Russia's new nuclear sub completes first round of sea trials

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by ETR3(SS)

Awfully long boat for only 16 birds.

It is around the same length as the Delta IV, also a 16-missile boat. An Ohio crams 24 onto the same length, but it has only one ~35000HP reactor, and is a single hull design.

And with a speed of 29kts how much you wanna bet she's got 2 reactors on-board?

She almost certainly does.

Originally Posted by geetrue

These crew numbers sound a little off over 50% of the crew is officer's???

No, it isn't a joke. It is typical. In addition to those 55 officers, if the boat was actually commissioned as originally scheduled, it would have had something like 30 michmanny (warrant officers). They don't have the latter now because AFAIK they are getting working on getting rid of the michman core. The ship will be only 10-20% of what we may consider "normal enlisted" or conscripts.

The important thing is to get the correct mix of qualification onto the boat, and the Russian Navy uses its officer corps much more for technical matters than say the US.

A positive way of putting it would be that the Russians have more of a single line of authority, rather than a dual line.

The negative (and stereotypical) way of saying the same thing is that they have a weak NCO corps, and this leads to overworked officers, dedvoschina, blah, blah, blah...