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[gelgoog]

The Russians will be building at least a dozen each of the Borei and Yasen. So they will lay down two more Borei and three more Yasen.
There is talk of four Poseidon drone carrier submarines.

Putin also announced the Lada diesel submarines would become serial built boats. So there will be more orders than the current four.

The question is about the Husky and the other next generation submarine projects like Arcturus.

The Russian Navy wants the Husky to be a small nuclear attack submarine to replace the Victor III but the design bureaus claim such a submarine won't have the required level of stealth to be survivable.

 

[SlothmanAllen]

The challenge for USN's submarine inventory is in the short- and medium-term as they seek to increase Virginia-class production despite switching to larger, more expensive VPM-equipped boats, while simultaneously servicing the Columbia-class SSBN program, and also trying to find a few extra boats under the sofa cushion for AUKUS. The official line is that one Columbia equals two VPM Virginias which are each equivalent to 1.25 non-VPM Virginias. Hence, the shift from building one non-VPM Virginia per year (as was the case pre-2011) to the current goal of building two VPM-equipped Virginias plus one Columbia per year represents a five-fold increase in the demands placed upon the submarine industrial base, with a little more required to also service AUKUS. If USN and the SIB can get anywhere near that target over the Columbia production period, they will be well-positioned to service ongoing SSN requirements once that program wraps up. The Australians, though, have come begging at precisely the wrong time.

Submarine production has indeed been a relative bright spot for the Russian Navy, but also potentially a transitory one. The current impressive launch/delivery cadence reflects boats laid down throughout the 2009-2017 period. Since that time, relatively few new nuclear boats have been laid down: two 885Ms and two 955As in the last eight years, down from six 885Ms and five 955As in the nine years preceding. That will soon translate to a reduction in deliveries. It's not clear to me what is going on with the 09851 Poseidon boats, but in any case it does not materially change the relative balance between the two periods. Given the cascading consequences of the conflict in Ukraine for budget priorities, it remains to be seen how committed Russia is to its ongoing submarine renaissance.

Do you know how many have been launched this year? As far as I can tell, only one Virginia class has been launched so far. As I mentioned previously, four were launched in 2024 representing a wide range of years in terms of when the first piece of the hull was laid down. It will be interesting to see if they can launch three or so Virginia's this year.

 

[Lethe]

The Russians will be building at least a dozen each of the Borei and Yasen. So they will lay down two more Borei and three more Yasen.
There is talk of four Poseidon drone carrier submarines.

Putin also announced the Lada diesel submarines would become serial built boats. So there will be more orders than the current four.

The question is about the Husky and the other next generation submarine projects like Arcturus.

The Russian Navy wants the Husky to be a small nuclear attack submarine to replace the Victor III but the design bureaus claim such a submarine won't have the required level of stealth to be survivable.

I'm sure there will be more boats, I'm not suggesting that Russia is about to abandon its nuclear submarine programs, just that we can't assume that the fairly impressive delivery cadence we've seen in recent years will actually be maintained going forward. Indeed we can be confident that, at least for a period beginning late 2020s, it won't be maintained. Just where the longer-term trends will settle remains to be seen.

Do you know how many have been launched this year? As far as I can tell, only one Virginia class has been launched so far. As I mentioned previously, four were launched in 2024 representing a wide range of years in terms of when the first piece of the hull was laid down. It will be interesting to see if they can launch three or so Virginia's this year.

Thanks for this question. I had been putting together a chart to track the progress of each boat according to public milestones to see if any clear trends emerge in where the delays are (and aren't) emerging. Given the largely ceremonial nature of especially the keel-laying date, it's not clear that there is anything to be gained by the exercise, but I thought it worth a try. But whereas construction start dates and estimated delivery dates come from official documents linked previously, and I had manually checked the delivery dates for all boats delivered to date, I made the mistake of relying on Wikipedia for keel laying and launch dates. Wikipedia says that SSN-800 was launched December 2024 but that actually appears to reflect the christening date, with the launch actually occurring July 2025. More dates to check...

One oddity that I have already encountered is the keel-laying date for SSN-792. Some sources list this as Feb 2017, while

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Navy release refers to a combined future christening and keel-laying ceremony to be held for SSN-792 in late 2018. Yet

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subsequent Electric Boat release about that christening in October 2018 makes no mention of keel-laying. The February 2017 date is plausible, but I can't find any definitive source for it, while the official Naval Vessel Register is

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on the subject.

 

[gelgoog]

It depends on if the Husky is indeed a small boat and the Russians mass produce it or not.
Right now the Russians aren't producing enough submarines to replace their still in service old attack subs let alone have the numbers they had in the Cold War.

A smaller boat could be built outside Sevmash. At Admiralty Shipyards and Krasnoye Sormovo for example.