, and undersea warfare concepts.&quot; Aka, the Carter probably gets to hang around the 
ocean floor a lot doing some very interesting things. In 2012 for example, the submarine 
received a Presidential Unit Citation for what was merely 
described as &quot;Mission 7&quot;. All the Navy said on the 
matter was that the Carter had, &quot;Successfully completed extremely demanding 
and arduous independent submarine operations of vital importance to the 
national security of the United States.&quot; The Carter then, arguably something like Russia&#39;s 
Belgorod, represents something of a unique asset. It can still nominally do the missions that would 
ordinarily be assigned to other ships of its class, but it&#39;s also there to deal 
with the occasional mission itch that no other submarine in the 
force may be able to scratch. The subsequent Virginia class 
then was intended to be just a bit more chill and more 
suitable for the post-Cold War world. Compared to the Seawolves, 
the first Virginias were smaller, cheaper, and couldn&#39;t dive 
to quite the same depth. The amount of torpedoes and missiles 
that could be kept in the torpedo room was slashed roughly in half, but 
that reduction was partially offset by the fact that the Virginias did gain 
12 VLS tubes for cruise missiles. The first Virginia would 
be commissioned in 2004 and the class would be 
turned out in blocks from there on. Interestingly though, some 
later versions of the Virginia class seem to be going in something of 
a different developmental direction. Starting with the USS Arizona 
that was laid down in 2022, a number of future Virginia-class 
submarines are expected to incorporate what&#39;s called 
the Virginia Payload Module. This is an additional module 
which lengthens the submarine and adds the capacity for 28 addition 
cruise missiles in a Vertical Launch System. With the addition of that module and 
the extra weapon capacity it brings, some future Virginia-class submarines, 
which remember were designed partly to be smaller, cheaper and less 
heavily armed than the old Seawolves, will instead end up heavier, more 
expensive, and more heavily armed. With the planned eventual retirement of the 
Ohio-class guided missile submarines though, the US Navy regards this 
addition as a critical way to maintain the number of 
cruise missile tubes in the fleet. And also to provide a launch platform 
for certain next generation weapons, including the Conventional Prompt Strike 
hypersonic weapon we mentioned earlier. Moving on from the attack submarines then, 
the other major component for the US is obviously the missile 
submarines, ballistic and guided. There are 18 Ohio 
submarines currently in service, each either capable of carrying 20 Trident 
nuclear missiles or 154 Tomahawks. Giving the US Navy the ability to launch 
a small fleet&#39;s worth of missile strikes with basically zero warning 
from almost anywhere. Compared to the attack boats these 
are unsurprisingly much bigger boys, getting close to 
19,000 tons submerged. But they&#39;ve generally provided 
good service to the US Navy since the first boat was 
commissioned in November 1981. But as you might guess from that commissioning 
date, they are starting to run into serious age trouble. The four guided missile boats, Ohio, Michigan, 
Florida and Georgia, are all more than 40 years old. And while the ballistic missile 
versions are on average newer, the youngest version of the class, 
USS Louisiana, is still pushing on 27. Certainly young for a human, but 
pushing it a bit for a nuclear submarine. With the class beginning to age out, 
the US basically had three choices. Give up on its submarine-based 
nuclear weapons entirely, obviously unacceptable not just for 
strategic reasons, but because it would mean that the British and French militaries 
had a capability that the US didn&#39;t. Try and put a 40+ year old 
design back into production. Or come up with something shiny, 
new and very, very expensive. Given that nuclear deterrence isn&#39;t 
really considered an optional extra by US military planners, 
we got the Colombia class. While a bunch of details about the 
Columbia class are obviously classified, there are a couple of elements 
that have been publicly disclosed. We know it&#39;s going to have an X-form rudder, 
improvements in quieting, lethality and sensors, a common missile compartment for its SLBMs 
jointly developed with the United Kingdom. A variety of smaller improvements, 
some of which have been taken directly from later blocks of the Virginia class, and 
reportedly an electric-drive propulsion system. Historically, most submarine nuclear reactors 
have provided a majority of their energy output in the form of steam which could be 
used to drive the propulsion system. That works fine if you&#39;re trying 
to turn a propeller for example, but good luck running a sonar or a 
computer system using superheated steam. On the Columbia class we believe the 
power output is mostly going to be electrical. With that electrical energy then being 
available to either drive the propulsion system, or a variety of onboard 
electronics and systems. In a way this mirrors the development 
trajectory we&#39;ve seen on surface warships and next generation aircraft, where 
there is greater and greater demand for more electrical power on board 
to support next generation technology. Interestingly, a lot of materials 
on the Columbia class also try and describe it as 
an efficient, cost-effective design. The Submarine Industrial Base 
Council for example has said, &quot;The Columbia-class SSBN program will provide 
a credible deterrent at the lowest possible cost.&quot; And while there are probably some arguments 
you could make in favour of that statement, that doesn&#39;t mean these 
things will be cheap. And by not cheap, I mean 
the first submarine in the class, the perhaps aptly named District of Columbia, which notably gets the honour of swallowing 
the development cost for the class, is expected to cost US taxpayers 
between 15.8 and 17.5 billion dollars, depending on whether you go with the US Navy 
or Congressional Budget Office estimate. The subsequent submarines in the 
class, by contrast, are expected to cost a mere 8.4 to 9.2 billion 
US dollars per unit. Bringing the total CBO estimate 
for a class of 12 boats to 119 billion. While all my US viewers are recovering, I&#39;ll add there 
are a couple of silver linings to those estimates. For example, the US Navy 
believes it will only need 12 Columbia-class boats to 
replace the existing 14 Ohios. The primary driver of that is the fact 
that Columbia class is being designed to eliminate the expensive and 
complicated process of mid-life refuelling. The reactors on these things are being designed 
with an intended unrefuelled life of 42 years. Meaning each submarine is expected 
to spend more time out on patrol and less time in dry dock 
vacuuming up maintenance dollars. The first vessel of the class, the 
