Submarines
US to Install Caterpillar Drive on Nuclear Submarine, Reportedly
It’s 40 years since Tom Clancy wrote ‘The Hunt for Red October’, and now his fiction is about to become a reality
I first read ‘The Hunt for Red October’ soon after it was published and, as Physics grad (and sailor), the idea made great sense to me. It’s taken nearly 50 years to reach the point of a full-scale test installation on USS Montana (SSN 794), a Virginia Class nuclear powered attack submarine, according to Naval News.
The caterpillar drive system (‘magnetohydrodynamic drive’ aka MHD) needs a lot of electrical power, but on a nuclear boat that’s no problem. But there are a couple of issues which struck me as problematical. I’ll get to them a bit later, but first the bones of the report:
The first boat to be fitted with the new propulsion will be the USS Montana (SSN 794). This Virginia Class attack submarine was commissioned into the U.S. Navy in June 2022. Although still a new boat, she has been brought in to Groton, Connecticut, for the modifications.
Spoiler alert: To be fair, I’d finished writing this story when I realised that Naval News published it on 1 April 2024. That could of course be coincidence, but I had a lot of…
