In order for an operator to control the drone, it would have to stay within range of some kind of control tower. The Poseidon's tube is thought to contain a nuclear reactor theoretically giving the drone an unlimited range if travelling on a pre-set course to its target. What is known with certainty is that the Poseidon is the biggest torpedo ever built The 184m (604ft) Belgorod submarine is the largest sub built in 30 years and is said to be able to be armed with six Poseidon nuclear torpedo drones. The torpedo would then be launched from the 30,000 Belgorod submarine and travel remotely towards the coastlines before detonating and causing a huge explosion. Thornton explains that the Poseidon, which is made up a 65ft tube that is almost 6ft in diameter, would travel on a 'doomsday' Russian submarine to waters off the UK or US coastlines - a journey that would take a few days. 'We would certainly see large movements of water locally - though that would probably be no less relevant than the heat and blast damage of the burst.' 'It would certainly move a large volume of water, though whether it though whether it would create a genuine tsunami on the scale we often see in the Pacific Ocean is improbable,' James Rogers director of research at the Council on Geostrategy, tells MailOnline. I just think physically that it just isn't possible to do that,' says Futter. 'It would have to be a phenomenally massive nuclear blast to create a tidal wave that would cover the whole UK. Last year, Russian propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, a man often known as 'Putin's mouthpiece', urged Putin to wipe the UK off the map with the Poseidon underwater drone while standing in front of a background graphic showing the UK being erased by a giant wave.įootage shows military officials overseeing the test launch of Poseidon, which can supposedly be launched from a submarineīut while Putin's propagandists have claimed the Poseidon would destroy the UK with 1,000ft waves the size of the Eiffel Tower, the military experts disagree. 'And the same wave might kill everyone in all channel ports in the UK and France - and maybe even as far as Rotterdam.' It would wipe out the city,' Thornton says. 'But the wave, if it it swamped London, would kill everyone there. Thornton says that if Russia launched the Poseidon from a submarine in the middle of the North Sea, it 'would create a fairly 'small' tsunami'. He explains that the tidal wave would be bigger if Poseidon was launched in deeper waters. Thornton says that if the Poseidon exploded just off the coast of south-east England, thousands of people along the coast could be killed from the nuclear explosion itself. Rod Thornton, a security expert at King's College London, says that the Poseidon torpedo would 'wipe out' any cities close to the explosion, whether it be London or New York in the US. 'The immediate worry wouldn't be about radiation because a huge number of people would killed by the blast, shockwave or burns, first.'įutter added: 'It's possible that it would leave the Thames irradiated, but there'd be so few people left alive in central London that it wouldn't really make a great deal of difference.'ĭr. The reality is that a large megaton blast, even in the water, would be very destructive. 'If a large nuclear device were detonated in or near that Thames estuary, the tide in the Thames could surge towards buildings and millions of people could potentially die in the blast. If Russia launched the Poseidon from its 'doomsday' submarine and the torpedo exploded in the Thames estuary, for instance, a tidal wave would erupt from the water's surface and destroy London, the academics say. While the experts deny Russia's claims that Poseidon would result in such monstrously high 1,000ft waves - around the height of the Eiffel Tower - or that it would destroy the entire country, they say that the effects of such a nuclear strike would still be 'devastating'. Just yesterday, retired Russian general Yevgeny Buzhinsky urged Putin to launch Poseidon - still said to be in testing - that he said would destroy Britain.Īnd now, international military experts have warned that Putin's underwater torpedo could indeed destroy the UK's coastal cities, cause radioactive floods and kill millions of people in London. Since Putin invaded Ukraine, his propagandists have continued to threaten the UK with a nuclear holocaust - and the rhetoric has continued to escalate in recent months. This is the chilling image conjured by Russia's ranting propagandists as they boast of the devastating power of Putin's most fearsome weapon - an underwater doomsday torpedo named Poseidon. A towering 1,000ft radioactive tsunami crashes into British shores pulverising everything in sight and reducing entire cities to desolate wastelands.
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