aforementioned District of Columbia, the stern section of which you can see on 
the right there, is already in construction. And the target date for her 
commissioning is reportedly in 2028. The current US long-term 
shipbuilding plan calls for a steady buy of one Columbia class 
per year out into the mid-2030s. At which point the Navy has indicated it wants 
to start switching the productive capacity that was building Colombias over to producing some 
other (as yet indeterminate) large-payload submarine. Essentially the US Navy has basically 
declared that it likes big boats and it cannot lie, and has decided to include some large 
submarines in its future budget planning, even if it isn&#39;t sure exactly 
what they are going to do yet. To quote from a 
Congressional Budget Office report, &quot;The Navy would also build a new 
large-payload submarine starting in the 2030s or 2040s depending on which 
alternative was implemented. That new ship would be a large capacity submarine, 
perhaps built on the Columbia-class hull in much the same way that the Navy&#39;s existing 
SSGNs are converted from a higher class SSBN.&quot; It goes on to note that depending on 
what ship building plan was implemented, the Navy would seek to acquire 
between 4 and 6 of these things. There&#39;s plenty of things these 
submarines could end up being, from Special Operations platforms 
to drone or missile carriers. But given how far off any definitive 
decision around them is likely to be, I&#39;m not sure it&#39;s worth speculating yet. Instead I&#39;d suggest their inclusion 
in that long-term ship building plan probably reflects in part a painful 
lesson the US Navy has had to learn. It takes many, many years and extensive 
investment to build up the shipyards and workforce you need to effectively 
build large nuclear submarines. But it doesn&#39;t take very long at all to lose those 
shipyards and that workforce if you ever stop building. Both Russian and US industry has had 
to deal with that particular challenge. And with the end of the Cold War, many, many 
years separated the last Ohio-class submarine being commissioned and construction 
kicking off on the first Columbia. Committing to continue building large-payload 
submarines even after the Colombias are complete might represent a statement 
of intent by the US Navy not to allow that part of its industrial 
capacity to atrophy again. Moving on though, while the Columbia 
might be a more immediate priority given just how old most of 
the Ohio subs are at this point, the US Navy is also looking forward 
to a potential next generation replacement for its 
attack submarines as well. Yes, the latest model Virginias 
are probably some of the best, if not the best, attack submarines 
in the world at this point. But the US Navy, like the US Air Force, apparently 
has no desire to ever find itself in a fair fight. That means eventually moving 
past the Virginias to a new design that at this point only carries 
the designation SSN(X). Budget appropriations for research 
and design activities related to the SSN(X) have really only started to 
ramp up relatively recently. Reportedly aided by the fact that you 
are going to have some very experienced design teams rolling off the Columbia projects 
who are now free to work on an attack boat instead. While we might know comparatively 
little about the Columbia-class boats, we know even less about the 
next-generation attack submarine. But one thing we can try to determine 
using various public statements by senior US figures is what 
the main design priorities are. And where, if anywhere, the service 
is considering making trade-offs. Remember, with the move from Seawolf 
over to Virginia the Navy originally decided to sacrifice some features like dive 
performance or torpedo storage in order to embrace some slightly more humble design goals 
that enabled a more affordable submarine. So you might be asking what sort of 
humble, restrained and economical goals might the US be embracing 
for its next generation attack sub? Well, according to the Executive Director 
of the Navy&#39;s Program Executive Office for Attack Submarines, the SSN(X) 
design will reportedly feature, &quot;Increased speed, an 
increased horizontal payload, improved acoustic superiority 
and higher operational availability.&quot; Admiral Bill Houston, speaking back 
when he was Rear-Admiral Bill Houston, Director of the Undersea Warfare Division 
at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, reportedly said that the SSN(X) has 
&quot;Got to be faster, carry a significant punch, a bigger payload, a larger salvo rate. 
It&#39;s got to have acoustic superiority. And simultaneously we are going 
to work on operational availability with respect to maintenance 
and life of the ship.&quot; If you stitch together some of the 
various statements that have been made by US Navy and other 
senior US leaders about this thing, you may come to the conclusion that what 
the US Navy has basically said it wants is something with more speed and 
torpedo capacity than the Seawolf, VLS and missile capacity 
more akin to an upgraded Virginia, the operational availability 
of the Columbia class, and stealth and sensors beyond 
anything that&#39;s come before. As Admiral Houston reportedly put it, the 
US Navy is pursuing the humble goal of fielding &quot;The ultimate apex predator 
for the maritime domain.&quot; Thus, while there&#39;s very little 
certain about the final design, it seems probable that it will be both 
very expensive and also potentially very large. To quote from a CRS 
report on the program, &quot;These requirements will likely 
result in an SSN(X) design that is larger than the original Virginia class 
and possibly larger than the original Seawolf.&quot; The US Navy requested about 587 million for design and development work 
on the SSN(X) in fiscal year 2025, up slightly from 545 million 
it requested in fiscal year 2024. But compared to the Columbia class, 
construction work is still much, much further off. Originally the Navy was targeting 
2031 for construction start, that date then got pushed out to 2035, and it&#39;s now looking like 
it might be closer to 2040. With the primary driver of that delay being the 
availability of funding to get the program moving. The question of how many 
of these things will be built in the coming decades is also 
still very much up in the air. The Navy&#39;s 30-year ship building 
plan includes multiple options, and they can vary significantly in how many 
of these next generation subs are called for. Option 1) for example calls for 11 more Virginia-class 
submarines with the Virginia Payload Module, 10 more without the payload module, 
and 33 SSN(X) class submarines. Option 2) by contrast, which prioritises 
quantity over the generational changeover, calls for an additional 
48 Virginia-class submarines, 11 with the payload module and 37 without, 
