Russian submarine designer predicts uncrewed future

Argus-D Autonomous Underwater Vehicles docking with Octavis Unmanned Underwater Station | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

One of Russia’s top submarine designers projected a future for naval operations that envisions masses of drones across domains, hosted by motherships and operating in swarms against adversaries. “It is our future,” said the Deputy Director General of Russia’s Rubin Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering, Andrei Baranov, speaking at the Army 2024 defence exhibition held on the outskirts of Moscow in August.

Rubin’s Long Line of Submarines

The first submarine to be built in Russia was the Delfin in 1901 for the Tsarist Imperial Russian Navy when the newly-formed submarine construction commission was given the task.

The navy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, launched a program in the decades following the beginning of the Cold War that would end up delivering the largest fleet of submarines in the world.

Compared to other navies, the Soviet Navy placed a much greater emphasis on sub-surface operational capability over more visible ‘sailing-a-gunboat-to-show-the-flag’ methods of impressing potential adversaries through power projection by means of, for example, aircraft carriers. Arguably, a submarine could leave a far more lasting and singular impression if and when it chose to surface.

While the U.S. built 212 submarines through the Cold War, the USSR constructed 727 boats, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. Soviet priorities were first to be able to control the Atlantic, when the occasion arose, and then to acquire platforms for strategic strike capability.

Typhoon-class SSBN | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

While there was an obvious emphasis on quantity, the Soviet Navy spread out capability across different classes of boats. Soviet designers ended up being highly prolific, spreading their work across classes — SSBN (Sub Surface Ballistic Nuclear or Ballistic Missile Submarines), SSN (Sub Surface Nuclear or Nuclear-Powered Attack Submarines), SSGN (Sub Surface Guided Nuclear or Nuclear-Powered Cruise Missile Submarines), SSK (Sub Surface Hunter-Killer or Diesel-Electric Attack Submarines). Their achievements included the construction of the largest-ever submarines (Typhoon SSBN at 48,000 tons — for context, the INS Vikrant aircraft carrier displaces 43,000 tons), largest cruise missile submarine (Oscar SSGN), fastest submarines (Papa SSGN, Alfa SSN), deepest-diving submarines (Mike SSN) and first titanium-hulled submarines (Mike, Papa, Alfa and Sierra classes of SSN) in the world.

This submarine construction commission eventually became the Rubin Design Bureau, part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, where prominent silhouettes like the Kilo-class (SSK), Lada-class (SSK), Amur-class (SSK), Oscar-class (SSGN), Delta-class (SSBN), Typhoon-class (SSBN), Borei-class (SSBN) of submarines came to form through the Cold War and since.

Borei-class SSBN | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

According to official data, more than a thousand submarines in 123 years have been built to Rubin designs, including more than 900 submarines commissioned by the Russian Navy. A total of 116 submarines designed by Rubin have been exported to 16 countries.

If the fictional Red October with the caterpillar drive from the film based on the Tom Clancy-novel had been real, it is reasonable to assume Rubin would have had something to do with it.

Since the end of the Cold War, economic resources shrank and the promise of rapprochement led to a changed military posture, priorities and requirements. Economics, a revised force structure and recent conflicts are directing the path towards a new kind of fleet.

Uncrewed Future

Submarine designers do not live in a bubble and are keen observers, not only of technical advancements by their competition, but also of the maritime context of emerging strategic scenarios around the world — and the response of navies to these new challenges.

Argus-D Autonomous Underwater Vehicle | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

“Drones are the main weapon,” said Baranov, pointing to the expansion in the deployment of drones of all kinds in various domains in recent conflicts.

Acknowledging the development of platforms like the Boeing Orca XLUUV (Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle), Anduril Ghost Shark AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) and the Northrop Grumman Manta Ray UUV (Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle), he thinks the future is uncrewed. ‘Robotics’, he said, pointing to the Rubin Design Bureau’s own development program for platforms like the Argus, as it unveiled the latest concept of the platform at the exhibition.

