Navy

 

Why the U.S. Navy Never Built Titanium Submarines Like Russia

Project 705 Lira, better known by its NATO designation Alfa, was among the most innovative Soviet submarines of the 1960s. Powered by a technically impressive lead-cooled fast reactor design, the Alfa class registered performance numbers that remain unbeaten to this day. Lira is the fastest serial submarine ever built, second only to the prototype Papa-class submarine. It could also operate at a depth of twenty-two hundred feet, far outmatching even its contemporary NATO counterparts. These innovations were enabled, in no small part, through the Alfa’s revolutionary use of a titanium alloy hull. An extremely light and durable metal, Titanium brings several advantages over a standard steel hull construction. A titanium construction facilitates higher pressure tolerances, allowing a submarine to operate at significantly greater depths. As seen with the Alfa and Papa classes, the comparative lightness of titanium bears the potential for record-breaking speeds. The metal is likewise resistant to corrosion and paramagnetic, meaning that it can be harder to detect by naval vessels using magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD). 

The Alfa’s impressive performance prompted alarm from the U.S. military, which expressed concern that the Alfa travels too fast, and too deep, to be reliably countered by the U.S. Navy’s existing arsenal of anti-submarine torpedoes. But Washington, wisely, did not try to reproduce Soviet advancements in submarine design. Instead, the navy invested in new, high-speed anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapons—such as the Mark 48 Torpedo—that were thought to be capable of catching Alfa boats.