Photos from inside a Typhoon class submarine

https://ru-submarine.livejournal.com/17486.html

by hestefisk • 6 years ago

610 367 6 years ago

ru-submarine.livejournal.com

xtiansimon• 6 years ago

One ping only

overcast• 6 years ago

This year is just rude.

happyweasel• 6 years ago

RIP Sean Connery.. Hunt for Red October was a decent movie...

rootbear2• 6 years ago

Oh, no! I hadn't seen the news! Still one of my favorite Bonds.

combatentropy• 6 years ago

For me, it was an extraordinarily well-made movie, one of my favorites. I was a film major, though, so I am concentrating on the camerawork and editing. The director, John McTiernan, was not famous enough --- right up there with Spielberg in his ability to compose scenes, https://vimeo.com/76739972

bigmattystyles• 6 years ago

Decent? It was nothing but extraordinary. My favorite part is how Connery didn't even bother trying to do a Russian accent.

supernova87a• 6 years ago

What books?

pavel_lishin• 6 years ago

I never considered the fact that submarines can have windows.

edit: also, they've got an arcade machine about submarine combat! Wonder whose idea that was.

brandmeyer4• 6 years ago

I never considered the fact that submarines can have windows.

That space would be free-flooding when submerged. I'll bet that it makes coming into and out-of port much easier environmentally on the topside crew. Soviet submarine bases were much farther to the north than Americans'.

tome• 6 years ago

What does "free-flooding" mean?

tpmx4• 6 years ago

That phone in https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/igor113/15886453/8307124/830... looks identical to an Ericsson Dialog:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson_Dialog (1964)

Was there a soviet-era clone of this phone? Or maybe Ericsson (Sweden) actually exported this to the Soviet Union during the 70s? That metallic red facia/dial cover thing looks decidedly non-scandinavian-market.

After tearing one down as a kid in the 80s I can attest to its mechanical robustness; I can certainly see why the soviet military would pick this model for their new submarine class in 1976.

bserge3• 6 years ago

Could be, I'm pretty sure we had the exact same phone in the 90's.

The USSR was pretty good at copying western tech and calling it their own. And they'd mass produce the shit out of everything, for the military, for civilians, everyone would get the same thing.

tpmx4• 6 years ago

In retrospect it's kinda sad/funny that our "mortal enemy" at the time were using a clone of our landline phones.

This was the same era when Sweden spent an insane amount of the national economy (like 5%) to develop and build a very large number of Draken and Viggen aircraft in order to defend Sweden in case the Soviets decided to invade.

Do you recognize this ring sound?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If7x1qj-cYE

miahi• 6 years ago

It seems to be the real thing, not a knockoff. It has the L.M. Ericsson logo on the dial, like this one[1].

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Ericsson...

Libre___2• 6 years ago

This pic looks like the real deal although I've seen Soviet Dialog clones traveling in eastern Europe.

It does seem to be an export variant however, as the Swedish pulse dial system had the number 0 first: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Dialog_1...

As an anecdote this is why the emergency number in Sweden used to be 90 000, in the dark or in a smoke-filled room you'd be able to feel your way to the last number(9), and then pull four short times from 0 to the finger stop to get emergency service.

rvba2• 6 years ago

KGB and GRU were tasked to spy on whatever possible - a lot of things made in USSR was based on blueprints delivered by their agents.

MiguelVieira• 6 years ago

I can hear Basil Poledouris’s Hymn to Red October just looking at the photos.

rootbear2• 6 years ago

Agreed! One of my favorite scores. I was sad to learn the Mr. Poledouris died fairly young.

lostlogin• 6 years ago

And Connery has now died too. RIP.

flimflamm• 6 years ago

They have a lathe in the submarine. Nice!

wazoox2• 6 years ago

And a jacuzzi!

twic• 6 years ago

I believe that is the plunge pool for the sauna:

https://englishrussia.com/2014/10/26/sauna-in-the-submarine/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrULRXlAlMU

goatinaboat4• 6 years ago

On a ship you can’t carry every spare part you might need. So you carry raw materials and have a machine shop on board to fabricate anything you need. Modern navies are very interested in 3D printing for the same reasons.

bserge3• 6 years ago

That's very interesting, I guess you need to be able to manufacture parts while at sea.

wcarey• 6 years ago

Even the much smaller submarines in the second world war where space was at extreme premium carried a fairly complete machine shop.

petertodd• 6 years ago

It's actually really common for ships to have small machine shops to be able to fix things while at sea. Here is a particularly nice example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Machinists/comments/dht45m/i_work_o...

A lathe and some tools isn't that expensive. As a rough guess, that one is probably something like $20k worth of tools. Maybe double that including the cost of the floor space? Changing course and getting deliveries at sea is really expensive, so easy to imagine it'd pay for itself if you need it just once.

https://federatedtool.com/king-kc-1440ml-2-14-x-40-gearhead-... <- $7k for a quite capable lathe and some tooling.

jonahss• 6 years ago

Zeppelins like the Graff and Hindenburg had machine shops onboard as well!

