Military Tuesday : Supercavitating Torpedoes
I recently read about supercavitating torpedoes being used in fictional near future global conflicts in Dragon’s Fury and Shotgun One and thought that it was a too much of a coincidence to be a fictional weapon so I went Googling and well, this stuff really exists!
The white area depicts the gas bubble surrounding the moving black object. Water resistance against the moving object is redirected away by the gas bubble.
Simply put, supercavitating torpedoes are rocket-propelled torpedoes which create a envelope of gas around the body of the torpedo to significantly reduce water resistance and drag, thus enabling incredible speeds of over 200 knots per hour – nearly 5 or 6(!) times faster than most warships, even new ships like the futuristic-looking USS Independence designed by General Dynamics.
There isn’t much information on the Internet about these ingenious weapons though since the only two types of supercavitating torpedoes in active service seem to be the Shkval/Shkval-II (above) developed by the Russians in the 1970s and an alleged Iranian copy of the Shkval-II.
Surprisingly, the Russians did not intend to use these weapons in the anti-ship role as depicted in the abovementioned novels but only as defense against enemy torpedoes instead. The Shkval probably wouldn’t be practical for attacking enemy warships in real life due to the limited maximum range of around 13 km (the American Mark 48 torpedo while slower, has a more useful maximum range of around 50 km) and the significant noise signature created by the ignition of the rocket motor which would have greatly compromised the launching submarine.
More information about the Shkval at Military Periscope, Articles Extra, World Affairs Board and of course Wikipedia. Or read the novels : Dragon’s Fury and Shotgun One 
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Renders of WWII Battleships from Navyfield : Resurrection of the Steel Fleet
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