but cuts the planned SSN(X) buy from 33 to 18. It perhaps says a lot about the US Navy that 
the &quot;spam&quot; option (for lack of a better term) involves mass producing one of the most 
advanced attack submarines ever designed. But this is the US military, 
where the cheap option often isn&#39;t. But regardless of what the composition of 
America&#39;s future attack submarine force looks like, there&#39;s still the question of what 
they are going to be armed with. And in the interest of time here, I want 
to focus specifically on the torpedoes. Here I think you could break some of the US programs 
out into at least three different lines of effort. Namely building better torpedoes, 
cheaper torpedoes, and smaller torpedoes. At the higher end, at least in 
the near term, it looks like the new US answer is going to look 
a lot like the old answer. The US has repeatedly upgraded 
its Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo, including with the Mod 7 version which was 
jointly developed with the Royal Australian Navy. The US actually stopped production of these 
heavyweight torpedoes for a number of years when it looked like high-end naval threats weren&#39;t 
going to be as much of a problem any more. In the 2010s it was decided that maybe 
that wasn&#39;t the safest assumption to make, and production was slowly restarted. Despite the original ADCAP versions of 
the Mark 48 dating back to the late 1980s, this is still a very dangerous 
torpedo by global standards. But it&#39;s limited by the fact that against a wide 
array of targets it&#39;s likely to be horrendous overkill. At more than 5 million US dollars per shot, 
there are main battle tanks out there that are cheaper than the most 
advanced versions of the Mark 48. And in a world where not 
every target is going to be a fast-moving deep-diving 
decoy-equipped Russian submarine, the US Navy looks to be 
trying to develop something a little more affordable to 
complement the Mark 48. While we don&#39;t have many details yet, 
that&#39;s likely to be where the Rapid Acquisition Procurable Torpedo, 
or RAPTOR, is likely to come in. We should probably expect that 
program to use a lot more commercial off-the-shelf technology that can 
be obtained and stockpiled quickly. As well as performance characteristics 
that are at least a little bit more humble. As well as cheaper, there&#39;s also a question of 
whether or not torpedoes should be made smaller. While the nearly 300 kilogram 
warhead on the Mark 48 is no doubt likely to provide a very 
satisfying bang every time one is fired, against a lot of likely future threats like incoming 
torpedoes or small surface and underwater drones, it&#39;s kind of like taking 
a shotgun to a sand-fly. There have also been questions asked 
around how economically US submarines could potentially engage masses of surface contacts, 
like commandeered civilian ferries and transports, in any hypothetical 
future escalation scenario where those sort of vessels might 
make a significant appearance. One potential answer here might be 
so-called &quot;very lightweight torpedoes&quot;. This is the potential domain of systems 
like the US Compact Rapid Attack Weapon. The piece you see on the right there by Lieutenant 
Commander Patrick Rawlinson of the US Navy hypothesises that with a weapon like that you might 
be able to pack as many as 10 per torpedo tube. He notes that the use of these 
sort of very lightweight torpedoes as defensive weapons might be 
critical for submarines in the future. But they might also provide a 
mechanism to give attack submarines much greater magazine depth when 
engaging lighter or less demanding targets. Suggesting as an illustration, that 
instead of carrying 26 heavyweight and 14 defensive lightweight torpedoes, 
a Virginia-class submarine in the future could carry 10 heavyweights 
and 160 lightweights. With all the potential implications 
that might have for how many targets a submarine could potentially engage 
before having to go back to reload. But while the US is undoubtedly pushing 
forward with these next generation designs and potential weapon upgrades, 
other powers aren&#39;t exactly sitting still. And so to illustrate the direction that another 
major player might be taking, let&#39;s talk about Russia. For the Cold-War Soviet Union, submarines 
were one of the cornerstones of its naval power. They were both a vital part of 
the country&#39;s nuclear deterrent and also an asymmetric counter to 
NATO&#39;s much greater naval power. The successor Russian submarine force of 
the 1990s would face a number of tough battles against foes that have felled many a navy: 
namely serious underfunding, rust, and occasionally catastrophic 
maintenance standards. With the help of new funding though, the 
Russian Navy would start to regenerate in the 2000s. And while there are several fields 
of military technical development where Russia has arguably fallen 
behind the international curve, its submarine force arguably remains 
the cornerstone of its naval power. And its latest submarine models 
tend to be described by NATO and other foreign commentators 
in very respectful terms. It&#39;s also worth noting 
that over the last 2.5 years, some of Russia submarines have been 
engaged in an active shooting war. With the success of Ukrainian anti-ship missiles, 
drones, and in particular naval drones, Russian surface warships in the 
Black Sea are having a pretty hard time. At this point Crimea, which has 
been hit on a number of occasions by things like air-launched cruise missiles, has 
basically been emptied of major naval warships. And Ukraine&#39;s grain exports on the Black Sea are now 
above what they were during the Black Sea grain deal. But despite all of those changes, 
Russia&#39;s submarine force is still largely immune to 
Ukrainian area denial efforts. Yes, one Russian submarine, the Rostov-on-Don, 
was previously hit by Storm Shadow missiles, and just in the last day at time of recording, 
Ukraine now claims to have hit the submarine again. The submarine was actually in dry dock 
when it was hit by that first missile strike. And most submarines do tend to fail their 
stealth checks when there&#39;s no water around. Russian submarines in the 
water part of the Black Sea have so far proven to 
be much harder targets. And they continue to make an 
active, if not particularly decisive, contribution to the war effort by flinging 
cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets. In terms of force composition, 
the Russian force is arguably the most diverse of the 
three we are going to look at. They have both the nuclear-powered component 
of the fleet, as with the United States Navy, while also maintaining a 
conventional submarine force as well. I&#39;ll note up front that when we are talking 
about Russian submarine evolution as well as their recent and next generation 
designs, most observers seem to agree that they are very roughly one 
