Captain Potemkin and the 1970 Blueprint for Hunting Nuclear Subs

By Harlan Pryce · September 14, 2026

Kept secret for 44 years, a CIA report tracks a Soviet plan to use ekranoplans to trap nuclear submarines—while Langley obsessed over the leak that provided the text.

The crew of a nuclear submarine operates in a state of permanent, claustrophobic tension, knowing that the only thing separating them from a depth charge is the silence of the deep. In 1970, a Soviet naval theorist proposed a way to shatter that silence using machines that flew just five meters above the waves, turning the ocean's surface into a hunting ground where stealth was no longer a shield.

This was the nightmare captured in a 1973 memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence. The record is a translation of an article from the SECRET version of Military Thought, a theoretical journal published by the USSR Ministry of Defense—the government body responsible for supervising the country's armed forces. The author was Captain First Rank A. Potemkin, a Candidate of Naval Sciences who had been associated with the Military and Political Academy i/n Lenin, an institution providing advanced training to political officers, as early as 1959. Potemkin’s goal was not merely tactical; it was an attempt to solve the fundamental problem of the Cold War at sea: how to find and kill a nuclear submarine in the vast, remote reaches of the ocean before it could launch its payload.

Sprinting at Five Meters

Potemkin’s solution relied on ground-effect vehicles (GEVs), known in the Soviet Union as ekranoplans. According to the public record, these are hybrid surface vehicles and aircraft that generate minimal lift and ground effect to reduce aerodynamic drag, allowing them to skim the water's surface. Potemkin argues that because multipurpose nuclear submarines are "comparatively slow" and their deployment takes "considerable time," they are vulnerable to high-speed platforms that can reach remote areas quickly.

He proposes a fleet of amphibian aircraft and ekranoplans equipped with "the longest range and most effective antisubmarine weapons," including remote-controlled torpedoes and nuclear charges. To find the subs, Potemkin suggests using the "explosive" sound method of locating targets—which the record identifies as a U.S. "Julie" type system. This involves firing three charges to explode at designated depths and calculating the time it takes for the sound to reflect off a target.

Potemkin's vision was a coordinated swarm. He argues that "the widespread introduction of antisubmarine amphibian forces will permit intensive group searches of submarines to be conducted in the broad expanses of the ocean in relatively short periods of time." He specifically notes the advantage of flying at altitudes of two to five meters to "successfully circumvent enemy air defense counteraction, especially fighters." By hugging the waves, these hunters could slip under the radar of NATO aircraft, arriving over a submarine's position before the alarm could be raised.

The Ghost of a Top Secret Issue

While Potemkin was dreaming of high-speed naval hunters, the CIA was obsessing over how they got the paper in their hands. The 1973 memorandum is an "Intelligence Information Special Report," and it carries a warning that is far more urgent than the naval theory it contains: "Because the source of this report is extremely sensitive, this document should be handled on a strict need-to-know basis."

Langley's interest in Military Thought was not just academic. The record establishes that the journal was published by the USSR Ministry of Defense in three versions: TOP SECRET, SECRET, and RESTRICTED. The CIA had obtained the SECRET version, which was distributed down to the level of division commanders. However, the analyst's note is haunted by what is missing: "There is no information as to whether or not the TOP SECRET version continues to be published."

The connection here is the gap. The CIA was not just reading a technical manual; they were measuring the depth of their own penetration into the Soviet Ministry of Defense's distribution chain. The fact that they were translating a "SECRET" document while praying for a "TOP SECRET" one shows a desperate attempt to calibrate their understanding of Soviet capabilities. If the TOP SECRET version existed, it likely contained the operational orders and actual deployment numbers that Potemkin's theoretical musings lacked.

The Three-Year Lag

There is a glaring discrepancy in the timeline of this file. The article by Potemkin appeared in Issue No. 1 (89) of 1970. Yet, the CIA memorandum is dated 18 April 1973. In the world of intelligence, a three-year delay for a technical report is an eternity. It suggests that this was not a real-time intercept of a current Soviet priority, but rather a retrospective recovery.

This lag, combined with the "extremely sensitive" nature of the source, creates a specific pattern. The desk's reading is that the intelligence value of this report lay not in the naval theory—which was largely conceptual—but in the compromise of the Soviet Ministry of Defense's internal archive. The CIA was likely processing a cache of documents recovered from a source who had gained access to the Ministry's library or a high-level distribution hub. The "sensitivity" was not the ekranoplan; it was the person who had walked out of the Ministry with the SECRET files.

Furthermore, if the shape of this file is what it appears to be, the CIA was using the SECRET version of Military Thought as a baseline to extrapolate the contents of the TOP SECRET version they could not access. By analyzing the "theoretical" aspirations of a Candidate of Naval Sciences like Potemkin, Langley was trying to reverse-engineer the actual operational requirements of the Soviet Navy.

A Potemkin Village

There is a final, biting irony in the name of the author. In the public record, a "Potemkin village" is a façade constructed to deceive observers into believing a situation is better than it actually is. The desk's reading is that Captain Potemkin's antisubmarine force was exactly that: a theoretical façade.

Potemkin himself admits the flaws in his plan. He notes that amphibian aircraft "cannot land on water in windy weather" and that the development of search means for aircraft "has lagged behind the pace of submarine development." He describes a world where it is "easier for aircraft to destroy a target than to find it." These are not the words of a man describing a deployed capability; they are the words of a theorist pleading for funding and research.

The pattern suggests that these surface effects vehicles were conceptual prototypes rather than operational threats. The USSR spent decades chasing the ekranoplan, building monstrous machines that looked like the future but were plagued by maintenance nightmares and limited utility. Potemkin's blueprint was a dream of dominance, not a reality of it.

If a full release of the associated files were available, the desk's reading is that they would show the CIA overestimating a theoretical threat because they were too enamored with the "sensitivity" of the leak. When an intelligence agency finds a "SECRET" document from a Ministry of Defense, they tend to treat the contents as gospel because the classification suggests importance. In reality, they were likely reading a Soviet academic's wishlist.

This is the recurring tragedy of the Cold War archives: the tendency of Western intelligence to mistake Soviet bureaucratic ambition for operational fact. The cost was a waste of resources and an inflation of fear, all based on the writings of a man whose name served as a perfect metaphor for the illusion he was selling. The redacted names and the "need-to-know" warnings protected a source, yes, but they also shielded a failure of analysis that mistook a theoretical journal for a battle plan.

Captain Potemkin and the 1970 Blueprint for Hunting Nuclear Subs

Sprinting at Five Meters

The Ghost of a Top Secret Issue

The Three-Year Lag

A Potemkin Village

Sources