Russia's hybrid combat patrol ship aka submarine

Sink or swim, the latest Russian-designed combat patrol ship can operate above or beneath the waves with equal effectiveness. Russia’s prime naval platform designer has produced a new version of a patrol ship that can turn into a submarine at the flick of a switch. The Rubin central design bureau of marine engineering which mainly focuses on submarines first produced a submersible patrol ship a year ago. The 1,000-tonne vessel was called Sentry and looked similar to the Whiskey-class diesel-electric submarine which the Soviet Union built in the early Cold War period. However, the new version of the “border and offshore submersible Sentry” (BOSS) has a futuristic look about it, similar in some ways to the US Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyer. It’s longer and bigger, at 1,300-tonnes, than the first model, is better-armed and has a sharply-featured wave-piercing bow, like the Zumwalt. However, unlike the Zumwalt, the Russian submersible patrol ship can disappear beneath the waves when required, providing an anti-submarine warfare capability both above and below the surface. In a statement, Rubin said the new contours with the wave-cutting forward bow and sloping sides would “reduce rolling motion, increase the ship’s steadiness as a weapons platform and cut radar signature”. Armed with two missile launchers , four torpedo tubes and a close-range automatic gun, the new Sentry has two air-tight hangars to accommodate boats,. It has an operational range of 4,000 miles at a speed of 10 knots (11.5mph). The company said it could accelerate to double that speed. The same company designed the 48,000-tonne Typhoon-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. The Typhoon, now out of service, was the largest submarine ever built in the world. A model of the Typhoon stands as a monument at the Ruben design bureau’s headquarters in St Petersburg. The innovative design for the Russian ship and its twin-role capability is in line with many of Russia’s newest weapon systems which have taken on an exotic character. President Putin unveiled many of the new systems in 2018. He described them as “superoruzhie” (super weapons). They included the Zircon hypersonic ship-launched missile and Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, both nuclear-capable and able to travel well in excess of five times the speed of sound (Mach 5). *A video of a new Chinese submarine which appears to be conventionally-powered and smaller in size than existing submarines has emerged on social media. China has an extensive submarine-building programme. The video of the new submarine shows China is not just focusing on nuclear-powered boats.