Russia Has One Super Weapon America Can't Seem to Match

Kyle Mizokami

Security,

Think super torpedoes. 

Is there a future for the supercavitating torpedo? The U.S. has been working on such a weapon since 1997, apparently without a deployable weapon. Indeed, the U.S. Navy is currently in the process of upgrading the venerable Mark 48 submarine torpedo for service into the foreseeable future. Then again, the Navy’s requirements were far greater than Shkval’s capabilities, including turning, identifying, and homing in on targets.

In the meantime Russian submarines are the only subs in the world equipped with supercavitating torpedoes, modernized versions of Shval armed with a conventional warhead. Russian industry also offers an export version, Shkval E, for sales abroad. Iran claims to have a supercavitating torpedo of its own it calls Hoot, and which is assumed to be a reverse-engineered Shkval.

In 2004, German defense contractor Diehl-BGT announced the Barracuda, a technology demonstrator torpedo meant to travel up to 194 knots. Barracuda was meant to be launched from submarines and surface vessels, and test models could travel straight and curved paths. However, the program apparently never translated into a marketable weapon.

Imagine the sudden revelation of a weapon that can suddenly go six times faster than its predecessors. The shock of such a breakthrough system would turn an entire field of warfare on its head, as potential adversaries scrambled to deploy countermeasures to a new weapon they are defenseless against. While a lull in great power competition delayed the impact of this new technology, the so-called “supercavitating torpedo” may be about to take the world by storm.

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