Photo used for illustration purposes onlyImagine low-cost nuclear-powered torpedoes that can travel largely
undetected in a swarm across the Pacific Ocean and strike U.S. targets
in about a week.
To a group of researchers in Beijing, that’s not
just a fever dream, it’s a concept they believe they can turn into
reality. And an ambition U.S. State Department officials have been
warning about.
Chinese researchers say they completed a conceptual design for such a weapons system in a paper published this month by the peer-reviewed Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems, a publication run by China’s biggest naval contractor, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported Tuesday.
The torpedo system would use a disposable nuclear reactor to reach and maintain a cruising speed of over 30 knots (35 mph) for 200 hours before dumping the reactor. It would then fall to the seabed. The torpedo would continue to draw power from a battery to launch its conventional (non-nuclear) attack.
It is unclear what kind of targets Guo’s team is considering for this weapon. The SCMP article did not offer any specifics.
While SCMP likened the system to the Russian Poseidon undersea nuclear-powered, nuclear-tipped torpedo-drone, there are major differences, which scientist Guo Jian from the China Institute of Atomic Energy reportedly noted in the Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems paper.
The Poseidon is one of Vladimir Putin’s six so-called ‘super weapons’ highlighted in a fiery address in 2019. Its main job is to strike at coastal installations with little to no warning. It reportedly has an especially dirty nuclear warhead, which means it would not only cause immediate damage, but also contaminate the area with radiation and impede any continued operations or repairs.
Some believe Poseidon would detonate off the coast near large naval installations and/or major population centers and send a wall of irradiated water inland, swamping and contaminating large areas with radioactivity.
Its nuclear propulsion and other design elements would allow it to be launched from thousands of miles away and potentially loiter for long periods on standby before prosecuting an attack or being recalled.
The special missions submarine Belgorod, which was turned over to the Russian Navy earlier this month, carries that torpedo.
A glimpse of the propulsion section of the Status-6/Poseidon nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered torpedo.
By contrast, the Chinese weapon proposed by Guo and his team has a conventional warhead (there is no reason why a nuclear warhead wouldn’t be possible), is small enough to fit in a conventional torpedo tube, and can be produced in far great quantities.
“Thanks to its high flexibility and low cost, this unmanned underwater vehicle equipped with the nuclear power system can be used as a conventional force like an attack nuclear submarine, rather than as a nuclear missile,” he said, according to SCMP.
It would in part meet growing demand in China for “small, high-speed, long-range unmanned underwater vehicles that can be used in reconnaissance, tracking, attack and strategic strike.”
The key to Guo’s system is a low-cost, disposable nuclear reactor that gives off just enough power to propel the torpedo great distances before detaching ahead of the system’s final attack.
To build a new nuclear power system with “mature and simple technology that is easy to use and maintain, inexpensive and suitable for mass production, we need to think out of the box,” Guo said.
Guo’s team “stripped most shielding materials from their reactor, protecting only some critical components from radiation,” SCMP reported.
They also replaced “expensive coatings made with rare earth elements inside the reactor core with cheap materials such as graphite.”
The resulting reactor would generate “more than 1.4 megawatts of heat with less than 8.8lbs of low-concentration uranium fuel.”
The reactor would be so cheaply designed that only about 6% of the generated heat would be converted to electricity to power the torpedo, but that would be more than enough for a one-way trip.
The torpedoes would be powered by disposable nuclear reactors and be able to travel more than 6,000 miles.
“When the manufacturing cost is low enough, even if the nuclear-powered device can only be used once, the overall cost will be low,” the researchers said, according to SCMP. “This in turn stimulates us to make the system simpler and smaller.”
Under the Guo design, a chain reaction would not start until about a half-hour after the torpedo left the launching platform. That makes it safe to handle, because it would not be radioactive until it reached a safe distance from whatever platform launched it.
That chain reaction would happen about 20 times faster than a typical reactor on a nuclear submarine to be able to reach a working temperature of nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit. That would accelerate the torpedo to a cruising speed of around 37 mph.
The researchers estimate the reactor would “be able to operate for up to 400 hours, cruising over 6,200 miles – about the distance from Shanghai to San Francisco.”
It would then separate from the torpedo and fall to the bottom of the deep sea, activating a safety mechanism to kill the remaining chain reaction, they said, according to SCMP. “Even if the hull is broken, the interior is filled with water, and the whole body falls into the wet sand on the seabed, the reactor will not have a critical accident. The safety is ensured.”
The weapons would be designed to be fired from any number of platforms, but especially from China’s growing fleet of submarines.