generation behind the Americans. When the US Office of Naval Intelligence 
released estimates for how quiet various classes of submarines were 
more than a decade ago at this point, they estimated that Russia&#39;s latest 
and greatest attack submarine was going to be quieter than the 
improved Los Angeles-class boats, but still short of the stealth levels achieved by 
the USS Seawolf, first commissioned in 1997. That perhaps 10 to 20 year performance gap 
obviously favours the American designs, but it&#39;s perhaps a tad understandable 
when you think about the state of the Russian submarine industrial base 
from the 1990s through to the early 2000s. With that context in place, 
let&#39;s look at some programs. The current fleet of Russian 
ballistic missile submarines is divided between older Delta IVs from the 
Cold War and the new Project 955 boats. Design work reportedly began in the 1980s 
but construction work stretched a bit. Having started construction in 1996, 
the lead ship of the class would be commissioned in December 2012. It&#39;s worth noting that while the 955s are 
much smaller than the old Soviet Typhoons, at approximately 24,000 tons 
displacement whilst submerged, they do displace nearly 30% more than 
their American equivalents in the Ohio class, despite carrying 20% fewer SLBMs. Russia currently has 7 active boats 
of the type divided into two flights, 3 of the base 955 design 
and 4 of the improved 955As. Ever since the first the 955A boats, the 
Prince Vladimir, was commissioned in 2020 the rate of commissioning has been relatively 
impressive by international standards. One submarine was commissioned 
every year between 2020 and 2023, another one is expected this year in 2024, with further commissionings 
expected in 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2031. Overall, if nothing changes 
(noting that isn&#39;t a particularly safe assumption to make when 
it comes to Russia these days) the construction plan for the class 
will probably extend out into the 2030s. Because the current generation Russian SSBN 
is in active production, unlike the American one, and doesn&#39;t have a level of acoustic 
subtlety only a couple of steps removed from a heavy metal band, unlike those 
belonging to a certain other naval power, Russia arguably doesn&#39;t have 
as much immediate imperative, nor as much immediate funding, 
to roll out a next-generation design. As a result, what we&#39;ve seen from 
the relevant design bureau so far isn&#39;t so much an official 
project as a design concept. In 2022 the Rubin Design Bureau showed off their 
concept for the so-called &quot;Arctic-class&quot; submarine. This appeared to include a 
couple of interesting features including some very large conformal sonar 
arrays, including one in the chin position. A pair of flooded hangers to accommodate 
two large autonomous underwater vehicles. As well as a fairly unique rudder shape. Interestingly, the concept shown also 
seemed to lean into the apparent trend of Russian submarines designed 
to carry nuclear missiles carrying fewer missiles than 
their American counterparts. The USS Ohio carried 20 tubes 
to the Project 955&#39;s 16. With the follow on 
Colombia class that we&#39;ll look at, America appears to be dropping 
down to 16 tubes themselves. But if it was built as presented, the Arctic class would 
preserve the margin by going down to 12 tubes. All in all, it looks like an 
interesting design that has a lot of the hallmarks we associate 
with the next generation. But at this stage it remains 
very much a concept, and I&#39;m not sure I&#39;d be willing 
to put significant chips down on Russia&#39;s eventual SSBN successor class 
looking anything like the concepts we see today. Moving on from the nuclear missile carriers 
to the conventional missile carriers then, Russia started commissioning a 
new class of SSGNs from 2013 onwards. You&#39;ll often see the Yasen-class boats referred 
to as SSGNs, guided missile submarines. But it&#39;s important to note there are 
some very significant differences in capability and mission between 
this family of Russian boats and what America often calls an SSGN, 
which is the converted Ohio boats. This class of Russian submarines 
is arguably much more analogous to something like the Virginia class 
equipped with a Virginia Payload Module. It&#39;s a capable attack boat with 
a significant missile armament. And like many Soviet and Russian designs 
before it, those missile tubes can accommodate not just land-attack missiles, 
but anti-ship options as well. Think things like the supersonic 
Onyx or the hypersonic Zircon. The submarines likely combine high performance 
with an ability to skip mid-lifetime refuelling, as long as you limit the lifetime 
of the boat to 25 to 30 years. Based on what&#39;s available in open 
source, you could probably argue that even though the 885s may not 
represent a next-generation submarine, they do probably represent Russia coming out 
with a very capable current-generation submarine. The commander of US naval forces 
in Europe reportedly described the class as, &quot;Very quiet, which is the most 
important thing in submarine warfare.&quot; And various sources credit the 
submarine with a silent running speed of between 20 and 28 knots, 
something which would put it squarely in the domain of the public figures available 
for the American Seawolf and Virginia classes. A RUSI report arguably states the 
submarine&#39;s capabilities in even clearer terms, &quot;In principle, the Yasen and Yasen-M class 
pose a substantial risk to Western forces. The combination of quietness 
and long-range strike capabilities poses a novel challenge to Western 
defenders, both at sea and on land. The range at which the two 
submarines can strike targets on land means they would not need to run the 
gauntlet of the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap in order to disrupt the effective 
mobilisation of Western forces in wartime.&quot; The report also notes that the submarines 
could potentially open the way for other older Russian designs 
to break into the Atlantic by threatening NATO surface 
vessels patrolling the gap. That sort of evaluation highlights the 
heavy armament of the Russian design. Yes, it looks short on missile count if you 
compare it to something like an Ohio SSGN. But if you compare it to 
something more like a Virginia, then suddenly the Russian design, 
which has the benefit of a wider beam (meaning it&#39;s girthier for those of 
you who are not navally minded) starts to look pretty good 
from an armament perspective. So all in all on paper, the Yasen-class boats 
look relatively fast, heavily armed, stealthy, and they even get a couple of respectful 
nods of approval from NATO sources. Now, yes, there are always going to 
be questions about a range of things, from construction techniques to 
whether the submarines will remain as quiet after several years in service. 
