Summary and Key Points: The Soviet November-class submarines, first built in the 1950s, were nuclear-powered attack subs intended to devastate American cities with nuclear-tipped weapons.
-This capability represented the first Soviet “Doomsday Machine,” an irrational but enduring concept still echoed in modern Russian military doctrine.
-Today’s Russian military retains this obsession, notably through the Poseidon underwater drone, a nuclear-powered, unmanned successor developed by the same Rubin Design Bureau responsible for the November-class subs.
-The original November subs marked the beginning of Moscow’s longstanding commitment to nuclear retaliation, and now the Poseidon continues this legacy as a “dead hand,” ensuring Russia’s nuclear threat remains credible.
November-Class Submarines: Russia’s Original ‘Doomsday Machine’ Explained
The Project 627 “Kit,” the Russian word for “whale,” became the first-ever series of nuclear-powered submarines in the Soviet Navy (VMF). Fourteen 14 boats were commissioned and operated by the Soviet Navy (VMF) between 1958 and 1990.
The different models within the November-class recorded officially in Soviet naval records are: K-3 Leninskiy Komsomol), Project 627A (K-5, K-8, K-11, K-14, K-21, K-42 Rostovskiy Komsomolets, K-50, K-52, K-115, K-133, K-159, K-181) and Project 645 (K-27). The K designation is Russian for Kreyserskaya podvodnaya lodka (meaning “submarine cruiser”).
Only one of the ships remains intact today, the K-3 hull, which is preserved as a naval museum in the pre-Soviet era capital of St. Petersburg. But even though none of the subs still exist, their mission is still alive and well in today’s increasingly belligerent Russian military.
These subs were created in the immediate post-WWII period. They were built in response to a 1952 requirement for an attack submarine to fire nuclear-tipped torpedoes at coastal American cities while submerged off-shore. Their function was to make American cities uninhabitable by irradiating them rather than leveling them.
As irrational as it might seem—this has remained part of Russian strategic military doctrine for decades and continues to this day.
If there is a bloodline that the November-class subs could lay claim to, it is the designation of being the first weapon system specifically designed for this end-of-the-world mission. It was the first “Doomsday Machine” ever to be produced in the USSR.
Nuclear Obsession
The Kremlin today retains an even more pronounced and seemingly psychotic fixation with destroying American cities by showering them with radiation. It is an obsession that remains on the Russian leadership’s list of priorities even to this day.
Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, either Russian President Vladimir Putin (or one of his surrogates) has surfaced at regular intervals to warn the West of how he plans to use nuclear weapons against the West if he somehow feels appropriately “threatened.”
In the past few years, these threats have escalated as the development of platforms that could carry out this doomsday mission – once the preserve of the November subs – have been steadily feeding Putin’s diatribes about annihilating the West.
These are advanced designs intended to take the place of some of the manned nuclear-powered subs that were designed decades ago to destroy the cities of North America. These almost science-fiction concepts of how to make war in the US have evolved from “comic book-type briefings present to the Fuhrer to real-world systems that have no role in a conventional military that is run according to rational criteria to actual weapons systems with a one-way nuclear mission,” said a Russian colleague with long experience in Moscow’s defense industrial complex.
The Family Line
Originally briefed to Putin almost a decade ago, the most recent of these weapons platforms is an underwater, long-range drone called the Poseidon.
The Poseidon is a nuclear-powered uncrewed underwater vehicle developed by the same Rubin Design Bureau that designed the November-Class subs. This design bureau, based in St. Petersburg, has built over two-thirds of the Russian nuclear submarine fleet.
Those familiar with the recent history of these types of new-generation nuclear drones know that they are a continuation of the “nuclear blackmail” strategy. A “dead hand” that will wipe out the US and its allies long after the Russian command bunkers and other nuclear delivery systems have been wiped out.
The November-class subs began this Alpha-Omega “chain” of platforms designed to destroy America. They were a priority in a way that a regular submarine was not when they were developed.
However, the number of design centers and other defense enterprises responsible for the November subs program showed that it was not just another undersea boat. It was a national “race to the moon” program. The only reason that they were built was to make sure that the USSR could “win” a nuclear war long after it was lost.
Their current-day legacy of these late-1950s subs is that Moscow is still willing to spend billions of dollars building four of these Poseidon-carriers. Today, they represent over a tenth of the future Russian undersea fleet.
This is a testimony to the importance Putin’s regime places on the doomsday torpedo. The same importance that his predecessors had invested in the November-Class subs.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
