Kirov-Class Battlecruisers: Nuclear Plus Steam and a Zircon Missile Refit

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

You know, usually when we look back at the 1980s and the Cold War in general, we tend to think of the arms race in terms of looking forward.

SPEAKER_2 (0:07)

Right, yeah. Newer, faster, more futuristic technology.

SPEAKER_1 (0:11)

Exactly. But in the early 1980s, the United States Navy did something that seemed, well, entirely backwards.

SPEAKER_2 (0:17)

Oh, they absolutely did.

SPEAKER_1 (0:18)

Yeah. They looked at their fleet, they looked at the ocean, and they decided they needed to pull their World War II era Iowa-class battleships right out of retirement.

SPEAKER_2 (0:27)

Which, I mean, that is just a massive undertaking. They're talking about spending billions to modernize these ships that were initially designed to fight, you know, the Imperial Japanese Navy.

SPEAKER_1 (0:36)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (0:37)

It was just a massive allocation of resources and manpower.

SPEAKER_1 (0:39)

To put that in perspective for you, they were pouring billions into like 70-year-old hulls. It makes no sense on the surface.

SPEAKER_2 (0:47)

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_1 (0:48)

Why look to the past, right? Well, they did it because the Soviet Union had just put something in the water that was so massively imposing, so heavily armed, that the US literally had to look back to the era of the dreadnoughts to find a hull big enough to counter it.

SPEAKER_2 (1:04)

It was a true shift in the strategic reality of the oceans. The moment those Soviet ships hit the water, the whole calculus of naval warfare just changed overnight.

SPEAKER_1 (1:12)

Yeah, it really did.

To understand how this nautical arms race escalated, welcome to today's Deep Dive. We're unpacking a stack of naval blueprints and historical records on the Soviet Project 1144 Orlan.

SPEAKER_2 (1:25)

Though you probably know it by the reporting name NATO gave the very first ship of its kind.

SPEAKER_1 (1:30)

Right, the Kirov-Class battle cruiser.

SPEAKER_2 (1:32)

Exactly. And before we get into the weapons or the history or the sheer drama surrounding these vessels, we really need to set the stage for you.

SPEAKER_1 (1:41)

Yeah, scale is important here.

SPEAKER_2 (1:43)

Very. When we talk about a Kirov-Class ship, you need to picture the absolute extreme of civil engineering.

These are the largest and heaviest surface combatant warships currently in operation anywhere in the world.

SPEAKER_1 (1:56)

Second in size only to aircraft carriers, right?

SPEAKER_2 (1:59)

Precisely. If you exclude aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, which are essentially just floating airports, these are the biggest traditional warships on earth.

SPEAKER_1 (2:10)

That's wild.

SPEAKER_2 (2:11)

Yeah, they're roughly the size of a World War I battleship, displacing upwards of like 28,000 tons fully loaded. But they're packed with nuclear-era technology.

SPEAKER_1 (2:20)

Which is a terrifying combination.

SPEAKER_2 (2:23)

It really is. The Soviets officially classified them as heavy nuclear-powered guided-missile cruisers.

But Western defense commentators took one look at their size and profile and just started calling them battle cruisers.

SPEAKER_1 (2:36)

You know, the analogy that kept jumping into my head as I was reading through these sources is, well, it's an apex predator.

SPEAKER_2 (2:43)

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_1 (2:43)

Yeah, because in nature, a lot of animals evolve camouflage, right? They want to blend in, stay hidden, kind of strike from the shadows.

SPEAKER_2 (2:50)

Right. Stealth is usually the goal.

SPEAKER_1 (2:52)

Exactly.

But then you have the apex predators, like a great white shark or, I don't know, a grizzly bear. They do not care if you see them.

SPEAKER_2 (3:00)

Not at all.

SPEAKER_1 (3:01)

They're designed not to blend in, but to completely dominate their environment through sheer size and power. And that's the Kirov-Class. It's a nautical apex predator.

SPEAKER_2 (3:10)

That is a highly accurate way to frame it. But, you know, what's fascinating here is that to truly understand why a ship this massive was built in the nuclear age, an era where submarines and aircraft usually reigned supreme, we really have to look at what this predator was actually designed to hunt.

SPEAKER_1 (3:26)

Because its mission actually evolved during the design phase, didn't it? It wasn't always meant to be this specific type of hunter.

SPEAKER_2 (3:33)

No, it wasn't. Initially, the concept for the class was heavily focused on countering submarines.

SPEAKER_1 (3:38)

Okay.

SPEAKER_2 (3:39)

The plan was for these massive ships to carry a really large payload of anti-submarine missiles to hunt down American subs. But as the design process went on, the strategic vision sort of shifted.

SPEAKER_1 (3:51)

They realized subs weren't the only problem.

SPEAKER_2 (3:53)

Right. The Soviets realized their biggest surface threat wasn't just under the water. It was the United States' carrier strike groups.

SPEAKER_1 (4:00)

So they realized hunting a submarine isn't going to cut it when there is a fleet of floating American cities projecting airpower across the entire globe.