Noting that one of the great potential threats to the stealth of a submarine 
is poor maintenance. Leading to things like worn out 
components and the associated acoustic indiscretions they can cause. If you have things like dodgy valves, 
pumps or rusted control surfaces, you might see a difference between the on-paper 
performance of a sub and its actual performance. Fortunately, we all know the Russian military has 
never, ever, had systemic problems with maintenance. But whatever the case may be, and whether 
or not you think the glowing evaluation of some Russian submarine 
designs by Western naval officials represents a straight 
evaluation of their capabilities. Or are potentially tilted a little bit 
towards the more optimistic side for reasons that I&#39;m sure have 
everything to do with risk mitigation and absolutely nothing 
to do with budget requests. Most sources seem to agree 
that as far as submarines go, the Yasen-class boats 
mean serious business. They do however have at least one clear 
weakness that the Russians may try to offset by introducing yet another 
new class, they are very expensive. And with that elevated cost, 
combined with their recent development has come relatively limited 
inventories, at least so far. As good as the Yasen-class boats 
are believed to be, they represent at least for the moment, a minority of 
Russian nuclear submarine strength. What you can see on screen there 
are Military Balance 2024 figures for a range of Russian 
SSN and SSGN types. As you can see, the most common 
type isn&#39;t the Yasen or Yasen-M, although I&#39;ll note a third Yasen-M 
has now entered service, instead it is the much older Oscar II, a type 
that was first commissioned in the 1980s. While the US submarine force also has its own 
division between legacy and more recent designs, with a lot of improved Los Angeles-class 
boats still remaining in service. When it comes to Russian 
nuclear-powered attack and missile boats, the balance is even more heavily 
weighted towards the older materiel. Over time that&#39;s expected to change, partly because 
more Yasen-M boats will continue to enter service. But the sheer scale of the problem, coupled 
with the diversity of types currently in service, might explain why the Russian Navy 
might be somewhat interested in combining the Yasen-M 
with another modern design. In 2018, Russian state media 
reported that a new 5th generation nuclear attack submarine 
would be completed by 2027. At the time it was referred to 
as the Project 545 Husky. From what little we&#39;ve been shown, including the 
model you can see on screen there from a 2020 demo, the 545 seems less like a direct successor 
and more like a cheaper alternative. Compared to the older sub, the Husky 
is expected to displace more than 2,000 tons less when submerged, have a 
lighter armament, and a lighter sticker price. In a sense there might be a little bit of a 
Seawolf/Virginia dynamic going on here. Although the two submarines are also potentially 
going to replace different older platforms. It&#39;s also worth noting that 
Russian sources claim to be leaning into modularity a bit 
more with the Husky. I&#39;m not sure if taking notes 
from the LCS is the best approach for any naval program, 
but we&#39;ll see how that goes. A final interesting observation 
related to the design is that in a lot of the concept art released by the design 
bureau, and the model you can see on screen there, the submarine appears to use an old school 
propeller, not a pump jet propulsor. That&#39;s interesting because Russia 
clearly does have that sort of technology and some of their existing 
submarine designs use them. One potential explanation may 
come down to good old-fashioned design bureau competition, even if both 
are ultimately owned by the Russian state. Russia currently has two 
submarine design bureaus, one of which seems 
comfortable designing vessels with pump jet propulsors, 
and the other designed the Husky. What impact, if any, that ultimately has on 
the stealth of the final design only time will tell. Alongside its core force of large nuclear 
powered missile and attack submarines, Russia also still has 
a number of diesel-electrics. This force is still overwhelmingly 
made up of various versions of the old Soviet Kilo class, although 
there have been attempts to modernise. There was an attempt at what the 
Russians called a 4th generation design with the roughly 2,700 ton 
displacement Project 677. The program was first jinxed when someone 
decided to call the thing the Lada class, and then distressed when the first 
version didn&#39;t exactly work as hoped. The lead ship of the class, the St Petersburg, 
was commissioned into the Russian Navy in 2010, found to be a little disappointing, 
and decommissioned in 2024. And while significant redesign and 
construction work on the class did continue, it&#39;s fairly telling that even in 
November 2023 a report came out that the Russian Navy had 
commissioned yet another 3rd generation Kilo-class diesel-electric 
submarine into the Pacific Fleet. I&#39;ll also note that the Russian 
state media article on the right there describes the improved Kilo-class submarines 
as the &quot;most noiseless in the world&quot;. Which on one hand is definitely attempting 
to throw some pretty serious shade on various Western submarine designs, 
but on the other hand sort of undercuts the Russian design that is supposed 
to be a generation ahead of this thing. Despite the partial false start 
with the 4th generation Lada, for a number of years now we&#39;ve 
been hearing about Russian proposals to push ahead with a 
5th generation non-nuclear design. That said, like many Russian development 
programs, determining its exact status isn&#39;t simple. In 2016 for example there was reporting 
that the first experimental work on the new class could 
commence as early as 2017. But in September 2021 Russian state media 
reported only that the relevant design bureau had presented several options 
to the Navy, and indicated that, &quot;The projects of the latest 5th generation 
submarines, the Husky nuclear project and the Kalina diesel-electric project, are 
no longer funded by the Ministry of Defence. And United Shipbuilding Corporation 
is developing them at its own expense.&quot; And, yes, the nuclear-powered 
Husky design just mentioned as not being funded by the Russian 
Ministry of Defence anymore, is the Project 545 boat that 
we discussed just a little earlier. The one you remember that was 
totally going to be delivered by 2027. What that article seemed 
to suggest is that as of 2021 the status of both future submarine 
programs was highly uncertain. It&#39;s still obviously possible that 
eventually one or both of these designs ends up being built, 
at least in some numbers. Although one imagines there are a couple of 
facets of the current international situation that might make getting 
new development funding a little more difficult than normal 
within the Russian military at the moment. In terms of weapons to pair with its 
