[Yef]

The Russian super-torpedo:


"In 1997 Russia announced that it had developed a high-speed unguided underwater torpedo, which has no equivalent in the West. Code-named the Shkval or "Squall," the Russian torpedo reportedly travels so fast that no U.S. defense can stop it.

In late 2000, after the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk, new reports began circulating that the Chinese navy had bought the Shkval torpedo.

"The Shkval" stated Richard Fisher, a defense analyst and senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, "was designed to give Soviet subs with less capable sonar the ability to kill U.S. submarines before U.S. wire-guided anti-sub torpedoes could reach their target. The Chinese navy would certainly want to have this kind of advantage over U.S. subs in the future. At the speed that it travels, the Shkval could literally punch a hole in most U.S. ships, with little need for an explosive warhead."

"This torpedo travels at a speed of 200 knots, or five to six times the speed of a normal torpedo, and is especially suited for attacking large ships such as aircraft carriers," Fisher said. "


------------------------

"Pope, an American businessman, was charged by Russian authorities with spying, specifically that he had sought to buy plans for the "ultra-high-speed torpedo."

"Evidence does suggest" said Scientific American, "that both incidents revolved around an amazing and little-reported technology that allows naval weapons and vessels to travel submerged at hundreds of miles per hour – in some cases, faster than the speed of sound in water."

The new technology that allows for these superfast torpedoes "is based on the physical phenomenon of supercavitation."

According to Scientific American, the new generation of torpedoes, some believed capable of carrying nuclear warheads, are surrounded by a "renewable envelope of gas so that the liquid wets very little of the body's surface, thereby drastically reducing the viscous drag" on the torpedo.

The new technology "could mean a quantum leap in naval warfare that is analogous in some ways to the move from prop planes to jets or even to rockets and missiles."