Argus-D Autonomous Underwater Vehicle | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

Last year, Rubin showed-off the initial Argus concept at the Army 2023 exhibition. At this edition of the show, Rubin displayed an upgraded version of the Argus concept. Rubin also unveiled the accompanying component, teased last year, that is complimentary to the Argus, called the Octavis Unmanned Underwater Station (UUS).

The Argus is an unmanned submersible, but it represents a system of systems concept designed for virtually indefinite, persistent operations. The Argus AUV is a multi-mission concept for offshore field exploration designed for underwater surveys, monitoring, sentry, search and salvage operations.

Rubin’s new design is called the Argus-D AUV, where “D” stands for “Deployment” or the ability to deploy various payloads like sensors and instruments. The AUV can deploy on the ocean floor scientific instruments to collect data on the ocean acoustic signature, particularly to fetch out the maritime shipping contribution to the acoustic signature of specific ocean areas or to register biological activity.

Four years back, the Rubin-designed ultra deep water AUV Vityaz-D accomplished the feat of conducting the first fully autonomous mission in the Mariana Trench, at a depth of more than 11 kilometres — the deepest point in the oceans. The Argus-D had been developed on the back of technologies demonstrated by the Vityaz-D.

Specifications of the Argus-D Autonomous Underwater Vehicle | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

The Argus-D has a length of 8.9 metres with a diameter of 1 metre, weighs 5.5 tons and can be transported in a standard 40-foot container. Incorporating an obstacle avoidance system, the AUV can go up to a speed of 6 knots (3.0 m/s) with a diving depth of 1 kilometre than can be increased to 3 kilometres. Seabed operations are enabled by forward-looking sonars, Doppler Velocity Log and altimeters. Open architecture allows the Argus-D to be interoperable with other developers’ systems and the design not only allows it to be tailored to customer requirements but also offers easy access to sub-systems and the battery for fast maintenance.

It can carry a detachable payload in a section with dimensions of 2 metres long, 0.55 metres wide and 0.5 metres high while operating independent of a manned mothership with an endurance of about 20 hours at 3 knots (1.5 m/s). An extra Li-ion battery could also be integrated in the payload section.

Octavos Unmanned Underwater Station | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

But for sustained operations and increased, virtually indefinite endurance, Rubin unveiled the Octavis Unmanned Underwater Station concept at Army 2024. The Octavis will rest on the seabed or be anchored with mooring lines at a depth of 500 metres to 1 kilometre. It features docking ports that allow up to three AUVs to recharge batteries and have new mission programs installed while their technical conditions and software are checked or simply park and wait for the next mission. Octavis will also store data collected by the AUVs and transmit it to shore-based control centres or other AUVs. The station is also a sensor in itself and will gather environmental data to monitor the surrounding waters. Octavis is powered by a Li-ion battery, which can be supplemented by external batteries or be recharged by external electric power supplied from the shore, offshore platform or even devices converting ocean energy. A submerged station offers the advantage of allowing AUVs to always be available for operations and eliminates the headaches and risk that accompany the deployment and retrieval of AUVs from surface platforms, especially in bad weather. With no mothership required to be constantly present, mission costs can be expected to shrink per bit of data.

WHALE-3000 Remotely Operated Vehicle | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

And finally, Rubin also showed off its work-class remotely operated unmanned vehicle WHALE-3000 concept, the likes of which will eventually evolve and multiply to build and populate the new uncrewed, sub-surface ecosystem. It can carry out a wide range of tasks at a depth of up to 3 kilometres like fetching equipment from the surface, assembling and installing it. It can stretch a cable and plug it in or snip it, cut and weld pipes and more, under powerful LED lights and high-definition cameras, mostly autonomously.

While all three are civilian systems, Baranov acknowledged that there are obvious military applications as well. “All these underwater systems will be covered by military versions.”

These sub-surface platforms, along with uncrewed platforms in other domains like surface, aerial and land-based drones are headed to eventually becoming components of larger systems or motherships.

