President Vladimir Putin says that Russia successfully tested one of its Poseidon nuclear-powered, nuclear-tipped, ultra-long-endurance torpedoes yesterday. The Russian leader’s revelation comes just two days after the announcement of a first long-range test for the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, as you can read about here, and is part of a wider pattern of recent strategic signaling by the Kremlin.
Of the Poseidon test, Putin said: “For the first time, we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a carrier submarine, but also to launch the nuclear power unit on which this device passed a certain amount of time.” The Russian president made the claims at a hospital in Moscow, while taking tea and cakes with Russian soldiers wounded in the war in Ukraine.
“There is nothing like this,” Putin said of the Poseidon, also known as the 2M39 Status-6, which was one of six ‘super weapons’ that the Russian president officially revealed during an address in 2018. These also included the Burevestnik and different hypersonic weapons.
Putin said that Poseidon is a more powerful weapon than “even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental-range missile,” another one of the weapons highlighted back in his 2018 address. Known to NATO as the SS-X-29, this heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has been developed to replace the Cold War-era R-36M (SS-18 Satan).
In contrast to the Sarmat, the Poseidon represents an entirely new class of weapon, with capabilities falling somewhere between a torpedo and an uncrewed underwater vessel (UUV), and with the intent to carry a nuclear warhead.
The Poseidon seems to have first emerged publicly in 2015, when Russian television broadcasts caught a glimpse of it in a briefing book while covering an otherwise mundane meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and representatives of the country’s defense industries. At the time, it was shown on the chart as an “autonomous underwater vehicle.”
Firm details relating to Poseidon’s specifications and performance are almost non-existent.
Russian media reports that each torpedo is around 66 feet, roughly six feet in diameter, and weighs 110 tons. Analysts have previously assessed it as having a range of 6,200 miles, and there have been some claims that it has a speed of around 100 knots, although this may well be an exaggeration. In the past, arms control experts have suggested that Poseidon is powered by a liquid-metal-cooled reactor and armed with a two-megaton warhead.
It is assumed that the primary mission of the Poseidon is to strike coastal installations with little to no warning. There have been various reports that it’s armed with an especially ‘dirty’ warhead, which would ensure not only the usual thermonuclear destruction but also spread radioactive contamination over a wide area. There have also been accounts suggesting that it could potentially be detonated further out to sea to create a kind of radioactive tsunami that could bring even more destruction and contamination to a wider coastal area, although the accuracy of these reports is debatable.
Exactly how it is intended to be used in wartime is somewhat unclear, but these assumed characteristics have fueled media descriptions of the Poseidon as a ‘super torpedo’ or ‘doomsday weapon.’
However, with its nuclear propulsion, the weapon should have the ability to cruise around the oceans for extremely long periods before unleashing a surprise attack. This is especially concerning, since it would make it difficult to defend against. Like the Burevestnik, if perfected, it would provide Russia with a strategic nuclear option that avoids existing missile defense systems.
It would also potentially give Russia a ‘second strike’ capability that could be argued is more resilient than submarine-launched ballistic missiles, should one of its enemies try to paralyze its strategic nuclear forces in a first-strike scenario.
The initial launch platform for the Poseidon is understood to be the Russian Navy’s shadowy Project 09852 Belgorod, the world’s longest submarine.
The Belgorod — also known as K-329 — entered service with the Russian Navy in 2022. It was first launched as an Oscar II class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine before being heavily reworked, including adding the capacity to carry six Poseidon torpedoes.
In the past, Russia has described the Belgorod as a “research” vessel able to conduct “diverse scientific expeditions and rescue operations in the most remote areas of the world ocean.” More accurately, this submarine was schemed as a ‘mother ship’ that can deploy a variety of deep-sea drones, a deep-diving nuclear-powered minisub, a submersible nuclear powerplant to power an undersea sensor network — as well as the Poseidon.
Ultimately, Russia plans to put three Project 09852 submarines into service. Beyond that, it remains possible that other platforms, too, might deploy the Poseidon, including surface vessels.
There have been announcements of previous Poseidon tests.
A Russian Ministry of Defense video from February 2019, seen below, purportedly showed part of an underwater test of the weapon.
In the summer of 2021, satellite imagery appeared that seemed to show a Poseidon test round, or perhaps a surrogate round of similar dimensions, aboard the special-purpose ship, Akademik Aleksandrov, at Severodvinsk on the White Sea, suggesting a new round of at-sea trials of the torpedo.
In January 2023, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported a series of “throw tests” that it claimed involved mock-ups of the Poseidon, launched from the Belgorod. These likely involved ejection tests of the Poseidon, in which test rounds would have been deployed from the launcher and likely retrieved by a special-purpose vessel afterward, without powering up the reactor.
Only days after that, TASS reported that “the first batch of Poseidon ammunition has been manufactured” for the Belgorod and will be delivered “soon.”
That same report said that trials had already been completed of various components related to the Poseidon, including its nuclear powerplant — Putin’s comments today suggest that earlier tests didn’t involve the powerplant being activated during at-sea launches.
Presuming that the Russian media claims about the delivery of the first production examples of the Poseidon were correct, then the timing of yesterday’s test, billed as the most extensive yet, would seem to tally.
On the other hand, there has so far been no independent verification that the test occurred, and there don’t appear to be very many obvious signs of a Poseidon test yesterday or recently. These might have been expected to include movements of Russian support and monitoring vessels, as well as NATO intelligence-gathering assets, including ships and aircraft. Potentially related, however, was the presence of six unidentified ships off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in northern Russia, situated in the Arctic Ocean, and used for many previous weapons tests.
Putting aside the details of the claimed test, it is notable that it was announced today, two days after the announcement of the Burevestnik test, and a week after Russia began its annual strategic nuclear drills.
This flurry of activity and the explicit nature of the related announcements would appear to be tailored to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tougher stance on Russia, as well as his own more bellicose rhetoric.
Regarding Putin’s comments on the Burevestnik test, Trump said: “I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying,” and called upon the Russian leader to end the war in Ukraine “instead of testing missiles.”
Trump has previously described Russia as a “paper tiger,” due to the slow progress its armed forces are making in Ukraine.
For Putin, meanwhile, tests of high-profile weapons like the Poseidon and Burevestnik are intended to send a clear message to the West that it won’t bow to pressure, especially over the conflict in Ukraine.
The tests should also be seen in the context of nuclear arms control discussions, with these new classes of weapons having been described by Putin as part of the response to the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as well as to NATO’s eastern enlargement.
While other parts of Russia’s military are struggling in the face of the war in Ukraine, crippling international sanctions, and broader economic pressures, strategic weapons programs have generally tended to receive priority. They are also seen as key to projecting Russia’s status as a global military power.
Like the Burevestnik, the Poseidon promises to be a highly versatile and lethal weapon, provided it can successfully complete its development and be fielded. Until then, further details of these mysterious programs are likely to be hard to come by, although, given the prevailing geopolitical situation, there is every sign they will be increasingly used to underscore the potency of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal.
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