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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1134 thread views

Transnational Thursday for October 2, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Fears of disaster as Russian nuclear submarine reports major malfunction in Mediterranean | The Standard

This triggers my submarine autism. To be fair, I'm not blaming you, I'm blaming The Standard (or rather, its headline writer, the article correctly points out the subtleties).

When someone says "nuclear submarine" without any qualifier, it means "nuclear-powered submarine". Though I would usually cut some slack if someone meant "ballistic missile submarine with nuclear weapons".

The Kilo is neither, it's a fast attack diesel-electric submarine. If it had one, which I wouldn't think likely, the Kilo could, in theory, fire a Kalibr cruise missile holding a smallish tactical nuclear warhead. By that token, every single platform that is capable of firing a Tomahawk is nuclear, seeing how they could technically fire a TLAM-N (I think they were officially retired, but I mean, the technical capability is still there, and if any still exist covertly...)

Thanks, mentioned you in the final version

Mmmh, thanks!

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