“You can easily imagine that the features and possibilities for underwater vehicles are really wide in the military field. Especially if these underwater vehicles are working as a team, in a swarm for one purpose, only. It can be a huge threat for a submarine. And it leaves almost every warship virtually defenceless. It’s much easier to identify the location of a surface warship. Give the command to the drones, underwater drones, for working as a team, as a swarm. And after that they can surround the warship and strike. Even if only one of them can strike. And it will be much cheaper. So the only thing will be how many drones you can operate. How many of them will be in the swarm?” asked Baranov.

There is an irresistible inevitability to this vision at which Baranov grins and nods. “The efficiency of such systems will be really high,” he pointed out, while shrugging at the expense building such systems will involve. “But you see, we have to make sure that this thing works reliably like a Kalashnikov rifle,” he emphasised.

Uncrewed platforms bring with them significant advantages over manned systems. They are simpler to devise because they are not required to sustain life, their operations are more efficient because they are built to specific mission purpose and minimise risk to personnel since they aren’t crewed. These simplifications compound and will eventually allow easier and cheaper construction and production in mass, more efficient and less risky operations, and greater endurance and persistence in the absence of the human element compared to the case for crewed platforms.

And the underlying challenge is to tackle the current asymmetry posed by relatively inexpensive but capable enough weapons being deployed by non-peer, and increasingly non-state adversaries, without resorting to preemptive defensive counter-measures that will not break the bank because they are comparatively more expensive by orders of magnitude.

But such a scenario is still some time away. At the moment, Baranov thinks small submarines capable of launching a variety of cruise missiles are the optimum tool for strike requirements. “Submarines are also taking part in war on land,” he said, referring to the conflict in Ukraine, in which Russian submarines have launched cruise missiles from VLS cells.

Small Submarines with VLS

“Our experience tells us that the submarine is the most effective weapon platform in this situation,” he said, pointing out that because surface warships are visible from satellites, their utility is reduced ‘in such types of war’, ‘because they become targets faster than they can fire on their own.’ “But as of now, you cannot identify the submarine as quickly. So there is a guarantee that it can fire. And that’s why we are offering Amur 950 with vertical launchers. Just imagine a salvo of ten rockets, firing cruise missiles,” said Baranov.

Amur 950 submarine | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

The Amur experience has been an interesting exercise for Rubin. The Amur is the export version to the Russian Navy’s Lada-class or Project 677 submarine. The Amur has evolved into multiple concepts with a variety of capabilities, beginning with the Amur 550, displacing 500 tons to the Amur 1650 with a displacement of around 2000 tons. The Amur 950 that Baranov referenced is a concept that packages 10 VLS (Vertical Launch System) cells for cruise missiles, besides a complement of torpedoes and mines with four 533 mm torpedo tubes, a displacement of 1065 tons, a fully submerged speed of 20 knots, an endurance of 30 days, an endurance of 1000 miles and a submerged cruising range of 300 miles at an economical speed of 3-4 knots.

Amur 950 configuration | Image: Rubin Design Bureau

It is crewed by a complement of only 19 personnel. For context, the Kilo-class (2325-3100 ton) crews 52 personnel and the Scorpene-class (1565-1900 ton) is run by a crew of 32 personnel. The larger Amur 1650 concept includes an Air Independent Propulsion (AIP), developed separately by Rubin. Ironically, the Russian Navy has no requirement for an AIP at this time, given their fleet of nuclear submarines. AIP allows submarines to operate submerged for longer periods than would ordinarily be possible.

Neither the Kilo or Scorpene classes of submarines incorporate VLS cells. While Vertical Launch Systems come with limitations on reloading while underway, the sheer ability to launch a much larger number and much greater variety of missiles than possible from existing torpedo tubes, tailored to targets, make a Vertical Launch System an essential weapons capability for any new submarine. Further, a ten-cell VLS set is an even more significant capability on an Amur 950 crewed by only 19 personnel.

“It’s not like the Americans, who have huge submarines. This is a small submarine and it’s really hard to identify. These small submarines with vertical launchers will be really useful in current and future conflicts,” said Baranov, who thinks sub-surface platforms with their cruise missile capabilities, will become increasingly accepted beyond the U.S. and its allies as the strike platform of choice, and no longer reserved solely for the role of the strike platform of last resort.