Their engines were very unreliable, they could do overhauls mid-flight. Airplanes around that time were just as unreliable, but flew shorter hops. Had to overhaul or swap their engines quite regularly between flights.

paulkrush• 6 years ago

Cool Pictures! Lathe! Neat! I am an old school trained navy machinist. We use to hang the long stringy chips from the over head. The angle of the dangle = power of the puke in heavy seas. BTW, US subs don't have lathes, well at least the smaller ones don't. You can do a lot with a hack saw, files, cold chisels, etc, if you have to. The small US frigates have a lathe, with a milling attachment!

jhallenworld2• 6 years ago

I saw one in the corner of the engine room of the USS Clamagore at Patriot Point, SC. But the really impressive machine shop was on the USS Yorktown:

https://www.facebook.com/PatriotsPoint.org/posts/the-difficu...

IgorPartola• 6 years ago

I love that at the end they have the instructions for how to properly pressurize the toilet so it would flush. And warnings to make sure you flush it properly or you’ll be severely punished because people live near the head in that sector.

crocal2• 6 years ago

The toilet is a very critical device in a sub. It is said that a german sub /sank/ because of that.

dmd3• 6 years ago

A thing that really strikes me as extraordinary is how there used to be two almost entirely independent technological supply chains. Americans and soviets both built extremely advanced equipment, with radar and sonar and computers and all that and literally from "digging ore out of the mountain" to making a computer there was almost no overlap in supply chain.

CountSessine• 6 years ago

Sometimes those supply chains overlapped or fed into each other, at least covertly

https://www.mining.com/bbc-future-sr-71-blackbird-the-cold-w...

petermcneeley• 6 years ago

I find this also quite fascinating as well considering that this was a non market economy. While not a complete refutation, I think the technological success of the USSR pokes holes in the economic calculation arguments of Von Mises (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Calculation_in_the_So...).

dmd3• 6 years ago

There is a fascinating alternate-history book about this: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Plenty-Francis-Spufford/dp/155597...

formerly_proven• 6 years ago

A very large amount of eastern "high tech" lagged behind by a couple of years, because stealing and reverse-engineering the Western designs in order to copy them took about that long.

atemerev• 6 years ago

Russian here. Unfortunately, our technological success was mostly limited to military production. And even there, quite a lot of technological processes and templates were simply stolen by our spies (starting from our nuclear weapons program). Granted, Americans used to do that too... USSR used to have a lot of independent discoveries and inventions. But nearly all of them were targeted to the military; Soviet cars, television sets, washing machines etc. were all truly awful.

chordalkeyboard9• 6 years ago

Mises doesn’t say that they can’t produce things of value or innovate technologically. Mises says that what they produce is not going to be what consumers want as much as things they would have chosen themselves, and more importantly that price controls prevent the signaling that allows them to correctly allocate capital. The eventual collapse of the USSR is the evidence for this.

kbutler• 6 years ago

It could certainly poke holes in a straw man argument.

Mises didn't say a planned economy could produce nothing, but that it would lead to irrational and inefficient use of resources.

USSR military and overall production and eventual collapse demonstrates his argument pretty well.

You can also see that US military spending is another example of irrational and inefficient use of resources allowed by central planning rather than market forces.

azernik• 6 years ago

You could get an equivalent of price signals by another means - rejection of products that were unfit for use. The Soviet military was able to do this, and so got equipment that was both of good quality and was of the correct mix of products. Civilian enterprises did not have this avenue available, and so ended up getting products of the minimum quality that would still skate by under the Plan's rules.

laurent92• 6 years ago

The titanium for the SR-71, all came from Russia, which the US acquired by mounting lots of shell companies across the world. When there is overlap between supply chains of countries at war, I have to say I find it quite comical. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/21105/how-was-ti...

It is similar to the legend that says the Germans supplied the red ink for the bright army pants of French soldiers on the field in 1914 « for a good price » (you bet!), although I think this one is rather a legend, as it is true that French costumes were too fancy for war, I think the traditional red pants were not in widespread application at the time.

ginko• 6 years ago

There was also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War_glass%E2%80%93...

Waterluvian2• 6 years ago

I read somewhere that a popular British firearm was licensed from Germany during WWI. A rifle action of some sort.

wbl• 6 years ago

I had no idea the Ludlum novel "The Rhinemann Exchange" had a basis in a historical event. The war is different, but the plot the same.

gvurrdon• 6 years ago

The French were aware that their traditional (mid-19th century) red trousers were not appropriate for modern warfare. Unfortunately, getting them replaced was not an easy task due to political difficulties. This article (in French) is a good summary of the French army's efforts from 1903 to find a uniform more suited to modern warfare: http://rosalielebel75.franceserv.com/reforme-uniforme.html It does mention the importing of red dye from Germany, in the context of the planned future uniform being a patriotic mix of red, white and blue, and the red being omitted due to the supply being curtailed.

Synaesthesia3• 6 years ago

The Germans were leaders in chemical dyes at that time.

rightbyte• 6 years ago

When there is overlap between supply chains of countries at war, I have to say I find it quite comical.

