Putin: N-capable super porpedo Poseidon's test a success

Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia had tested a Poseidon nuclear-powered super autonomous torpedo and that it had been a great success.

There are few confirmed details about the Poseidon in the public domain but it is essentially an autonomous nuclear-capable torpedo which is capable of triggering radioactive ocean swells to render coastal cities uninhabitable.

Putin, drinking tea with Russian soldiers wounded in the Ukraine war at a hospital in Moscow, said the test had taken place on Tuesday.

"For the first time, we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a carrier submarine, but also to launch the nuclear power unit on which this device passed a certain amount of time," Putin said. "There is nothing like this."

"This is a huge success," Putin said, adding that the power of the Poseidon exceeded the Sarmat intercontinental missile, known as SS-X-29, or simply Satan II.

"The Poseidon's power significantly exceeds the power of even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental range missile," Putin said.

Since announcing the Poseidon and Burevestnik in 2018, Putin has cast them as a response to moves by the United States to build a missile defence shield after Washington in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and to enlarge the NATO military alliance. Reuters