A comment following Gessler's fine April 25, 2026 article is:
As well as Kilo square sail characteristics influencing the Arihants, Russia's Delta SSBNs (with similar square sails side on) and hump back would influenced India's Arihant designs.
What INS Arihant (and Arighaat) may look like. Note square sail, planes on sail and hump back (Artwork courtesy H I Sutton at Covert Shores).
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I theorise that Russia has suffered so much financially from Ukraine war sanctions and higher tri-service defence spending that Russia may have traded accelerated SSBN and SSN design secrets to India. Unlike China (1969) India has no record of fighting Russia. So little risk for Russia that its defence tech exports to India would be used against Russia.
In return guaranteed Indian purchases of Russian oil and gas and joint energy projects have been considerable.
Its possible the now 30 year old Russian Borei/Borey SSBN design features will influence India's future full size S5 SSBNs. Also design features of the French and now German SSKs sold to India will influence India's S5 SSBNs.
Possible Borei/Borey SSBN design (Artwork courtesy Mike1979 Russia - Own work at Wikipedia (right sidebar).
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Overt and covert intelligence gathering (proud professions) about current UK, US, Chinese and French SSBN programs, would also influence India's S5 designs.
See previous Submarine Matters articles on the S5s HERE.
2 comments:
Thanks Pete. Some have criticised India’s deals with Russia. But looking at it from India’s viewpoint, given their reality of the threat of China and past cold war difficulties with the USA, I can’t criticise India for ensuring they have a workable independent deterrent. I wish we were equally pragmatic.
This video is a 30 minute inside tour of a French Suffren SSN while in dock. The captain explains many interesting details including crew rotations and operations. It also shows multiple ways they are integrating different type of drones into the subs capabilities. The DDS, originally intended for combat swimmer missions, is obviously very useful in this context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CJ6ZOlmrU8
Thanks Anonymous at 5/10/2026 11:33 AM
See my article later today indicating France likely has insufficient industrial capacity to build unscheduled Suffrens (for Australia) in France nor to oversee Australian Suffren construction at Osborne.
A pity, because, at 6,000 tonnes, the Suffrens are small enough to suit Australia's mission requirements in the straits, shallows and narrows to Australia's north.
Regards Pete
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