The US and the Soviet were never at war though.

robotnikman• 6 years ago

Kind of reminds me of the 40mm Bofors AA gun in WWII, the design being sold to both sides during the war (though was mostly used by the allies)

hodgesrm• 6 years ago

Not only were the supply chains different but the US and USSR also had very different design and procurement philosophies that tied back to military doctrine. There's an interesting summary on Reddit related to Soviet aviation that outlines some of the differences. [1]

This seems to be an example of defense strategy driving economics. In the US we tend to think of market forces driving defense policy but in fact there's a feedback loop between defense technology and how societies organize themselves.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/9abbo3/what_wer...

virtue3• 6 years ago

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

Basically, SV was started by WW2 military radio / em / signal tech!

kens• 6 years ago

One interesting supply chain is the EF50 vacuum tube, which was manufactured in Holland and was vital for radar in World War II. Hours before the Germans took over Holland, the British trucked out 25,000 tubes and key manufacturing equipment so they could start manufacturing the tubes in England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF50#Flight_from_Holland

wayanon• 6 years ago

Great story - thanks! I’d read about the Battle of the Beams but never this.

raverbashing2• 6 years ago

Though the bakelite phone is apparently the same all around the world

jacobush4• 6 years ago

It’s not bakelite but injection moulded and I could have sworn it was Swedish. Definitely not British. There are nuanced differences.

rafaelm• 6 years ago

I came here to say just that! I grew up with that exact phone in Venezuela in the 80's!

usrusr• 6 years ago

Tempted to claim that there were actually three independent supply chains:

Soviet, western (metric) and western (wtf).

mulmen4• 6 years ago

I'm not sure what this means?

Is this a Metric vs US Customary thing? How does that relate to supply chains?

chewz• 6 years ago

In the video I have linked below, in third lecture Jonathan Parshall compares industrial doctrines of tank manufacturing by Nazi Germamy, Soviet Union and USA during WW2. Very enlightening.

Three different systems, three different manufacturing philosophies.

- Germany - pre-industrial artisan manufacture (250 modifications during 2-year production run of 1347 units, 300 thousand man-hours per tank vs American 10 thousand man-hours)

- USA - Detroit style horizontal mass production (US scaled down tanks production in 1944 due to overproduction in 1943)

- Soviet Union - cost-optimized, vertical mass production (the average tank lasted only 14 hours in battle anyway)

https://youtu.be/N6xLMUifbxQ?t=2875

Tank Production: A Comparative Study of output in Germany, the US, and the USSR Jonathan Parshall.

ntr--• 6 years ago

very interesting, thanks!

nickdothutton• 6 years ago

See also the Maxim Gun in the 1st WW, and no less lethal... the phone network supplied by ITT in the 2nd.

Dirlewanger• 6 years ago

Governments can do wondrous things given geopolitical constraints...when they want to that is.

jhallenworld2• 6 years ago

It's fascinating to see the difference in consumer goods. Soviet Union seemed to build things to last forever, vs. the planned obsolescence for American stuff (although this is really only true after the outsourcing began).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG3PiVm9DvQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMjPzXLC5k

You can still get Soviet germanium transistors since they were in use a few decades longer than in the west- handy for repair of old electronics.

skolos• 6 years ago

Things in Soviet Union lasted forever not because they were purposely built that way, but because you either fix things or don't have them - it was almost impossible to get a new replacements. For example you would need to wait more than 10 years in a queue to get new car. Very few domestic made things were considered more desirable than foreign, and usually reliability was terrible.

Gravityloss• 6 years ago

Old cars after the war were terrible and only lasted for short distances, no matter if they were from the east bloc or west. But longevity rapidly improved in western cars, while eastern ones didn't really develop that much. Early Japanese cars were also bad but got better. Soviet and eastern block technology just developed much more slowly than western Europe or Japan, and the difference grew larger every year.

Things that happened in cars in the eighties: electronic ignition (no distributor), fuel injection (no carburetor), full body zinc coating (much less rust).

ARandomerDude• 6 years ago

I'm surprised it's so dirty and rusty. American crews clean their ships, then they clean them again if they run out of clean things to clean. I'm sure budget plays a large role but I couldn't stop looking at the rust, chipped paint, and dirt.

giarc• 6 years ago

This one doesn't look operational, however I could be wrong.

alkonaut• 6 years ago

These are abandoned for many years I assume?

simonh• 6 years ago

These photos are from 11 years ago, and in the comments from 2009 they're saying how they'd already been neglected for a long time so they may have been rusting for a decade or more even then. I wonder what they look like now.

gscott• 6 years ago

In the comments he says it was scrapped...

marcinzm• 6 years ago

Based on Wikipedia, I'm guessing this was TK-17 and 20 as TK-12/13 were probably scrapped before these picture were taken.

TK-17 and TK-20 where officially decommissioned in 2004/2006. They were probably effectively decommissioned years before that but it'd make bad PR to say so. The pictures are from 2009 so that's many years sitting neglected with probably just enough people to keep the reactor alive and theft at bay.

andromeduck• 6 years ago

No, the post was published in 2009 but the photos themselves were taken in 2004.

chrisseaton• 6 years ago

Do you realise that these submarines aren't in service?

mrtksn2• 6 years ago

Is everything still that exposed on modern submarines?

