Northern Fleet's newest Yasen-M class submarine will be based 60 km from NATO Norway
The Arkhangelsk will now sail north to Zapadnaya Litsa, Russia's westernmost submarine base on the Kola Peninsula.
“Today is a significant day for the entire Navy,” Commander-in-Chief Admiral Aleksandr Moiseev said at the official ceremony that took place on Friday.
The Arkhangelsk is the forth of the Yasen-M class built in Severodvinsk. Two are already sailing for the Pacific Fleet, while the third, the Kazan, belongs to the Northern Fleet. Including the prototype vessel of the Yasen class, the Severodvinsk, the new Arkhangelsk will be the third of the class deployed with the Northern Fleet.
Yasen and Yasen-M class are 4th generation multipurpose nuclear-powered submarines in the Russia navy.
The Arkhangelsk (K-562) was rolled out of the ship hall at Sevmash in late November last year and has spent the last 13 months on sea trials, including navigation and weapons testings in the White Sea and Barents Sea.
Tsirkon missile
Admiral Moiseev praised the onboard weapons systems and said they are “capable of hitting both sea and coast targets.”
The Yasen-M class can carry Kalibr and Oniks cruise missiles, but more important for the navy is arming these new submarines with the Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missiles, a weapon key for Russia in the ongoing naval arms race with NATO.
It is not clear if the Arkhangelsk has tested the Tsirkon missile yet.
A Tsirkon was first time tested from the Yasen-class submarine Severodvinsk in October 2021, from a submerged position at a depth of 40 meters in the Barents Sea.
The scramjet maneuvering wing anti-ship cruise missile is said to be capable of accelerating up to Mach 9 (nine times the speed of sound) and has a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. That means a launch from inside Russia’s bastion defense area in the Barents Sea can reach enemy warships practically anywhere in the part of the Norwegian Sea north of the Arctic Circle.
Although Russia is bragging loudly about the Tsirkon missile's invulnerability to modern air-defenses, reports came earlier this year that Ukraine had shot-down two of the missiles. Those missiles were allegedly launched from land-based launchers.
Soviet era torpedoes
An important role for the Russian Northern Fleet's multi-purpose submarines is hunting for enemy submarines that can threaten the ballistic missile submarines sailing with the country's second-strike nuclear weapons capability.
In a longer article on Thursday in state-controlleed Izvestia newspaper, questions are asked about the torpedo armament.
Yasen-M submarines are currently armed with torpedoes from Soviet times and the new torpedoes have not yet been fully tested.
"... there is work to do, something to improve," Izvestia writes.
It was a Soviet era torpedo that in August 2000 exploded inside the Kursk submarine, triggering a larger explosion in the torpedo compartment blowing off the front of the vessel so it sank, killing all 118 onboard.
Six Yasen-M to Zapadnaya Litsa
Construction of the Arkhangelsk started on March 19, 2015 and took nearly 10 years.
Russia is planning to expand its fleet of the Yasen-M class to 12 vessels. Half of them could be based in the Northern Fleet. After Arkhangelsk follow the Perm, Ulyanovsk, Voronezh and Vladivostok, all currently under construction at the Sevmash yard in Severodvinsk.
The Northern Fleet has chosen the piers in Nerpitcha at the submarine base in Zapadnaya Litsa as home port for the Yasen and Yasen-M class vessels. Located a short 60 kilometers from the border to NATO country Norway, Nerpitcha is the westernmost of all naval bases in northern Russia.
Third named Arkhangelsk
Nerpitcha was originally built for the Cold War giant Typhoon submarines sailing the Arctic waters in the 1980s and 1990s.
One of the Typhoons, the TK-17 was also named Arkhangelsk. The first Oscar-class submarine, the K-525, was also named Arkhangelsk when she was in operation from 1980 to 2005.
