Russian Navy to commission Project 09852 Belgorod special nuclear-powered submarine in 2018

The Northern Fleet HQ has told Izvestia that the upgrade of the equipment aboard the Belgorod is still in progress to tailor the ship to new missions. The work is due for completion next year, with the Navy to receive the boat then. For now, the Belgorod is on the slipway of the world’s largest Shop 55 of the Sevmash Shipyard.

The Belgorod is the derivative of an unfinished Project 949A Antei-class (Oscar II-class) nuclear-powered cruise missile attack submarine. The latter class was developed by the Soviet Union in response to the deployment of US Navy aircraft carrier battle groups throughout the ocean.

Sevmash laid down the Belgorod in 1992, but the construction of the submarine, which was 76% complete, was put on the back burner in 2006. However, the Navy again took interest in the unfinished submarine, albeit in a role different to her aircraft carrier killer purpose. The top brass decided to convert the ship into a carrier of deep-water manned and unmanned submersibles.

The sub is supposed to be equipped with the plethora of special and diving equipment and pressure equalization chambers for access to deep-water submersibles. One of the latter is the Bester. The Belgorod also will carry the Magma geophysical complex for offshore geological exploration in the Arctic. The Magma will slash the cost of the research in inaccessible areas fourfold. Research will be feasible irrespective of weather and ice conditions.

"The Belgorod may well be called a multipurpose submarine," expert Dmitry Kornev tells Izvestia. "The boat can haul deep-water submersibles, bathyscaphs and remote-controlled systems. She herself will be able to operate down on the seabed too. Therefore, the Belgorod can be used for both military and peaceful purposes. For instance, the submarine will lay underwater cables or set up the Garmoniya system. She also will assist in mineral exploration and production on the Arctic shelf plate."

There is no direct analog to the Belgorod in the world, according to experts. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in conjunction with private firms, is running the Poseidon program that cost it about $70 billion a year. The Poseidon is an underwater analog of the GPS system - a system of deep-water relay stations, while Russia is developing a carrier of such equipment, which is capable of not only intelligence, surveillance and relevant equipment emplacement, but servicing the equipment on the seabed as well.

The Project 09852 nuclear-powered research submarine will be the largest in the Russian Navy’s submarine fleet, larger than the Project 941 (Typhoon-class) SSBN listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

At present, the Belgorod is on the slipway of Sevmash. Her central section has been redesigned and her missile compartment has been replaced with a new one measuring almost 30 m long. It will house the special equipment and is equipped with pressure equalization chambers for submariners to access the submersibles and for divers to exit the ship. The compartment replacement extended the nuclear-powered submarine from 154 m to 184 m - 11 m longer than the world’s longest Project 941 boat.