From what I know - in the 80s it was known that Alfa is very fast (42kts) and build with titanium, so everybody assumed that titanium hull means very deep diving sub (like the Mike class). And this belief had it's impact on both western weapons design (increased depth for ADCAP and fast deep diving Mk50) and novels written in this time and early 90s.
Now when the secrecy is lower and it's known much more about details of cold-war designed weapons (and about m most new designs too) it was revealed that titanium was used for mass saving, not deep diving, and Alfa was very fast but not especially deep-divin (IIRC 300m operational depth). It was supposed to evade enemy subs and weapons by speed alone.
The ultimate deep diving design was the Mike class (Konsomolec), which was lost in an accident and no more were build. IIRC again, it's (Mike)design had influence on later Sierra boats with not 3000ft but still quite good dive depth. And the more conventional Akula class is quite deep-diving too, again no 1000m but about 600 is better than most western designs. I had info about 520m operational depth for Akula, but Kapitan says he knows for sure that it can go to over 600m.
And one more thing - the Akula is build not with titanium, but with conventional high-strength steel :-). This means MUCH lower cost and was the reason (among with fact that it had very similar capabilites that expensive titanium hull Sierra) that it was chosen to be primary Russian hunter-killer submarine.
|