current and future generation submarines, the Russian Navy is arguably a 
bit more diverse than the US one. There are systems that are broadly 
comparable and fill similar roles, the Kalibr cruise missile for example is broadly 
analogous to the American Tomahawk. But the Soviet and later Russian 
navies have also maintained some weird and wonderful systems that 
don&#39;t have direct American analogs. The VA-111 for example is one of very few 
super-cavitating torpedoes ever developed. In very crude terms, this is 
essentially a rocket-powered torpedo that forms an air bubble 
around it as it travels in order to enable underwater 
speeds of more than 200 mph. That obviously gives it a much 
shorter potential time to target compared to conventional torpedoes 
in exchange for a range of drawbacks, including most notably, 
significantly reduced range. Russia has however developed and fielded 
new conventional heavyweight torpedoes, as well as a range of new missile systems, 
many of which are intended for submarine use. The Soviet Navy placed 
significant emphasis on the value of long-range submarine-launched 
anti-ship missiles to attack NATO targets. The Russian Navy has arguably 
continued that trend and built on it by fielding systems like the 
Zircon hypersonic anti-ship missile. I&#39;ve talked about hypersonic missiles 
and Zircon specifically before. But I bring them up again here to demonstrate 
that even if you presume Russian submarines on average aren&#39;t as capable platform-for-platform 
as their American counterparts, if they have a sufficiently dangerous 
armament with sufficient range and missile-defence penetration capabilities, 
they may end up posing more of a threat or having more impact than the performance 
characteristics of the submarine alone suggest. Russia also has a number of underwater drone 
programs that we&#39;ll pick up in future episodes, but you can&#39;t close out a discussion of 
Russian submarine weapons development without talking about 
perhaps the weirdest of the lot. In January 2023 Russian 
state media reported the first nuclear-armed Poseidon 
drones had been manufactured. The Poseidon, NATO reporting 
name Canyon, is believed to be a large nuclear-powered underwater 
drone carrying a nuclear warhead. Given its nuclear power plant, this 
thing could hypothetically be launched thousands of kilometres from a target, 
travel fast and deep towards it, and then sail for example into an enemy port 
and detonate the onboard nuclear warhead. Given that most existing missile defence systems 
are not exactly optimised for underwater operation, Poseidon would presumably 
be able to bypass them in order to reach its 
presumably coastal target. There are a lot of questions around 
Poseidon and its development. How many are likely to be built, how reliable is the 
navigation system, how large is the onboard warhead? But the biggest question 
that occurs to me is just: why? As far as we can tell from open source 
there is no other power on planet Earth that has built an equivalent to this 
thing, and no one seems to plan to. The reason for that perhaps 
is that in trade-off terms it just doesn&#39;t seem to make much 
sense compared to existing systems. Yes, a Poseidon nuclear torpedo could presumably 
bypass existing missile defence systems. But it&#39;s generally understood that 
Russia&#39;s existing missile arsenal could already penetrate the missile defence 
systems of the United States and its allies, and any future missile defence system that they&#39;re 
likely to develop and field in the near to medium term. Compared to an SLBM, a 
giant nuclear-powered torpedo would presumably take much longer to 
reach its target, not be able to carry MIRVs, and also come with the minor 
drawback of not being able to hit any target that wasn&#39;t on 
or near the bloody water. They also appear to be large, 
bulky, and intended for carriage in relatively small numbers 
by a specialist platform. To date, Russian sources 
have generally indicated that Poseidon is intended to 
equip the submarine Belgorod. A derivative of the old 
Soviet Oscar II class, Belgorod represents a massive 
investment of Russian resources. And for all that, it might 
be able to carry 6 Poseidons. Something which also presumably comes 
with significant opportunity cost attached. If you are out there using the Belgorod 
to carry out nuclear deterrence patrols using your second-strike doomsday weapon, one imagines the Russians are 
comparatively less likely to have it available for other potentially 
more useful tasks. Like for example supporting maritime 
special and seabed operations. For me from an investment perspective, 
the existence of Poseidon suggests the Russian military may have asked 
whether it could, instead of whether it should. For me the biggest 
question mark over all of this, which I started to hint at earlier, 
is simply resource constraints. Despite the immense demands 
of the war in Ukraine, so far Russia has largely succeeded in 
ring-fencing its submarine force. Construction activity has continued, 
boats have continued to be commissioned, and Vladimir Putin has suggested that 
that construction effort will continue. But that doesn&#39;t mean that the question 
is permanently settled going forward. There&#39;s going to be stiff competition for 
budget resources, a very tight labour market, and partly related to the above, 
significant inflationary pressure. With things like labour costs in Russia spiking 
as significantly as they have, it&#39;s entirely possible the submarine builders will need contract 
revisions if they are going to continue work. And that may put them in direct or 
indirect competition not just with other parts of the Russian government, but also 
just other parts of the Russian military that, perhaps understandably, might claim 
to have their own more imminent concerns. One imagines it might become 
harder and harder to justify continued investment in 
things like doomsday drones when Private Conscriptovic is over in 
Ukraine without any optics on his rifle, a Chinese golf cart for transportation, 
and fire support provided by only the finest 
artillery pieces of the 1950s. So far the budgetary walls appear to have been 
holding, but it&#39;s not certain they&#39;ll hold forever. Despite the lost years of 
the 1990s and early 2000s, Russia still clearly retains the capability to design 
and build nuclear and conventional submarines. Outside the bounds of the US 
and its allies, Russia still probably leads the field in 
several technical areas. And so arguably the greatest challenge 
for its submarine programs going forward is simply going to be the 
demand for everything else. From an investment perspective, 
the big question for me is not so much whether Russia can keep pace 
with the United States going forward, but whether it is in the 
right race to begin with. And speaking of operating within resource 
constraints, there&#39;s one more fleet I want to look at. Let&#39;s talk about Japan and the submarines 
