The american subs that have thier dive planes on the sail find it alot harder to surface through thick ice than the russians the knife like sail of the akula makes it perfect to slice open ice and surface.
The al'fa is yes now way obsolete, however in 1969 the americans lost thier undersea advantage untill whitey mack came along as the russians launched the yankee class.
Today submarines like the kilo and akula class are far quieter than the main line attack submarines the USN has (688 / 688i) the seawolf is of good design and quality something the soviets didnt have till alot later on.
And the alfa incident was off the coast of iceland back in the 1980's The alfa out dived and out ran its persueing submarine.
The alfa's role was not littoral or under ice but it was mainly an intercept submarine carried torpedos only to defend itslef the idea was it could speed ahead to meet the enamy battle group report back then run back before the USN could do squat about it.
The last alfa was used in 1995 as a trials boat then was re laid up again and so far it has just sat there.
The alfa was designed for speed and speed only, the soviets knew that they couldnt get the americans with silencing so they had the other alternative which was to make masses amounts of submarines (over 500) as they knew come war time they were bound to loose alot.
Now take the al'fas sucsessor there isnt one the role the alfa played is now built into the sierra III and to a point the Akula.
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