true but i think the only things they will take away from alfa class is the automation small crew sizes which if you look at current submarines they have less crew then western boats.

take akula almost the same size as a 688 has a crew of around 65 where the 688 has a crew of nearly 130, i think the whole alfa idea is good and it was a design screw up that went in the designers favor.
perhapse a cheaper steel hulled version would be a good sign but i think the russians will continue to create the hybrid SSGN models as they have more flexability.

There is discussion around building smaller SSNs to compliment Yasen class, but the size here is due to the desire to keep the costs down (Yasens are viewed as expensive/redundant).

Automation experience from Alfas was used in the 3rd and 4th gen submarines. It is not directly applicable to modern subs, as the Alfas were viewed as non maintainable subs (ie crew does not do the maintenance), meaning that modern crews would be larger than those of Alfas.

Good points, but hard to understand why ...

http://news.usni.org/2014/10/28/u-s-...an-attack-boat
I noticed on some submarines the russians have more officers than enlisted men ... that's really hard to understand. Who gets the blame then if something goes wrong :D

Historically this can be atributed to two factors:
- small crews due to high automation (Alfas were more or less run purely by officers).
- bias towards officers due to the sailors being conscripted.

Your right subnuts, this link leads to some really cool pictures and information about Alfa class submarines.

You know how sometimes a person will save a link, but not really go there?
That's what I did back in February ... this morning I was bored and saw the link in my favorites folder for subsim.

My respect for Russian tech advances went up a bit higher ... how did they ever get the big boys with the money to approve of this I will never understand.

What else is lurking in their minds while the budget is low, ready to produce as soon as they can get more oil money into their banks?

While the budget is certainly alot lower than in soviet times, the Russian federation still maintains the 3rd largest defence budget in the world and its expect this year to rise to $96bn USD

In contrast the UK budget is $60bn while the american budget is some $630bn

Defense (and other critical) spending is balanced against the stable incomes such as non oil/gas/foreighn trade taxes.

Very correct which means your total spending in percentage to GDP is around 4.5% expected to rise to 4.7% this year.
The USA on the other hand has declined from 4.6% in 2011 to 3.5% in 2014.

Figures obtained from the world bank data pool

At the moment due to low oil prices Russia is hurting plus the sanctions what is it now over there 70ruble to 1 USD ?