of the Maritime Self-Defence Force. Even by the standards of some of the major 
military powers we&#39;ve looked at this episode, Japan maintains in numerical terms 
a relatively large submarine fleet. It has generally remained 
fairly stable around its targets of 22 submarines in the main fleet, 
plus 2 for training purposes. Noting that for a lot of global fleets, having 
2 entire hulls dedicated to the training role is pretty far along to the luxury side 
of the essential/luxury spectrum. But what really sets the Japanese fleet 
apart from the others we have looked at today is that rather than being a nuclear force 
or a mixed nuclear/conventional force, the Japanese remain squarely focused 
on conventional propulsion designs in the roughly 4,000 tons submerged range. Now those conventional designs did start to 
get modern Air Independent Propulsion systems, starting with the last 
two vessels in the Sōryū class. But in 2022 they commissioned 
the first of a new class of submarines that have been built from the 
ground up with AIP in mind. And which I think illustrates the 
Japanese philosophy so far fairly well. In many ways the new Taigei class feels 
like an evolution on the older Sōryū. It combines advancement in 
sensor technology, silencing, power, propulsion (including the 
addition of AIP as I mentioned), a slightly larger displacement, 
a complement of around 70 crew. And while it might have nowhere near 
some of the performance characteristics that the nuclear-powered 
leviathans we&#39;ve looked at can offer, it&#39;s still likely to be very quiet, 
very dangerous, and very affordable. Despite being the first boat in the class, 
Taigei reportedly cost less than 70 billion yen. Or around 470 million US dollars. Well short of the billions of dollars you&#39;d 
expect to pay for a Russian or American SSN. Being a relatively new design, you can 
already see evidence of some of the features we associated with next 
generation submarines earlier. For example, you can very clearly see that X-shaped 
arrangement for the control surfaces at the rear, coupled with a concealed, but one would 
presume rather advanced, propulsion unit. The Japanese also appear to have already made 
significant movements on the armament front. To date Japanese submarines 
only have torpedo tubes, no VLS, but they can launch some 
missiles, like extended range variants of the Harpoon, 
from those torpedo tubes. And while specifics are hard to lock 
down, they may actually have access to one of the best torpedoes in the world. 
Right at the end of the 1980s the Japanese adopted the Type 89 as 
their heavyweight long-range torpedo. In terms of dimensions and performance, 
you&#39;ll often see the Type 89 compared roughly to the American Mark 48. But reportedly in 2012 development 
started on something better again. The reported requirement included 
a range of features including greater resistance to things like 
decoys and defence measures. As well as improved reliability 
and targeting performance not just in deep waters, but also 
in coastal and very shallow waters. Zones of operation that might 
be very much front of mind for the Japanese for 
hopefully obvious reasons. It&#39;s worth noting that Japanese sources still 
refer to planned armament improvements, including torpedoes that are 
quieter and more difficult to detect. I&#39;m not sure it&#39;s 100% certain 
whether that refers to an upgraded Type 18, 
a new torpedo, or both. But it&#39;s interesting to point out that 
despite the fact that Japan is now arguably ahead of a lot of other powers 
in terms of armament modernisation, it appears to already be making 
plans for that next iteration. But in terms of increasing the 
lethality of Japan&#39;s submarine force, I&#39;d argue there are other future plans that may have 
even more of an impact than the new torpedoes. Because after years of building submarines 
that basically evolved on the same idea, we are now getting indication that Japan&#39;s next 
generation is going to be something different. Japan&#39;s stated intention is to 
build 7 boats of the Taigei class. At one boat built per year with the 
first one commissioned in 2022, that gives a pretty clear indication that a next 
generation submarine might be coming around 2030. And lo and behold, in 2023 
Kawasaki Heavy Industries confirmed that it had received 
a research and development contract from the Japanese Ministry of Defence for 
a new-generation diesel-electric submarine. The details on said submarine 
were relatively vague, one imagines not just because of secrecy, 
but also because it hasn&#39;t been designed yet. But there have been a number of interesting 
statements on the new design from Japanese sources. And there&#39;s probably a few things we 
can derive from the most unimpeachable and reliable of all information sources: 
corporate concept imagery. A few features instantly stand out 
in that image on the right there. You have that X configuration, but 
you also have other structural changes. The sail has been moved to the aft and the 
dive planes been moved from the sail to the bow. But perhaps the most impactful apparent 
change is the introduction of VLS. That suggests both that 
future Japanese submarines might carry considerably more 
bang than previous versions, and that they may provide a much 
greater land-attack capability. I need to stress that by global standards 
this would be a fairly unusual configuration. VLS armaments are normally associated 
with nuclear-powered vessels. And unless you count North Korea&#39;s 
effort to convert a Romeo into a &quot;tactical nuclear 
attack submarine&quot; as they call it, it&#39;s relatively unusual for a power to try and 
up-gun a conventional submarine in this way. But if you look at Japan&#39;s specific strategic position 
and its available industrial and financial resources, you can probably start to see why they 
may have decided to go in this direction. For the most part, unlike US, Russian, French, 
British or to an extent Chinese submarines, The JMSDF probably doesn&#39;t imagine its submarines 
having to project power that far from home. The country&#39;s major stated security concerns 
include North Korea, which is just there, and the People&#39;s Republic of China, 
which is just there. Japanese submarines then arguably 
don&#39;t need the kind of range and endurance of America&#39;s Pacific hunters in order 
to reach their areas of operation. What they do need to be is relatively 
numerous, survivable, and lethal in an environment that is often going to 
be relatively shallow or potentially coastal. The decision to add a long-range missile 
armament is also probably a sign of the times, with Japan becoming more 
focused on long-range systems that enable it to exercise what it 
describes as a &quot;counter-strike capability&quot;. And by extension, what missile-armed 
submarines might be able to contribute to the 
overall firepower of the fleet. And there are other factors, from 
the political and social to the industrial, that may have informed the decision 
to stick with a conventionally-powered fleet. One of the big ones here from 
a defence economics perspective is probably just industrial continuity 
and the flexibility that might come with it. Japan has been building diesel-electric 
submarines for a very long time at a very consistent pace 
and has got very good at doing it. By continuing to turn out one 
submarine per year, year after year, participants in the supply 
chain for Japanese submarines are often going to have a lot more 
certainty than those in other countries. And in fact you could argue that Japan has 
maintained that production rate and that stability even when the fleet numbers 
themselves don&#39;t strictly require it. If you&#39;re building one submarine per year 
and maintaining a force of 22+2, that means you are throwing out your 
submarines on average after 24 years. Which is by submarine standards 
a very generous retirement age. What that suggests to me 
is that as long as Japan maintains that one submarine per year industrial cadence, 
there is always going to be the possibility there with additional investment in maintenance, 
overhauls, crew training, munitions, etc. to steadily lift the number of submarines in 
the force over time to some new steady state. If you kept every submarine for 30 years for 
example, the force might go from 22+2 to 28+2. Certainly more easier said than done, but almost 
certainly cheaper than just building more submarines. I bring all this up to try 
and illustrate a point. When it comes to almost any field of 
technological development, military or otherwise, there can be a tendency to start to 
presume what the future is going to look like. With submarines we see countries like 
Russia, France, the UK and United States all pushing towards a certain apparent vision of 
what a next-generation submarine will look like. A nuclear-powered underwater 
monster with slightly less technological complexity 
than the Starship Enterprise, and budget line costs that 
could bankrupt smaller nations. Then much like 6th generation fighters in the air, 
those very expensive underwater platforms are meant to be augmented 
by all sorts of unmanned systems. For many countries, 
especially those with long-range power-projection requirements, 
that may be the right approach. But there are a wide variety of countries out 
there, whether you&#39;re talking about Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, India, 
Pakistan, Egypt, or a variety of European states, and arguably with its hybrid fleet structure, 
the People&#39;s Republic of China, that all seem to see a place for conventional 
submarines in the next generation mix. These smaller diesel-electric 
submarines do have their drawbacks. And for a nation like the US they&#39;d 
probably be a bit of a non-starter. But hunting a very quiet, modern, 
AIP conventional submarine in its home or familiar waters 
is an ASW nightmare. And given that the cost gap might be the 
difference between a country like Japan being able to afford 22 submarines or 2, 
(if you take the latest Virginias as a baseline) I think it&#39;s probably understandable 
that there is more than one direction of travel on 
submarine development out there. And I think it&#39;s important to understand 
from an analysis and planning perspective, that for some countries just 
because something doesn&#39;t look like the future, it doesn&#39;t 
mean it isn&#39;t the future. And so in conclusion I wanted to 
flag some of the major challenges these next generation programs might face, 
as well as the opportunities they might present. Perhaps the greatest challenges 
to some of these programs, and a factor we will definitely 
explore more in the future, is simply having the industrial capacity 
necessary to build them at the desired rate. Even the United States, with the largest 
fleet of nuclear submarines in the world, has been facing industrial 
constraints for years. And it&#39;s likely to take considerable further 
investments in the submarine industrial base and its associated workforce, if all of 
these new very complicated submarines are going to be built in the planned 
quantities on the desired timelines. Another barrier whether you&#39;re talking 
about Russia, the United States or many other submarine 
operators may simply be cost. The Japanese boats aside, most of the platforms 
we&#39;ve talked about today are horrendously expensive. And analysis suggests that all versions of the 
US Navy&#39;s proposed 30-year ship building plan would require a considerable 
increase in shipbuilding funding just to hit the outline targets 
as they stand today. And even where those investments are 
made, technology risk is likely to follow. Both in terms of technologies these 
submarines are to rely on not maturing in time, and also anti-submarine warfare 
threats continuing to evolve. Some of the programs we have talked about 
today are intended to field submarines expected to serve into the 2070s or 2080s. Meaning that if we suddenly get to 
the 2050s, and some new unexpected technology has suddenly made submarines 
less viable, you could hypothetically find some very expensive investments having 
their values significantly written down. But what is abundantly clear is that even 
though next-generation submarine programs arguably represent a very 
expensive, very long-term bet, it&#39;s one that just about every major 
naval power out there is choosing to make. Whether you are talking about 
Russia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France 
or several others besides, all have apparently come to the decision 
that the submarine is so indispensable as a platform that it&#39;s 
worth making the investment. That it&#39;s worth betting on the promise of long-term 
deterrence and potentially underwater dominance. Even a small number of 
advanced nuclear submarines is the kind of threat an opponent 
has to take very seriously. And so in the coming years we should 
expect to see a range of new designs start to take shape in 
dry docks around the world. And OK, channel update to 
close out. I&#39;ll try and keep it brief. I very much hope you enjoyed 
the topic, which in many ways follows on from our previous video 
on the future of the submarine. If things go well, I would 
like to do a third entry specifically on US military 
shipbuilding, but time will tell. For patrons, as promised the charity poll 
should be up by the time this video goes live. And for those of you interested 
in Perun Gaming, that channel has resumed a regular cadence 
of updates now as well. Thank you very much to all of 
you for your support as always, and of course thank you to Ground News for 
their long-term sponsorship of the channel. I wish you all, and especially the 
bubbleheads among you, the very best and I hope to see 
you all again next week.

Transcript for:Trends in Submarine Development and Technology

Transcript for:
Trends in Submarine Development and Technology