Quote:
Originally Posted by FPSchazly
Yes, indeedy. The Soviets/Russians became very determined to have their boats support crew survivability in the form of escape pods, double hulls, etc.
The author's conclusion at the end of the Typhoon series was interesting. He states the Russian subs by the end of the Cold War had become at least equal to and maybe superior to American boats (in not all but a good chunk of categories). Knee jerk reaction was, of course,  but I think it seems plausible. The Russians had gotten to that point, but had spent themselves to oblivion with Typhoon and Oscar, as the author also pointed out. Basically, an unsustainable, mighty surge in technology. IMO, the author's conclusion lines up with the, at the time, seemingly super-sub specifications for the Seawolf (and the tremendous associated cost). |
Typhoon was just plain silly, especially considering how Borei-I was desighned around Bark.
Noise reduction wise the desighns were driven by requirements - pre pr.671RT (V-II) the requirements were such that machinery noise was not viewed as significant.
You can clearly see the shift from around pr.671RT times in requirements for the specific new desighns and in other documents, such as "recomendations for desighning low noise submarines 71" and then in the whole VAKh series (68-74-80 for the later game relevant subs) of requirements for submarine equipment.
Another interesting story is about how pr.971 (Akula) came to be. The "cheaper pr.945 (Sierra-I)" was indeed a thing, but it was a thing later. Nor was it a true successor to pr.671RTM (Victor-III) as evolutionary imrpovements of the later were built in paralel to the 3rd gen SSNs and some of those are still in service.
The true origins of the pr.971 (Akula) are in two other desighns - pr.991 low noise sub (was being desighned 1970-1973) and pr.657-pr.958 (Igla-Afalina) C4ISR sub (from 1967, the project morphed a lot, was originally intended to operate with "interceptor" subs that later came to be as pr.705 as a counter to Polaris threat, but with growth in range of SLBMs the idea to have a two component system died, with the C4ISR desighn evolving into a dedicated SSBN hunter-killer). In fact pr.971 (Akula) was originally pushed as a split off from the pr.657-pr.958 (Igla-Afalina) and in the early form looked fairly simmilar to it:
(early pr.971 depicted above, note the bow, towed and flank array type and placement)
but that all changed with the new requirements for armament and so on.
Model of the (late) Afalina desighn: