Perry had summoned the analyst and chewed her out — politely but firmly. Exactly how big was the cylinder? Standard photogrammetric techniques could tell her that. What was it made of? Steel? Titanium? If steel, what kind of alloy could it be made of? Was a standard-sized industrial product used for this task, or a custom-built military component? That would help them track down the manufacturer. What could the fittings on the end be used for?
He understood she’d been under tremendous time pressure, but an intelligence analyst’s job, especially right now, was to give the president every scrap of information possible. His job was to fit those scraps together into a coherent hypothesis, if he could, or generate more questions to help refine the analysis if he couldn’t.
Her revised report, delivered the next afternoon, had estimated the cylinder’s dimensions as two meters in diameter and twenty-eight meters long. Fuzzy close-ups of the fittings had identified possible air and hydraulic lines and probable electrical connections. According to the metallurgical experts she’d contacted, the tube was probably constructed from standard structural steel. No special alloys would be needed in this application. The fabrication methods required to construct such a cylinder were equally conventional.
A little disappointed, Perry had been hoping to get clues about the thing by locating the manufacturer, but without some unique feature, that was going to take a while. Still, it was a much better report than the earlier one, and every bit of information could be useful. Everyone said so, anyway.
The dimensions in her report matched his own back-of-the-envelope figures, but they bothered him a little. A Status-6 torpedo was 1.6 meters in diameter. The cylinder was close to two meters. The weapon was twenty-four meters long, while the cylinder was twenty-eight meters.
What was all that extra space for? Conventional twenty-one-inch torpedoes fit neatly in a twenty-one-inch torpedo tube with only a fraction of an inch clearance around it and a foot or two separation from the muzzle door. In fact, the weapon had to fill the space inside the torpedo tube, or it wouldn’t launch properly.
So why did they need the extra half meter in diameter and four meters of additional length? The only thing he’d ever heard of going into a tube with the torpedo was the dispenser that carried some of the guidance wire. The Status-6 was definitely not wire-guided. Was their estimate of the Status-6’s size incorrect? It was possible, but not very likely.
He spent several hours going through everything he had on the Russian wonder weapon, comparing its size to the subs that carried it and the engineering analysis that had been done. There was even a cutaway drawing, based on the now famous November 2015 “leak” of the Status-6, engineered by the Russians.
Perry grunted with satisfaction; earlier analysis still checked out. But that didn’t help him explain what was going on now.
His next stop was the original HUMINT reports that had triggered the creation of the Tensor compartment. It was actually a cluster of three short messages. The first described an improved model of the Status-6 land-attack torpedo. The second mentioned Bolshevik Island and said that they were adapting the weapon for shore-based launch. The third reaffirmed the launch facility location and reiterated that the weapon would be much improved.
But what were the improvements? Perry wished the source had provided more details, but dismissed his feelings of frustration. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for someone to do what the spy did; not just for a moment, or for a short time, but for weeks, months, perhaps even years. Perry knew he couldn’t live with that kind of never-ending risk. That the U.S. knew about this project at all was a miracle.
The spy’s three messages had been decoded, and then translated. The printout that Perry held displayed the original message in Russian, and then repeated it twice, first translated into English, and then a transliteration of the original Cyrillic.
“Improved.” Perry’s Russian was pretty bad, but he could follow along, comparing the English and Russian text. The word for “improved” in Russian was “uluchshen,” and the spy had used that word in the first message. In the third message, though, they’d translated “bolshaya” as “improved.” One of the meanings for bolshaya was “better,” but others included “greater, major, larger, massive,” and “big.” Had the translator been thinking about the first two messages when he worked on the third? Was the improvement a “larger” torpedo?
His mind asked again, But what improvements? The thing didn’t need to go any deeper or faster, and in both cases smaller was better. Its range was already ridiculously long. A bigger warhead, perhaps? Perry thought a twenty-plus megaton blast was quite big enough, thank you very much.
Perry rubbed his eyes; a larger size wasn’t sufficient to justify being called an improvement all by itself. Something had changed, requiring the increased size. And that would, in turn, require a larger launch tube, which meant it wouldn’t fit aboard the Khabarovsk-class subs or Belgorod. He’d just checked both subs’ specifications for the third time. Hell, the torpedo wouldn’t even fit in the missile tubes of the massive Typhoon!
It would take years to design a new submarine to carry the larger torpedoes, and many more years to build them. The new sub design might carry fewer weapons, but it would probably be much larger, and more costly. In that sense, a shore installation would be cheaper, and allow the weapon to be placed in service much more quickly.
Perry sighed. He had to write a daily report on his progress. Luckily, he was supposed to keep it short. DNI Peakes was a busy man.
“It is likely that the weapon to be deployed at the Prima site is larger than the Status-6 torpedo, with approximate dimensions of about 1.9 meters in diameter and 27 meters in length, compared with 1.6 meters and 24 meters for the first weapon. This increase in size may be required by a new payload, since an increase in speed or range is not necessary to accomplish its mission and are inconsistent with the change in dimensions.”
It wasn’t much, and after a moment’s consideration, Perry added, “This does not answer the question of the weapon’s vulnerability when fired from a shore installation. We will continue to search for this, as well as details of possible improvements being made to the Status-6 design.”
Commander Russ Chatham shook his head and laid the draft back on his boss’s desk. “Why do we have to decide what the Navy will say? Isn’t this Public Affairs’s territory?” he complained.
“Public Affairs will say whatever CNO tells them to say,” RADM Mike Sanders replied. “Our intel shop knows the most of anyone in the Navy about this issue. And we have to determine what’s best to say in any case. It’s simpler if we draft the release. I don’t want to brief a bunch of PAO types into a compartment just so they can screw up the story.”
Sanders continued, “Besides, my recommendation is ‘Nothing.’ As far as the rest of the world, and most of the Navy, is concerned, we’re still looking for Toledo.”