In a ruling that ended an era for Russian sea power, Russia’s powerful Dmitry Donskoy, a Project 941 Akula-class Typhoon heavy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, was retired on February 8, 2023. The Cold War giant has been the backbone of Russian sea power and the country’s strategic heft for over four decades.
The retirement was necessitated by Dmitry Donskoy’s depleted nuclear core. As a Russian Navy source put it, The Dmitry Donskoy could no longer be in service due to its spent nuclear core. The cost of replacing the nuclear core and the sub’s prolonged operational life also wrote its epitaph. The source continued that placing a new unit in place of the nuclear core was deemed as inexpedient due to the high cost of this operation.
The Dmitry Donskoy, ordered on September 29, 1980, and officially launched into service on December 29, 1981, has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in Russia’s Northern Fleet. The ship was built at the Sevmash Shipyard and the prototype of a series of six heavy nuclear-missile-carriers built by the Rubin Central Design Bureau of Marine Engineering. The ship was also named after the Russian historical figure Dmitry Donskoy.
The principal weapons of the world’s largest submarine, Dmitry Donskoy, were once intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) of the D-19 strategic rocket complex. In 2002, the submarine was refurbished under Project 941UM, and since then has been the chief among the sea-based tests of the Bulava ICBM. In a demonstration of power and speed, Dmitry Donskoy conducted an inter-fleet redeployment to the Baltic Sea in summer 2017 and took part in Russia’s Main Naval Parade.