Everything looks engineered, it’s nice in its own way but as a final product I would imagine that something designed to be more upbeat and tidy can be beneficial for the psychology of the crew.

pantalaimon• 6 years ago

I guess it's intentionally so. If there is a problem with tech, you want to be able to fix it quick as the life of the crew depends on it.

mLuby• 6 years ago

Same with the ISS. It looks relatively unkempt.

brandmeyer4• 6 years ago

When thinking about the "Cold War" the emphasis in the submarine community was on "War", not "Cold". US and Soviet submariners played an intense game of cat-and-mouse for decades. The ICBMs on Typhoon and Trident were there to enforce the "mutually assured" part of mutually assured destruction. Typhoon's mission was to carry ~200 nuclear bombs with a guaranteed strike-second capability.

In that environment, wouldn't you rather have our crews sharp and focused?

officemonkey• 6 years ago

I'm surprised about the relative space. I once toured a Los Angeles-class sub (sorry, no photos) and I never felt I had enough headroom. Seeing all that open space in "workout area" and the "lounge area" and a lot of headroom was very strange.

doikor• 6 years ago

The Russian nuclear submarines are just crazy big compared to the American ones (or anything made by anyone else for that matter)

Typhoon class has a displacement of 48000 tons.

Los Angeles class has displacement of 6927 tons. Typhoon class is a bit under 7 times bigger. Even the largest American sub (Ohio class) is still less then half the size of a Typhoon (the largest submarines ever built) at 18750 tons

edit: As a side not Russians have mainly moved away from the old Typhoon and replaced it with Borei class which is half the size (24000 tons). Only 1 Typhoon class sub is still in active service.

Hamuko• 6 years ago

Typhoon class has a displacement of 48000 tons.

That's quite massive.

The Japanese I-400-class submarines/submersible aircraft carriers, which I believe are still the largest diesel submarines built, were under 7000 tons.

wazoox2• 6 years ago

For anyone interested in visiting a Los Angeles class sub, "Smarter everyday" made a nice series of videos inside one.

crazydoggers• 6 years ago

Your comparing a fast attack sub to a ballistic missile sub. The Typhoon is nearly twice as large. Compare instead an Alfa or Akula class Russian fast attack.

dmurray4• 6 years ago

Attack submarines are much smaller than missile subs. I don't understand exactly why this is and what the trade offs are here - manoeuvrability, cost? They seem to need approximately the same size crew of 100-150.

The closer comparison would be to the US Ohio-class missile sub, which is 3x the size of the LA class with the same complement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio-class_submarine

brandmeyer4• 6 years ago

I don't understand exactly why this is and what the trade offs are here - manoeuvrability, cost?

Payload. One type carries a couple dozen medium-range ballistic missiles, and the other doesn't.

chiph2• 6 years ago

You need a certain diameter of the pressure hull in order to accommodate the length of the missiles and their launch tubes. Also a factor - the range of the missile. Want a longer range? You'll need more fuel and the missile gets longer. Which means you need a bigger sub.

masklinn5• 6 years ago

Attack submarines are much smaller than missile subs. I don't understand exactly why this is

SLBM are big, a Trident II is 13.6m long and 2.11m wide[0] and Ohios need to fit them straight up plus the hull, so we're talking 14m moulded depth or so (excluding the sail), and a pretty similar beam, at which point… you just have a big sub, because it can't exactly be a ball: you need to fit 12 Tridents in a row, plus the reactor, engine, crew compartments, passages for the crew to move around, torpedo tubes, and enough stores to last for literally months.

Attack subs can have vertically mounted cruise missiles but those are puny compared to an SLBM, a Tomahawk is 6.25m long with booster[1]: an Ohio-class carries 24 Tridents in SSBN configuration, if converted to SSGN it carries 154 tomahawks.

Los Angeles carries 37, Seawolf carries 50 (and on both this competes with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, on an Ohio you get 24 tridents or 154 tomahawks plus a dozen torpedoes or anti-ship missiles).

[0] and Typhoon's SLBMs were even larger at 16.1m by 2.4

[1] and 0.5m wide

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

Attack submarines are much smaller than missile subs. I don't understand exactly why this is

Because a missile sub is, loosely, an attack sub with an ICBM base strapped to it. (Yes, technically SLBMs aren't ICBMs, but late Cold War SLBMs had ranges greater than the upper end for IRBMs, and so would be ICBMs if land based.)

and what the trade offs are here - manoeuvrability, cost?

The boomer trades off maneuverability for the ability to destroy a moderate-size country with nuclear hellfire from thousands of miles away.

astura• 6 years ago

Los Angeles-class are fast attack boats, they are much smaller than boomers, which is what the Typhoon class is (they carry nuclear warheads). But Typhoon class is even larger than the American boomers (Ohio class - and the soon to be Columbia class).

nabla9• 6 years ago

Typhoon was made from two two parallel full length pressure hulls and three smaller pressure hulls (and missiles tubes ) between them inside one outer hull.

