At 178 meters, the Belgorod is the longest submarine in the ocean today – longer than Russia’s 175-metre Typhoon-class and U.S.’s 171-metre Ohio-class.
Experts say its design is a modified version of Russia's Oscar II class guided-missile submarines, made longer with the aim to eventually accommodate the Poseidon, the world’s largest torpedo.
One of Vladimir Putin’s six so-called “super weapons” highlighted in a fiery address in 2019, Poseidon’s 100-megaton warhead could devastate the U.S. coast with a massive tsunami and intense radiation. The Soviet “Tsar Bomba,” the biggest nuclear device ever detonated, was 58 megatons.
The Belgorod could set the stage for a return to scenes of the Cold War under the ocean in the next decade, with U.S. and Russian subs tracking and hunting each other in tense face-offs, CNN reports.
