Soviet Union Spent $8 Billion to Match US Polaris Force

By Eleanor Voss · August 18, 2026

Kept secret until 2017, these records track a rapid buildup of 16-tube ballistic missile boats designed to place the United States under a permanent nuclear shadow.

The residents of the United States lived under a nuclear shadow cast by 16-tube ballistic missile submarines they could not see. The cost of this invisibility was an estimated $8 billion in Soviet investment to ensure that no American first strike could ever be final.

An October 1968 intelligence report from the CIA, marked TOP SECRET and held from public view until 2017, details the hurried expansion of the Soviet Y-class submarine program. The agency’s analysts were tracking a shift in production efficiency that threatened to accelerate the Soviet Union's reach. The report indicates that production at the Severodvinsk shipyard was expected to reach six hulls per year by 1969, potentially bringing a fleet of 35 to 50 units into service by 1975.

Two Years to Build

The speed of this buildup was a matter of industrial optimization. For previous nuclear programs, the Soviets required three years to assemble and outfit a boat. By 1968, that cycle had dropped to two years—16 months in the construction hall and eight months at the fitting-out quay.

This acceleration was not the result of a miracle, but of specific facility upgrades. The report notes that between 1963 and 1965, the Soviets implemented a "30-percent increase in subassembly space" and installed a "new, heavy-duty transverser" to move hull sections. These changes allowed for larger, more completely fitted sections to be produced before they ever reached the main hall.

At Severodvinsk, the layout was reorganized. While it was previously believed that six building ways were in use, the CIA determined that only four were being utilized for the Y-class. The increased spacing was necessary to accommodate the "large stern planes" of the new design. With each way capable of holding two hulls end-to-end, eight units could be under construction simultaneously.

Komosomol'sk Docks

The report raises the possibility that a second shipyard was involved in the program. Intelligence suggested that the Komosomol'sk yard was building Y-class hulls, a claim supported by the sighting of a new submarine dock. This dock was described as "the largest ever seen in the USSR," capable of accommodating boats up to 490 feet long and 50 feet wide.

Because of the shallow waters of the Amur River, the Soviets relied on transporter docks to move submarines to the delivery base at Petrovka. The report concludes that the only known class of submarine requiring a transporter dock of that specific size was the Y-class. If Komosomol'sk were indeed in production, the Soviets could have reached their force goals a full year sooner than if they had relied on Severodvinsk alone.

$8 Billion in Equivalent Terms

The financial scale of the program was staggering. A force of 50 Y-class submarines would have made it the most expensive submarine program the Soviets had ever attempted. The report estimates the procurement costs alone at "$5 billion to $6 billion measured in equivalent US terms," with an additional $2 billion to $3 billion for missiles and associated systems.

This expenditure represented nearly half of all estimated average annual procurement for all Soviet submarines between 1968 and 1977. The objective was strategic parity. The CIA analysts calculated that a force of 35 Y-class boats would give the Soviets roughly the same number of launchers as the US Polaris force—what the report calls their "minimum force goal."

To achieve true comparability in terms of launchers continuously on station, however, the Soviets would have needed 50 units to compensate for the vast distances between their bases and the patrol areas off the American coast. The report predicts that two-thirds of this force would be based in the Northern Fleet, specifically at Guba Sayda and Guba Litsa, while the remainder would be deployed to the Pacific.

The transition to this new class was not seamless. The report observes that the first Y-class unit, delivered to the Kola Peninsula in late 1967, and a second unit, returned to the launch basin at Severodvinsk in mid-May. The CIA noted that "it is not known why either of these units returned," though it acknowledged that difficulties were to be expected in any new program.