China is working on an ultra-fast “supersonic submarine”

The technology was developed by a team of scientists at Harbin Institute of Technology’s Complex Flow and Heat Transfer Lab. Li Fengchen, professor of fluid machinery and engineering, told the South China Morning Post he was ‘very excited by its potential’. The new sub is based on Soviet technology developed during the cold war. Called supercavitation, it envelopes a submerged vessel inside an air bubble to avoid problems caused by water drag. A Soviet supercavitation torpedo called Shakval was able to reach a speed of 370km/h or more – much faster than any other conventional torpedoes. In theory, a supercavitating vessel could reach the speed of sound underwater, or about 5,800km/h, which would reduce the journey time for a transatlantic underwater cruise to less than an hour, and for a transpacific journey to about 100 minutes, according to a report by California Institute of Technology in 2001. The Chinese system constantly ‘showers’ a special liquid membrane on its own surface.