The Arkhangelsk will now sail north to Sapadnaya Litsa, Russia’s westernmost submarine base on the Kola Peninsula.

“Today is a significant day for the entire Navy,” Commander-in-Chief Admiral Aleksandr Moiseev said at the official ceremony on Friday.

The Arkhangelsk is the fourth of the Yasen-M class built in Severodvinsk. Two are already underway for the Pacific Fleet, while the third, the Kazanbelongs to the Northern Fleet. Including the Yasen-class prototype ship, the Severodvinskthe new Arkhangelsk will be the third of this class to enter service with the Northern Fleet.

Yasen and Yasen-M class are 4th generation multi-purpose nuclear submarines of the Russian Navy.

The Arkhangelsk (K-562) was rolled out of the ship’s hangar in Sevmash at the end of November last year and has spent the last 13 months on sea trials, including navigation and weapons tests in the White Sea and the Barents Sea.

Tsirkon rocket

Admiral Moiseev praised the onboard weapons systems, saying they were “capable of hitting both sea and coastal targets.”

The Yasen-M class can carry Kalibr and Oniks cruise missiles, but more important for the Navy is arming these new submarines with the Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missiles, a key weapon for Russia in the ongoing naval arms race with NATO.

It is not clear whether the Arkhangelsk has yet to test the Tsirkon missile.

A Tsirkon was tested for the first time from the Yasen-class submarine Severodvinsk in October 2021, from a submerged position at a depth of 40 meters in the Barents Sea.

The anti-ship cruise missile Scramjet with a maneuvering wing is said to have an acceleration of up to Mach 9 (nine times the speed of sound) and a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. This means that a launch from Russia’s Bastion Defense Area in the Barents Sea can reach enemy warships virtually anywhere in the Norwegian Sea north of the Arctic Circle.

Although Russia loudly boasts about the Tsirkon missile’s invulnerability to modern air defense, there were reports earlier this year that Ukraine had shot down two of the missiles. These missiles were reportedly fired from land-based launchers.

Soviet-era torpedoes

An important role for the Russian Northern Fleet’s multi-purpose submarines is to hunt down enemy submarines that can threaten the ballistic missile submarines that have the country’s second-strike nuclear weapons capability.

A lengthy article on Thursday in the state-controlled newspaper Izvestia raises questions about torpedo armament.

Yasen-MU boats are currently armed with Soviet-era torpedoes and the new torpedoes have not yet been fully tested.

“… there is a lot to do and something to improve,” writes Izvestia.

It was a Soviet-era torpedo that exploded inside the building in August 2000 Kursk The submarine triggered a major explosion in the torpedo room, which tore off the front of the ship, causing it to sink and killing all 118 people on board.

Six Yasen-M to Zapadnaya Litsa

Construction of the Arkhangelsk began on March 19, 2015 and lasted almost 10 years.

Russia plans to expand its Yasen-M class fleet to 12 ships. Half of them could be stationed in the Northern Fleet. After Arkhangelsk Follow that Perm, Ulyanovsk, Voronezh And Vladivostokall currently under construction at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk.

The Northern Fleet has chosen the piers in Nerpitcha at the submarine base in Zapadnaya Litsa as the home port for the Yasen and Yasen-M class ships. Nerpitcha is located just under 60 kilometers from the border with NATO country Norway and is the westernmost of all naval bases in northern Russia.

called third party Arkhangelsk

Nerpitcha was originally built for the massive Cold War Typhoon submarines that plied Arctic waters in the 1980s and 1990s.

One of the typhoons, TK-17, was also named Arkhangelsk. The first Oscar-class submarine, the K-525, also received his name Arkhangelsk when it operated from 1980 to 2005.