It was like 3 submarines joined together. http://www.skitzone.com/2010/photos-of-russian-typhoon-class...

hartator• 6 years ago

That’s crazy big. Does that me the submarine can operate with one side flooded?

sorokod• 6 years ago

Photos taken at 2004.

bobnarizes• 6 years ago

Looking at those pics made me think that it was like putting a camera inside of my body

quelsolaar2• 6 years ago

What is striking to me is the enormous waste of resources and engineering talent that went in to destructive monstrosities on all sides. I remember having the same reaction visiting a UK air museum seeing the Vulcan up-close for the first time.

Entire generations of the best an brightest roped in to build political brinkmanship tools, never to be used that are now rusting away.

Meanwhile, Japan and Germany, the loosers of WW2 that was meant to be kept down, by not allowing them to participate in the arms race built up formidable industrial capacity, that came to dominate many sectors by the end of the cold war.

op03• 6 years ago

More like a Cost of dealing with people in the neighborhood who want your stuff and/or want you to bend and bow to them.

Look at Taiwan today. What other option do they have other than burning billions to buy some deterrence?

Same goes for Japan and Germany. They are highly dependent on outside help if the bullies in the neighborhood get a little more ambitious.

looping__lui10• 6 years ago

Ever heard of NATO?

jedberg8• 6 years ago

People say the sam thing about ad-tech today. They even using the exact same phase: "Entire generations of the best and brightest".

But look at the innovation that comes from both endeavors and leaks out into the rest of society. Arguably computer technology would not be where it is without the war machine driving the initial innovation.

And similarly, web technology, such as Javascript and just the ability to update a webpage without reloading it wouldn't exist without ad-tech.

PopePompus2• 6 years ago

I think it's the financial sector, not ad-tech that's wasting the abilities of many bright people, at least in the USA.

MontyCarloHall• 6 years ago

I’d love to see a thorough analysis on the technological externalities of the Cold War. How many decades would we be set back technologically if it never happened? I’d say at least 20 years.

mzkply• 6 years ago

I thought Microsoft invented xhtml no-refresh tech just for web outlook no?

c22• 6 years ago

Perhaps not, but a world without computers would be markedly different from the world we live in, whereas a world without Javascript and the ability to update a webpage without reloading it would be... pretty much just like the world we're living in now, except perhaps less annoying.

Pulcinella• 6 years ago

Uhh the web technology predates ad-tech. CERN was not funded by advertising.

Also you say no ad-tech would mean a world without JavaScript like it’s a bad thing.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 6 years ago

Didn't you know that porn is what drives Internet tech?

Some time ago, someone here posted about running the infrastructure for one of the main pr0n sites, and it was crazy cool.

It wasn't "cutting edge," but it was incredibly well-engineered and robust.

anonu• 6 years ago

Javascript was created for/because of ad tech? Source?

nitwit0053• 6 years ago

The innovations that have come out of military efforts are impressive, but can seem a bit limited if you realize just how vast military spending can be.

I suspect we'd have made decades of progress if we'd truly dumped all the funds spent on military efforts in the 20th century into research.

Not to mention the lost opportunity cost of making millions of people have the occupation of soldier, rather than something more productive.

citizenkeen• 6 years ago

And similarly, web technology, such as Javascript and just the ability to update a webpage without reloading it wouldn't exist without ad-tech.

I don't know what I find more depressing - that somebody thinks this is true, or worse, that somebody thinks this is a good thing.

UweSchmidt3• 6 years ago

The war machine brought about some tangible technological achievements (although of course in an incredibly wasteful process), but even more, the arms race was driven by technological progress in civilian economy: all improvements and inventions of civilian economy had to be put into military equipment and forced new generations of planes, tanks, guns.

Market based economies and state sponsored science are pretty solid at bringing about progress and the trillions in military spending that could have reasonably been saved since WW2 would have have lifted all boats and would have provided money for better education, telescopes, particle accelerators and many other things we can't even conceptualize, since so many ressources were squandered.

And regarding ad-tech: similar thing. All that money that goes into it is paid for by us through the products we buy, plus we are manipulated by it so our decisions are all worse. Do away with it and we would have better things all around.

flyinglizard• 6 years ago

Japan and Germany could do what they did because they were under the US protection of those brinkmanship tools.

Furthermore, military tech has a huge impact on everyday life (jet engines, satellites, communications). Even when the tech was not directly invented by the military, it was still at some time a major customer or patron of the tech.

looping__lui10• 6 years ago

Protection from whom? Never in the history of time has Russia ever attacked Germany...

If we learned anything post-WW II it is that you cannot win wars with technological superiority and they look like a huge waste of ressources. Vietnam, Afghanistan anyone?

deeviant2• 6 years ago

Entire generations? No.

Some amount of each generation? Yes.

In general I agree with your sentiment. War = bad.

Being a pacific that eschews all ability to make war is not the pinnacle of evolution. At least not in my view of things. A truly evolved species will retain the power to protect innocent again harm and violence, but only use that horrible type of power expressly that purpose.

fastball9• 6 years ago

What we need is the kind of tech they have in The Culture series by Iain Banks.

They have "effectors", which is highly advanced tractor beam-style technology that allows you to manipulate matter from a distance with a precise field, which can obviously be used for all sorts of scientific / constructive pursuits. But in times of war, the effectors can be used for all kinds of defensive/destructive shenanigans as well.

fuzzfactor4• 6 years ago

Further evolution could make horrible power unnecessary for this purpose too if any predatory nature were to no longer appear.

thwarted• 6 years ago

It's good that people had jobs and science and technology was advanced. It's bad that it was done under the auspices of war and creating machines for killing and destruction. It's good some of those machines didn't get used.

