Refit with Moskit can be done quite fast, although I don’t the see the use of such a conversion. That 550km range of Bazalt really had its use… Closing to 130 or 250km would just be too dangerous.
As for mounting that extra radar, solutions can be found for that. Power requirement, with the loss of the huge Bazalt weight, you have enough spare bouyancy to mount some extra auxiliary engines (generators). The model of the SLava with the Tombstone was there in 2003 too. Maybe they plan to replace the Top Dome with the Tomb Stone.
Also, a Tomb Stone would probably be less space requiring than the Top Dome, hence it might be capable of being fitted somewhere upfront.
I agree on the time it would take, but what’s half a year? Doesn’t matter too much, ships have a life of 20-40 years. Depending on what you’re doing with them 🙂
I found the picture, well at leas the link, but it was inactive. I’ll have to ask around whether someone downloaded the picture… 🙁

Well I don’t have pictures of those models, but in the meanwhile I’d say enjoy this:
The launch of the first Lada/Amur (some time ago) it was commissioned yesterday:

note the small stabilizers on the tail. Which Akula do you mean Blackcat? Schchuka-B? or the Typhoon SSBN? It seems most logical you are asking for Typhoon, so as for that, I don’t know. No one will probably know except for the designers. I think Garry gave some good possible reasons and maybe we should be looking in that direction for the “true” answer too. But indeed it’s easier to steer from that place ON A SURFACE VESSEL. I think submarines aren’t steered by sight(never saw a helmsman at a wheel on top of a conning tower), hence all the helmsman has to do is follow the orders.
I think the balancing might be the good point. The center of Floatation (center of longitudinal stability) might be oddly placed on this submarine. We don’t know the weight of the reactors, but I suppose the weird shape of Typhoon might indeed cause this center of floatation to be oddly placed, hence the reactors might have indeed caused a problem… Not sure though. I think twenty of those huge missiles just to counter the weight of those two reactors would be a bit exaggerated.

That is old news and a lot more is known about this possible deal. Including price and that it would go to the Pacific fleet for practice.

Never mess with or call people/nationalities stupid when you don’t know them. Although I admit our navy is pathetic and soon probably non-existent…

Gary, the tanker and merchant acommodations are not placed there for the sailing. I admit it’s easier to steer a ship from there, but the true reason for that placing is: They’re merchant ships. Basically a merchant ship has holds, if you put an accomodation on the ship, the hold below is not easily accesable, for example with bulkcarriers. Therefor, they look for a space inside the hull that is not usable, namely the engineroom. So, when they place the accomodation on top of the engineroom they have the largest accessability of holds, more safety (no accomodation on top your tanks for tankers, no pipelines having to go through or around your accomodation also for tankers), hence best use of the hull and on top of that, it makes it cheaper, because you evade costs of extra pipelines and your funnel can be placed on top of your engineroom, avoids extra costs again.

For Typhoon, that Ice argument might indeed be correct. It has an enforced bow and I suppose they just come with their bow first through the ice, creating a whole and smaching upon the ice, hence if your sail would be in front, it might hit the ice. Now, with the sail in the back, it might just come through the hole, while the bow makes the space to come through.
Compartments? Don’t know.
The mounting of the weapons of Papa, Charlie etc. is easily explanable by the fact that their VLS modules are mounted under an anlge, if you put it behind your sail, the missile will hit the sail when launched :$

It’s some kind of Russian habit to put all the weapons in front, same with Talwar, Kirov class, Typhoon SSBN… It’s a weird habit though 😀
Anyway, the US LAI SSN have their VLS inserted in front too (this also eliminated the slight Trim of the early LA class SSNs, because these were designed with space for such a VLS insertion). I think it gives a better field of fire, not to damage the sail.
I think the Hatches on the Typhoon SSBN, are as high as Amur’s SAIL… Not equal in size with the hatches of this Amur model.
Anyway, the real name of Typhoon is indeed Akula, yet the real name of Akula is Shchuka-B and not Bars. Bars is one of the units (K480)and hence they have called it the Bars class. Normally they pick the first of class, someone must have thought this was the first of class…

As for placing the AIP inside, the Swedes have done it with the Näcken class too. Just cut the thing in half and put the module in between.

As for the AIP shift forward. It’s probably for stability. The aft part is angled inwards, if you would take a look from above you would see a “V-shaped” slice. This slice gives less upward force from the water. In short, if you put the heavy weight of a AIP in there, it will receive less carrying power, hence cause a trim and stress on your hull. You can of course play with that trim, but I’m not sure if you want your forward ballast tanks filled up half to keep your sub stable when you are in an emergency… They might have thought about having a heavier piece forward, like the Sonar and weapons and afterwards found out that it would be too light.

Now, Mr Edison you have gone to far.
Mr Wanshan did what you asked, he came up with some junk of his own. I don’t get your point of: “if you don’t have junk, you can’t call Chinese stuff Junk”. Basically everyone needs to have junk to call Chinese things junk? You live in an odd world…
You pretty much did just about the same thing to Russia/Soviet Union now. You call it junk. You indeed have even more junk, aka Han and Xia class. So indeed you qualify to call Akula junk in your world.
Yet this does not apply to the real world, wake up my friend…
What counts here is whether you state something very logical or proven or not. You are stating rubbish and I don’t know of any Leaking Reactor incident on any Akula. If you do have any official or pseudo-official source for such thing, please post it then.
Wanshan does have such sources about Shenzhou and Soyuz and his country does not need to build any Spaceship to allow him to say such things. And if he sees no use in his government wasting their money on such projects, I don’t think he should “force” his government to do so. If you wanted a spacerace, sorry you’re a couple of decades late for that.
I’m not cracking jokes or wise cracker or whatever kind of language you are talking. I think this is very clear language to any person with even the very basic knowledge of English.

I expect that they have thought about that Steve, I know it has been stated to be a possible helicopter for Talwar, I think that won’t be the case. I suppose they’ll have them on Gorshkov. With multiple helicopters, it’s possible to keep a better sector guarded. There’s also the AS radar of the parent vessel and the fleet to scan for small low-flying incomers from unexpected angles.
I also suppose it won’t really “stay on station”, I think it would rather stay mobile and fly in circles. Anyway, it would certainly be better to keep several up, since they’ll attract lots of enemy fighters…