Is Russia Developing Another 100-Megaton Super-Torpedo?

By Michael Peck,The National Interest

In 1961, Andrei Sakharov, the brilliant physicist considered the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, had an idea that made a regular H-bomb look like a firecracker. He proposed a giant submarine-launched torpedo with a 100-megaton nuclear warhead that would have pulverized coastal cities with the titanic force of a tidal wave.

Now, Russia is talking about resurrecting this weapon. Why?

It was on October 30, 1961, that Sakharov’s Tsar Bomba, a 57-megaton monster, was successfully tested in the largest nuclear detonation in history. But even the genius of Sakharov couldn’t solve a basic problem of physics: how do you transport a 27-ton bomb to the target when the bomb is too big to fit in a bomber or the primitive nuclear missiles of the early Cold War?

Sakharov proposed a solution: a torpedo with a 100-megaton warhead. Fired by a submarine at a major port such as New York or Los Angeles, such a warhead would inflict massive damage not just through blast and radiation, but also a giant tidal wave generated by a cataclysmic underwater explosion.

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