It's unfortunate that humans can find the resources for war but can't find the resources to help fellow humans. But in some sense, the department of defense is a massive jobs program not just in the direct hires but also in the large military industrial complex of military contractors (and you see this in the way politicians work to keep military bases open and contracts for useless jets going) that, as long as we don't go to war, is arguably a net positive.

I wish we could admit how much of a jobs program it is and use that money and effort directly for good things.

powderpig• 6 years ago

Did you know that the Vulcan's engines were developed into the engines that powered Concorde?

quelsolaar2• 6 years ago

Yeah, but it wasn't the most straightforward way to go about building a supersonic airliner.

The sad thing is that the Vulcan was one of three submission to The UK government to build a long range bomber. The military wanted the Vulcan, but it was seen as risky due to its advanced technology. So they orderd the Vulcan and the Victor, a less risky design as backup. Then they got cold feet and orderd the Valiant too just in case. So they ended up designing 3 entirely different planes with the same Mission profile. Oh, yes then they bought some B-29 Just in case....

hermitcrab3• 6 years ago

More Vulcan trivia: The pilot and co-pilot has ejector seats. The other 3 crew had basically zero chance of bailing out.

crocal2• 6 years ago

Nuclear submarines like this have prevented the world from going to war because some crazy idiot could think he had first strike advantage. Not a bad waste of engineering, especially if not used. In terms of warfare, this is the optimal result.

commonturtle2• 6 years ago

'Waste' is the wrong way to look at it. It's like someone looking at the human body and complaining about the huge amount of energy spent collecting waste from the body and passing it out via the urinary tract. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the body didn't generate any waste in the first place and thus didn't need a urinary tract in the first place?

The problem with this scenario is that it is unrealistic, just like assuming there is a way of having an absolutely peaceful world.

A planet with billions of agents each who are moderately self-interested will result in the agents trying to take things from each other by force. To protect themselves, the agents form groups and aggregate their resources, using them to produce war-making abilities that can deter other agents. 'Tis the way of the world.

The wonderful thing is how far we've come in making the world safer over the last 2000 years. In the west we have a largely functional police force and judiciary that will protect and provide justice to every citizen regardless of their political influence

As compared to 2000 years ago of course, as compared to some utopian ideal we have a long way to go, as recent news in the US shows :)

Retric6• 6 years ago

The difference between having 1,000 and 10,000 nuclear weapons is fairly meaningless from a MAD standpoint, but the second still costs ~10 times as much. That’s where the waste is, not simply having a military but having a pointlessly large one.

Worse, it’s even counterproductive. Investing in useful economic assets pays dividends thus increasing your long term military capacity. Buying excessive military hardware on the other hand just gets outdated over time. So, the winning strategy is to spend slightly less than your opposition.

carapace• 6 years ago

Alice: Why do you have that cannon in your front yard?

Bob: To keep the tigers away.

Alice: But there are no tigers around here.

Bob: See? It works.

- - - -

It's hard to credit now, but I recall the real existential dread of the bomb. Reagan talking about the "Evil Empire". As a kid I was scared of nuclear war.

Today we still have the nukes but everybody's pretty relaxed about it. Hypersonic weapons are on the horizon (not literally, thank God) which are crazy destabilizing to the international détente. No one cares. "War is so last century."? "Space Force"!? We're not out of the woods yet.

The hippies were right: peace and love are the answers.

Devils-Avocado• 6 years ago

A far larger amount of money is devoted to the healthcare and welfare of the aged. Italy devotes 17% of its GDP to pensions, for example.

In the middle of the cold war USA defense spending never exceed 10%.

fuzzfactor4• 6 years ago

Seems to me both countries would be better off spending even more than they are on improving people's living, and less on killing strategies.

echelon2• 6 years ago

If the US weren't spending on its military, Germany and Japan would likely need to spend much more. Japan especially.

The US protects G7 interests from Russia, China, and the oil cartel.

Russia takes what it can with impunity, but they're constrained to their immediate neighbors out of fear of the US and NATO. China is beginning to behave the same way. In the coming decades, they'll likely begin to act more aggressively.

I predict military spending will need to increase and that there is a coming arms race.

Once China's military surpasses the US, we'll have nuclear subs off every coast ready at a moment's notice. Shipping and energy interests will be fiercely defended.

We're going to enter Cold War II, and it's not going to be fun. Let's hope it stays cold.

refurb• 6 years ago

"What is striking to me is the enormous waste of resources and engineering talent that went in to destructive monstrosities on all sides."

To me, this is like looking at our ability to treat trauma patients and saying "what a waste - if those people weren't hurt in the first place, these great minds could work on something else".

Well, sure. And if gravity didn't exist people wouldn't fall and get hurt. But it does exist. And so does war.

hermitcrab3• 6 years ago

Entire generations of the best an brightest roped in to build political brinkmanship tools, never to be used that are now rusting away.

