Russia: Moscow tested its most advanced submarine, the Arkhangelsk, equipped with Zircon hypersonic missiles

Moscow tested a fifth model of Project 885, the name of its class of “new” submarines, construction of which began more than 30 years ago for the first of them.

It is therefore the turn of the K-525 Arkhangelsk, equipped with weapons that are Russian pride such as the Zircon, a hypersonic missile (which can travel more than five times beyond the speed of sound), to join the ships installed in Russian bases near the Arctic.

One more submarine for the Northern Fleet

Although the Russian navy suffered from the conflict against Ukraine, the country’s naval production did not stop. The Arkhangelsk submarine, under construction since 2015, underwent its first test on June 11, after being launched in November 2023, as Rossiyskaya Gazeta then pointed out.

The latter must come to reinforce the Northern Fleet, whose headquarters is located in Severomorsk. This fleet, which includes a large part of Russian submersibles, is responsible for defending the country’s northern seas and the Arctic. Its deployment, however, is not limited to these areas: the missile cruiser Marshal Oustinov was thus able to be spotted in the Irish Exclusive Economic Zone in 2022, as the Irish Times noted at the time.

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Ukraine – Russia: military planes of the war

Ships from this fleet have received much more attention recently: the frigate Admiral Gorshkov and the nuclear attack submarine Kazan, accompanied by the tanker Pashin and the tugboat Nikolai Chiker, visited Cuba on June 12.

As the Cuban Foreign Ministry quoted by Euronews then indicated, the ships did not carry nuclear weapons and their presence “does not pose a threat to the region“While this deployment is not unusual, with Russia having sent ships to the Caribbean island several times, it comes at a time of heightened tensions with Washington and the West.

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A few months of getting started for the Russian submarine

According to a source in the Russian naval industry cited by TASS, the national news agency, testing of this model will continue.For many months“. The Arkhangelsk submarine is part of the Project 885 ships, or Yassen class according to its designation by NATO, aimed at building new cruise missile-launching submersibles.

Four of them have already been launched in addition to the Arkhangelsk since 2014, while the Perm, Ulyanovsk, Voronezh, Vladivostok and Bratsk are under construction, intended to equip the Northern and Pacific fleets. The Kazan, which sailed to Cuba, is one of the “big brothers” of the Arkhangelsk, launched in 2021.

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The armament of this class is strongly promoted by Russia as proof of its technical and military capabilities. The Arkhangelsk, like other Project 885 ships, is to be equipped with Zircons hypersonic missiles, as well as other Kalibr and Onyx missiles, in addition to Fizik torpedoes, according to Aleksey Rakhmanov, director of the shipbuilding company Russian United Shipbuilding Corporation cited by Ria Novosti in August 2023.

These Zircons were used from February 7, 2024 in Ukraine, according to the Kyiv Scientific-Research Institute for Forensic Examinations, cited by Reuters; the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin confirmed during the same month that they had indeed been used during the war, without providing further details, according to TASS.