09V/09VI (095/096) Nuclear Submarine Thread

[Senna]

There were no formal ceremonies of acceptance into active service of the new nuclear submarines after 2021 in China, which means nothing. Although in the case of Type-094 I could believe that there are 6 of them, I am of the opinion that the number of of Type-093 submarines is much, much higher.
Submarines are not "space technology" if your country is already able to build dozens of frigates, destroyers, as well as hundreds of 5th generation aircraft.
The Russians have acquired 10 new nuclear submarines since the beginning of this decade; 5 x 955A "Borei-A", 4 x 885M "Yasen-M" and one from project 09852 "Belgorod". Two more nuclear submarines were launched last year, ie one of the project Yasen-M ("Perm") and "Khabarovsk" submarine of the project 09851. A few days ago I read the info that "Ulyanovsk" (Yasen-M) is being prepared for launch.
USA; 7 Virginia-class submarines (one is Block 3 and the rest are Block 4) commissioned and 3 more Block 4 submarines were launched.

 

[para80]

These national comparisons are a little apples and oranges. China is establishing a modern nuclear powered submarine industry, and in the process both evolves and develops new designs to satisfactory standards. The large variety in 09III/A variants may be seen as evidence in this regard. Limiting production numbers while a design (and in this case also the infrastructure) is worked out is an established PLAN practice, too.

End of the day submarines dont carry hull/sail numbers anymore, and even if they did, PLAN has a demonstrated practice of changing hull numbers on surface units. Hence the best visual evidence we have is seeing for example four Type 09IV at the same time at a location etc. The reality seems to be we see a very limited number of boats, and so far we dont have even circumstantial evidence of massed SSN operations suggesting steady roation of a high volume of boats either.

The rest for now remains fully speculative beyond foreign government reports such as the CMPR. Just my two cents.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Excerpts from a tender document on the hardware and software simulation systems of the entire electric propulsion system for TWO models of nuclear-powered submarines, with the designated supplier being the 719th Research Institute.

According to the original poster on Bilibili (@星依樱未), this tender is meant for the 093B and 095 SSNs. However, I think 095 SSN and 096 SSBN are likelier.

 

[plawolf]

Not directly related to the 095/96 classes themselves, but China just casually demonstrated the commercial application of a supercritical Co2 power generator.

This video gives a nice breakdown of the benefits this brings, and while he focuses primarily on the civilian power generation implications, the advancement this could bring to nuclear submarines could be hard to overstate.

This technology is basically a new tech tree from the steam engine the the overwhelming majority of the world still uses. It’s offers significant improvements in efficiency that allows you to massively reduce the size of turbines needed for the same power output, and/or massively increased power generation capacity. But most relevant for nuclear submarines, it removes the need for many of the pumps you would need for cooling in traditional steam turbines, and we all know that the biggest single source of noise on nuclear submarines is from the pumps and other equipment linked to the stream turbines.

With much reduced need for pumps and potentially much smaller turbines, the noise level of nuclear submarines using supercritical Co2 could be a fraction of that of a submarine using traditional steam turbines.

The vastly reduced start up time from half an hour to two minutes also offer potential massive advantages and unlocks tactical options no realistically available to steam powered nuclear subs, especially when paired with the naturally increased safety of essentially removed meltdown risk. So you could theoretically power down the turbine and go fully on batteries for prolonged periods when absolute silence is needed, and be able to rapidly power back up to full operational capacity.

This breakthrough is almost certainly too late to be incorporated into the 095/96 designs, but given the advanced stage of this technology in China, I would not be surprised at all of the 097/98 next gen subs start using this.