ST. PETERSBURG, July 10. /TASS/: The outlook of future submarines will radically change compared to underwater cruisers operational today, Scientific Head of the Krylov State Research Center Valery Polovinkin told TASS at the St. Petersburg international maritime defense show on Wednesday.
‘Submarines of the future will have contours fundamentally different from submarines operational today. Perhaps, they will even look like flying saucers. And, of course, they will be crewless," he said, replying to a question about whether the Center was carrying out work to develop conceptual projects of next-generation submarines.
The Center’s staff recently held a session of the scientific council where the doors were open for fantasy, he said. "At this session, specialists of one of our department proposed versions of fundamentally new hull contours," the researcher said.
"Today the possibilities of further noise reduction and stealth provision have reached a certain threshold when traditional forms will not yield any tangible results from the viewpoint of any further engineering effort," he noted.
As the researcher recalled, already during the Soviet period, then-Chief Designer and Head of the St. Petersburg-based Malakhit Design Bureau of Marine Engineering Georgy Chernyshoyv and then-Chief Designer of strategic nuclear-powered underwater cruisers Yevgeny Kovalyov portrayed the contours of submarines in the form of flying saucers and in other shapes.
"That is, in principle, today the world is on the threshold of departing from the traditional contours of submarines. We are not staying aside from this process. And, of course, we have some developments but they are still undergoing the stage of conceptualization," the researcher stressed.
