Nuclear energy can supply a large quantity of energy to support these tasks however, most reactors have complex structures and are expensive. Guo said there is a growing demand in China for “small, high-speed, long-range unmanned underwater vehicles that can be used in reconnaissance, tracking, attack and strategic strike”.īeing nuclear powered, these torpedos could have a massive range They said that the "Poseidon" primarily functions as a strategic weapon, which is not the intended role of their new torpedo. However, the Chinese researchers claimed that using such a weapon may start a nuclear war that would end the world, making the development much more unlikely. For reference, that payload is 100 times more potent than the Hiroshima bomb. Russia's "Poseidon", is a theoretically very dangerous weapon that could destroy a coastal city or a larger area using its onboard two-megaton nuclear weapon. "Thanks to its high flexibility and low cost, this unmanned underwater vehicle equipped with the nuclear power system can be used as a conventional force like an attack nuclear submarine, rather than as a nuclear missile,” he said. In a paper published this month by the peer-reviewed Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems, a publication run by the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, the nation's largest naval contractor, lead scientist Guo Jian from the China Institute of Atomic Energy claimed that there is a fundamental difference between the design and the Russsian "Poseidon". The new torpedo can allegedly be fired from a standard torpedo tube. Not only that, but the scientists said that the new torpedo could be placed into a standard torpedo tube and launched in vast numbers from virtually any submarine or surface warship.Įach torpedo would use a throwaway nuclear reactor to propel it to and maintain its cruising speed of over 30 knots (56 kph or 35 mph) for 200 hours before being dumped to the seafloor and using a battery to power a conventional weapon strike. In contrast to the Russian "Poseidon" crewless submarine, the first known underwater drone propelled by nuclear energy, this new torpedo could be mass-produced with relative ease.
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