Lada-class submarine

Lada class, Russian designation Project 677 Lada (Russian: Лада, meaning "Lada", NATO reporting name St. Petersburg) is the class of diesel-electric attack submarine designed by the Russian Rubin Design Bureau. A program to develop a "fourth generation" diesel-electric submarine aimed to produce an improved version of the Project 636 with better acoustic signature, new combat systems and possibly air-independent propulsion. However, in 2019, Alexander Buzakov, the head of the Admiralty Shipyard, indicated that there were no plans to equip the Lada class with an air-independent propulsion system. In July 2022, it was reported that efforts to produce an electrochemical generator capable of making hydrogen from a combination of diesel fuel and oxygen was resuming as the designers signed a new contract in 2019. This was scheduled to be completed by the mid-2020s. In 2023, the decision was taken to decommission and scrap the lead ship of the class, the Sankt Peterburg due to the very high costs of modernizing the submarine.