Kilo-Class Submarine

The Kilo class, the NATO reporting name for a family of Soviet and later Russian diesel-electric attack submarines, entered service in the late 1980s and was designed for anti-ship and anti-submarine operations in relatively shallow coastal waters as well as open ocean patrol. Its diesel-electric propulsion and hull design earned it a reputation among Western navies for being exceptionally quiet while running on batteries, a quality that led some American observers to nickname it the black hole for how difficult its acoustic signature could be to detect. Beyond service in the Soviet and Russian navies, the class has been widely exported to a large number of foreign navies around the world, making it one of the most widely proliferated modern conventionally powered attack submarine designs and a significant contemporary naval export success for Russian shipbuilding.