Russian sleeping beauty for 16 years heads out to sea

[Mr Quatro]

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the...urns-sea-18171

Earlier this month, a Russian ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) called Podmoskovie slipped out of its pier at Severodvinsk for the first time in 16 years. Podmoskovie was photographed leaving the shipyard for contractor sea trials on Oct. 22 by Oleg Kuleshov, who writes for the BMPD blog—a product of the Moscow-based Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

If you go and read the article it tries to equal the Jimmy Carter SSN to this old sea dog. No way are they equal, but what have they done to this sleeping beauty after 16 years.

Just carry missiles?

Wait a minute, I read the rest of the article:

What is known about Podmoskovie is that the massive vessel entered the shipyard in 1999 under the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Project 09787—which ostensibly performs deep-sea research. By 2002, the boat had its missile tubes removed and the special compartments similar to those on Orenburg were installed. Indeed, externally, Podmoskovie looks very different from a standard Project 667BDRM boat aft of the sail and she appears to have had her hull lengthened.