Titanium Submarines: Gamechanger, Not ‘Made in the USA’ Submarines, Built in Russia

What you need to know: In the 1960s, the Soviet Union unveiled the Alfa-class submarines, revolutionary ships built with titanium hulls that enabled unparalleled speed and deep-diving capabilities.

-These submarines, which could reach a speed of 41 knots and dive to depths of 600 meters, worried American defense planners because of their advanced design and the perceived inability of American torpedoes to counter them.

-While the US Navy considered using titanium for its own submarines, high costs and manufacturing challenges forced a different approach. Instead, in the 1970s the Navy developed the MK 48 torpedo, designed to destroy deep-diving Soviet nuclear submarines such as the Alfa class.

Titanium Submarines: The Soviet Edge in Cold War Undersea Warfare

In the 1960s, the arms race between the US and the USSR reached a peak.

The drive to develop the most advanced military platforms culminated in the introduction of a variety of Cold War-era platforms that are still respected today. From airframes and submarines to battle tanks and air defense systems, new technologies began to push the boundaries of innovation.

The Soviets believed that using titanium to build submarines would give them an edge over the Americans. However, because titanium was more expensive and difficult for the US to obtain, its own Navy never followed suit in using this material to build submarines.

Meet the titanium submarines of the Alfa class

The Soviet Union’s Project 705 Lira class became the first submarine to feature titanium on the hull.

This revolutionary approach paved the way for similar construction of future USSR ships. These nuclear-powered attack submarines, designated ‘Alpha’ by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), were powered by a technically advanced, lead-cooled, fast reactor design.

This layout significantly reduced the size of the reactor, keeping the overall vessel size to a minimum. The Alpha submarines were the fastest of their kind ever built. These formidable ships managed to reach a top speed of 41 knots.

Outlining the pros and cons of titanium:

Although titanium is more expensive than steel and other metals, it has some advantages. Titanium alloy is generally stronger than steel and less corrosive in salt water. In terms of submarine performance, titanium is better suited to handle the increased pressure during deep dives up to 600 meters below sea level.

Its high specific strength, non-magnetic properties and superior corrosion resistance make it the ideal alloy for submarines.

When the Alfa-class submarines entered service in the Soviet Navy, Washington immediately became concerned about their high speed and deep-diving capabilities. The Alfa’s capabilities were so advanced that they may not have been reliably countered by the U.S. Navy’s arsenal of anti-submarine torpedoes. Initially, the service toyed with the idea of ​​building future submarines with a titanium alloy.

However, the expensive cost of the metal and its limited presence in the US proved too much of a challenge for the agency.

Other shortcomings of using titanium have been outlined by Mark Episkopos: “Titanium panels are more difficult to bend into shape, especially on the scale of military submarines. To be successfully manipulated, titanium had to be processed in purpose-built, argon-infused warehouses by trained welders equipped with an external supply of oxygen. A costly and time-consuming trial and error process reconfirmed that titanium is subject to hydrogen embrittlement at higher temperatures, potentially causing design imperfections that could compromise the structural integrity of the submarine.”

Instead, the Navy prioritized improving its own undersea warfare to better counter the titanium-designed Soviet submarines. The heavyweight torpedo MK 48 was developed in the early 1970s and was specifically designed to sink deep-diving nuclear-powered submarines, in addition to powerful surface ships. The advanced weapon replaced the earlier Mk-37, Mk-16 and Mk-14 torpedoes as the primary weapon of U.S. Navy submarines.

About the Author: Maya Carlin

Maya Carlin, National Security Writer at The National Interest, is an analyst at the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has had bylines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

Image credits: Creative Commons.