Akula-Class Submarine

The Akula class, known in Russian service as Project 971 Shchuka-B, is a class of Soviet, and later Russian, nuclear-powered attack submarines, the lead boat commissioned in 1984, developed as a direct Soviet response to the sound-quieting advances of American attack submarines such as the Los Angeles class, incorporating major improvements in acoustic isolation, including a double-hull design and sound-dampening mounts for internal machinery, that dramatically reduced the boat's underwater noise signature compared with earlier Soviet submarine designs. Armed with torpedoes and, in most boats, vertical or angled launch tubes for anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, the Akula class was designed primarily to hunt enemy submarines and surface ships, and its markedly quieter operation compared with previous Soviet classes narrowed a stealth gap that had favored American and NATO submarines for most of the Cold War. Several improved Akula-class submarines remained in active Russian navy service well into the twenty-first century, continually upgraded, and the class is often cited by Western naval analysts as marking the point at which Soviet submarine quieting technology first became genuinely competitive with its American counterpart.