Oldest Russian Black Sea Fleet Submarine Back to the Sea after 8 Year-Upgrades

The Black Sea Fleet’s oldest submarine Alrosa is back the sea for the first time in over eight years for shipbuilders’ sea trials after its repairs and upgrade.

“The submarine has deployed [to the sea from the Sevastopol Bay]. For the first time over eight years, it will be tested in various modes of operation and must prove its ability to operate according to its designation,” the Fleet’s 13th Ship Repair Plant in Sevastopol, Crimea, told government-owned TASS on Tuesday.

Alrosa is now armed with Kalibr cruise missiles

Alrosa is a sub-variant of the Project 877 or Kilo-class diesel-electric boats.

A military source in Sevastopol revealed earlier that the submarine had been upgraded to carry 3M14 Kalibr subsonic cruise missiles. The Kalibr is widely analogous to the RGM-109 Tomahawk and is thought to have a range of between 930 and 1,550 miles, carrying a high-explosive warhead weighing 990 pounds.

Alrosa was built at the Krasnoye Sormovo Shipyard in the city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union and belonged to the experimental Project 877V. What’s unusual about the Alrosa is its propulsion system. While the standard Kilo-class diesel-electric boats are driven by a six- or seven-bladed propeller, the Alrosa has a pump-jet propulsor. It offers an array of advantages over propellers, above all the ability to reach higher speeds without noisy cavitation — this means they can transit long distances around much more stealthily. Pump-jets boats are nicknamed “black holes” by the Russians due to their noise-suppressing features.

Pump-jets are also more efficient across most of a submarine’s performance envelope and have particular advantages in shallow water, as in the Black Sea. However, pump-jets are heavy, costlier, and more complex than a propeller.

They have found recent use on some of the Royal Navy’s Trafalgar-class and later the U.S. Navy’s Seawolf-class and Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines, and many other subsequent classes.

Soon after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Alrosa remained Russia’s sole combat-fit submarine in the Black Sea.

It was reported in early May that the submarine’s repairs were over and the Alrosa had acquired new combat and technical capabilities that "put the Alrosa on a par with six subs that had arrived for the Black Sea Fleet in recent years.”