Originally Posted by nero1234

Hmmm! Lets see, 13th Redneck is probably to young to remember much about the era of the cold war first hand, but Pale Rider would just about be old enough to remember something of those days. I meant what I said, in America at the time the Soviet Union was routinely building submarines and bicycles out of Titanium, it's use in America was still highly restricted.

The reason you use Titaium for a submarine's hull is simple, the material has the remarkable ability to become stronger under compressive loads, allowing submarines to be built for operation at far greater depths than hulls fabricated from more conventional materials. This allowed Soviet submarines to operated routinely below the thermocline, rendering them vertually immune to detection by surface vessels and other submarines operating above the thermocline. And is, I think the reason America went to all the trouble and significant expense, to lay down it's sea-bottom, submarine detection network of sensors. Forgotten now what it is called. Given some of these Titanium hulled submarines reportedly had a routine operational depth of as deep as 1,000 metres and in the case of at least two classes, are also believed to have been fast enough to outrun American torpedoes. The advent of the Titanium boats was a major design shift in submarine technology.

Incidentally, the Soviet Union could only afford to build Titanium hulled submarines because it operated a closed economy. Like America, with it's now more open economy, Russia cannot now afford to build Titanium hulled submarines and to the best of my knowledge, none have been built post the Soviet era. Although Russia is still improving its submarine designs otherwise and continuing to build ever more advanced submarines. Delude yourself if you will, or simply ignore the facts, but in many areas, Soviet technology was a long way ahead of the American technology of the time. If you want or need other examples, let me know and I'll post you a few.

Fellas, please keep in mind, I'm not doing this for fun, I really believe that Russia is or will re-arm with weapons, that in many cases, will include this power plant type. They have nothing to lose in doing so. What do you think will happen to the world wide market for weapon systems, if they start exporting an uprated T-80UM1 BARS, T-90 or T-95 as part of an integrated system, that includes SPAs and wheeled vehicles, all with common and interchangable power plant parts. And in parallel with this, starts marketing AIP submarines with levels of performance previously only attributable to nuclear powered submarines. We all know how peacetime sales are prioritized, hell the reduced through life costs and logistics imperatives alone, would be adequate to ensure adoption of this equipment, let alone its combat effectivesness.

The hilarious part of all this is, having failed to adopt this technology or even really consider it years ago, America may find itself in the position of having to buy power plant upgrade kits from Russian manufacturers, just to keep it's own equipment competitive. Don't think I'm joking abot this, I'm not. At the very least, the name of the game is keeping up with the competition and if Russia starts marketing this equipment internationally, they will own the world's arms market and equipment of even developing countries, would be otherwise, superior to the American equivalent.
nero1234