China builds worlds largest diesel submarine but almost three times smaller than nuclear US Ohio and seven times smaller than nuclear Russian Typhoon

China’s Qing class submarine displaces 6,628 tons submerged and measuring exactly the length of a football field at one hundred yards long (ninety-two meters), it is by most accounts the largest diesel submarine ever built.

The Type 032 can fire not only long-range cruise missiles, but submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with the capacity to send a nuclear warhead across the ocean.

Only a single Type 032 has been built. It was intended as an affordable testing platform for missile armament. It appears to have replaced the sixties-era Type 031 Golf-class sub used to test the JL-2 ballistic missile. In addition to its crew complement of eighty-eight, it claimed that the Type 032 can carry an additional one hundred “scientists and technicians.” The sub has also reportedly been used to test submarine-launched surface-to-air Missiles and a new underwater escape pods. Some suggest the Type 032 may be applied to deploying undersea drones.

Diesel submarines are about $100-500 million each while nuclear submarines are $2-5 billion each.

The French built an 4,750 ton diesel submarine called the SMX Ocean

The Ohio class is a class of nuclear-powered submarines currently used by the United States Navy. The navy has 18 Ohio-class submarines: 14 ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) and four that were later converted to guided missile submarines (SSGN).

The Ohio-class submarines are the largest submarines (18,750 tonne submerged) ever built for the U.S. Navy. Two classes of the Russian Navy’s submarines have larger total displacements: the Soviet-designed Typhoon-class submarines have more than twice the total displacement (48000 tons submerged) , and Russia’s Borei-class submarines have roughly 25 percent greater displacement (24,000 tons submerged), but the Ohio-class boats carry more missiles than either: 24 Trident missiles per boat, versus 16 missiles for the Borei class (20 for the Borei II) and 20 for the Typhoon class.

The Typhoon is 175 meters long, the Ohio is 170 meters long and the Qing is just over half the length at 92 meters long.

Typhoon is the bottom sub and the Ohio is third from the top

Qing submarine

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