And now they are moving numbers around spreadsheets for hedge funds? I guess it is an improvement, of sorts.

hestefisk2• 6 years ago

I’m with you on this one. The money spent on building expensive rust buckets never used could easily have been redirected more productively to building industrial capability or better healthcare.

cwbrandsma• 6 years ago

That is certainly enough to trigger my Submechanophobia. Time for a walk in the mountains.

wintorez4• 6 years ago

Clicked on the link looking for the swimming pool photo: https://pics.livejournal.com/igor113/pic/001e551p

It's fascinating that they thought about a swimming pool in a submarine, and also a galley and toilet in SU-34, another very fascinating Soviet design.

pantulis• 6 years ago

Came here to comment the same exact thing. A swimming pool inside a sub?!?!

cbanek• 6 years ago

I was also wondering about the swimming pool! Is it meant to be one of those stationary lap pools or more of a lounging pool? Looked pretty small (although everything is on a submarine).

notdang• 6 years ago

That's a swimming pool attached to the sauna. Usually it's used to cool down after sauna and relax, not for actual swimming

rangibaby• 6 years ago

How else are you meant to take a dip? It's not like you can open a hatch and go for a swim deep underwater

lreeves2• 6 years ago

The galley and toilet was actually a thermos, thermos holder and... I guess you could generously call the toilet a urine vacuum and receptacle (1)

1 - https://youtu.be/Ynm3em8fHaA?t=403

wintorez4• 6 years ago

Wow, thanks! That was a nice video. Still a beautiful plane, don't you agree?

jpalomaki• 6 years ago

Smarter Every Day Youtube channel has a series of videos filmed onboard Los Angeles class sub.

This was pretty interesting and I really like this approach compared to typical TV documentaries.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQR...

404mm• 6 years ago

Odd question, how much air were these things leaking? I know there were containers with pressurized air (not only to refill chambers after torpedo was launched or cleared..). But I wonder how air tight submarines actually are.

Balgair2• 6 years ago

Torpedo launch systems shouldn't leak any air, at least. Here's a good explanation of a system used on US subs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYEyhB0AGlw&t=7m9s

tpmx4• 6 years ago

I suspect they have a bilge pump somewhere for the water that's eventually seaping in (causing all of that interior corrosion).

mkuklik2• 6 years ago

They are not that air-tight... see this cat on one of the pictures (https://pics.livejournal.com/igor113/pic/001g7xxp). He was a part of a cat unit used to test submarines for air-tightness. Soviets would lock such unit up on a submarine for a week... if cats are dead, submarine is air-tight. One of the picture survived! Though I heard that cat survivability was close to 100%. Only reported cat fatalities were due to bad food.

ac42• 6 years ago

They used cats specifically for their inbuilt probability amplification properties.

chiph2• 6 years ago

No air was lost - any pinholes that let air out would also have let water in, because when submerged the water was at a much higher pressure than the interior of the sub. Plus, think of the effect on crew morale!

jaspergilley• 6 years ago

Not nearly as nice as The Hunt For Red October makes it out to be

bicx• 6 years ago

I can smell the various engine oils and general mustiness just by looking at these photos. I love old machinery like this.

mkuklik2• 6 years ago

How much did these guys pay to get on this submarine?

This reminds me of the movie: https://www.netflix.com/title/80202236?s=a&trkid=13747225&t=...

trhway• 6 years ago

No need to pay if you know somebody. May be a bottle of good vodka/cognac to smooth introduction to the friend of the friend :). I grew up on a Navy base, and back in 90ies visiting my hometown we'd drink and enjoy sauna on a big active service Navy ship with my childhood friends who served there at the time (as officers of course). Of course if you're an "American spy" nobody would let you even come into the town, and an unknown person trying to pay money out of the cold to for example get some photos/etc. is a sure way to get branded as one :)

rsync• 6 years ago

There are pictures of an exercise room with treadmills, etc., near the end ... and also a relatively large conference room.

Those were not inside the submarine, right ?

dataking• 6 years ago

I wondered the same. I think they are. You can see how the pool is very cramped and follows the curvature of the submarine hull.

jaynetics• 6 years ago

I wondered as well, but it seems entirely plausible. This thing had about the same crew size as an Ohio class submarine but more than double the volume.

PeterisP• 6 years ago

That's the rest room next to the sauna, and yes, it's inside the sub.

p_l6• 6 years ago

This class of submarines was designed to spend a long time underwater on patrols. The problems faced by the crew are comparable to problems facing long term space missions, except there was higher chance of returning to port.

Because of that, Typhoons were designed with crew comfort in mind, with lots of amenities, ensuring crew performance after several months underwater.

whistlesnort2• 6 years ago

As a young pup back in the 80s I worked at a research lab that was obsessed with the Typhoon submarine. My first assignment was to test torpedos that could hit the same spot on a submarine. Why? Because the double-hulls of the Typhoon were made of titanium. A Mark 46 could hit it and I doubt the crew would even notice (exaggeration, of course, but you get my point).

My second assignment was to write programs that processed data from a towed sonar array. We were looking for ways to find Typhoon submarines hiding in underwater canyons.

It is funny to me now to see a Typhoon mothballed with tourists crawling all over it. We were honestly scared of this thing.

baybal22• 6 years ago

Typhoons are not made of titanium.

Mark 46 has 50kg of explosives. Not as much as heavy torpedo, but still no submarine in the world will likely be able to continue a mission with damage from it, invariably of whether it had double hull or not. Though, a typhoon would've more likely it simply outran, and outdived it.

ericd2• 6 years ago

The inner hull supposedly is made of titanium, the outer of steel.

"The Soviet Navy would have to “treat and/or derust each Typhoon’s massive steel outer hull and Titanium inner hulls. Russia may have lost the highly expensive industrial capability to work Titanium for submarines.”" - https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-russia-packing-it...

berkut• 6 years ago

Whilst the Akula-class attack subs (not to be confused with NATO-name Akula, the Typhoon SSBN - what this article is about) explicitly moved back to using steel after the Sierra-class used titanium due to cost, I used to work at BAE Systems on Submarine systems / weapons ~17 years ago, and I'd also heard rumours there that the inner hull was Titanium.

Whilst it's not likely that the mission could continue with damage from a Mark 46 (44 KG explosive, btw), it's very likely that the titanium would at least give the submarine a much greater chance of survival than otherwise, as evidenced by the USS Baton Rouge collision in February 1992 with a Sierra-class sub, which suffered much less damage than the American one.

pdoege• 6 years ago

Our strategy was to engage from the rear and use MK48 to pop the shaft seals. In retrospect, the time to penetrate the bastions meant that the show was over by the time we could engage. The MK50 was meant to defeat the Soviet hulls, again, by the time surface/helo assets were in the bastions the world had ended days ago.

zahma• 6 years ago

Well this is ironic. I was just watching The Hunt for Red October in honor of Sean Connery.

harryruhr• 6 years ago

Yes, me too. It's my favourite movie with Connery.

nix23• 6 years ago

Who find's the third Thypoon?

https://www.google.ch/maps/@64.5739821,39.7815937,1702m/data...

What an interesting picture overall it is ;)

spaetzleesser• 6 years ago

Compared to World War 2 or especially World War 1 diesel submarines this looks pretty comfy and not as claustrophobic. I guess it helps to have a nuclear reactor that gives you plenty off energy.

bartread• 6 years ago

So, obviously, this looks hilariously dated in 2020. But even in 1990, when The Hunt for Red October was something of a phenomenon, if you were into computers this looked pretty dated. What I've subsequently come to realise, of course, through friends whose jobs involve maintenance of military equipments, is that most of it is pretty dated. I really start to wonder if, like Google with its servers back in the day, one couldn't build military systems that were capable and credible from off the shelf components, rather than paying billions to the military-industrial complex.

jvanderbot• 6 years ago

They often do. But the long lifetime and extremely focused role of this equipment means it rarely changes.

And I'm not sure the ballistic missile submarine computing market is ripe for disruption, or that less than a few billion is a reasonable cost target for a nuclear powered stealth multi megaton missile silo.

p_l6• 6 years ago

Some of the cost is due to grift.

But a lot of the cost is due to making sure that things work in harder conditions than office/home, that the parts can be repaired quickly, etc. It also usually has to work for longer than typical lifespan targeted by server vendors (3-5 years for normal server, 20-30 years for industrial/military hw)

All of those requirements also mean that there's less made, so you have less exploitation of economies of scale - even if you use COTS chips, the market for, let's say, OpenVPX SBCs with specific connector configuration is pretty small. So even efforts to commoditise parts run into problems like that.

55555• 6 years ago

Looking these really makes me feel uncomfortably claustrophobic. https://pics.livejournal.com/igor113/pic/001dq4y4

dheera• 6 years ago

I always find it fascinating all the random pipes going all over the place. So many potential single points of failure.

rvba2• 6 years ago

The state of this submarine kind of shows the Soviet approach to everything. They spend enormous amounts of money to build those submarines - and then did not even care to take care of rust inside, or to support them.

Supposedly those submarines are not active any more (probably explains the photos), but the typical state of "not caring about things" is a very communist approach. Even in military.

Compare this with the American approach of caring about quality.

I mean, probably better for everyone if their ships go down as often as they go down, but just wanted to make an insight on mentality.

calcifer• 6 years ago

The state of this submarine kind of shows the Soviet approach to everything.

Yeah, no. These two Typhoons have been mothballed for a long time and are in the process of being disassambled.

probably better for everyone if their ships go down as often as they go down

I'm confused, are you talking about American ships?

m0zg• 6 years ago

LOL at the exhortations to properly flush the toilet, not put toilet paper into the toilet, and close the door after using the toilet because "there are people living in the compartment". I can only imagine what things smelled like after 3+ months underwater.

ngcc_hk• 6 years ago

Typhoon class. Know that due to hunt for the red October. Rip Sean Connery.

jaclaz• 6 years ago

Worth a note is how in aeronautics the western countries and the USSR developed an artificial horizon with completely different display (direct vs. indirect):

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/51791/how-is-a-...

https://glance-efis.com/direct-and-indirect-attitude-indicat...

Photos from inside a Typhoon class submarine

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