These gigantic leviathans of the sea were codenamed "Typhoons" by NATO analysts and they are still the largest submarines in the world. Displacing 33,800 tons submerged. At the height of their power, they had the capability of incinerating more than 100 American or European cities each with the 20 multi-independently targeted reentry vehicle warheads. They are now entirely toothless.

Their old missiles are no longer reliable enough to be even tested. And plans for a replacement missile have yet to even reach the prototype stage.

Now, veteran Navy Commander-in-Chief Fleet Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov has ordered the entire Akula class to be scrapped, another senior admiral, Gennady Suchkov told the Interfax news agency in an interview published Tuesday. Fleet Adm. Suchkov also told the newspaper Novaya Gazeta that Kuroyedov issued the order on April 29, the Moscow Times reported.

The enormous Akulas are bigger and heavier than a British aircraft carrier. They provided the model for the famous Tom Clancy novel "The Hunt for Red October" and the highly successful movie adaptation starring Sean Connery.

But now all of Russia's long-feared Akulas face the threat of being deactivated because there are no longer any reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles for them to carry and launch, Suchkov told Interfax.

Suchkov was disgraced and given a suspended sentence following the loss of the nuclear submarine K-159 in August 2003 near Murmansk in the Arctic Ocean. However, Russian and Amer ican naval analysts believe his claims are accurate and that he may be speaking on behalf of disgruntled senior navy officers.

Suchkov said the Russian Navy is trying to develop a new nuclear missile, the Bulava, to rearm the Typhoons but it does not even have a prototype ready yet.

Russian officials have tried to play down Suchkov's claims. Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo claimed the Akula class "will continue to exist as it has existed."

But Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the American Center for Defense Information told the Moscow Times that the navy has in fact already been decommissioning Akulas for some time, even though many of them have not reached the end of their service lives.

However, the malaise of the Russian navy stretches across its entire submarine fleet, far beyond the Akulas.

It is now nearly four years since another enormous nuclear submarine, the Oscar-II class Kursk, sank in the Barents Sea during exercises in August 2000, dooming all 118 officers and crew on board. There were more humiliations in February this year when other submarines failed to successfully test fire a sub-launched missile, the RSM-52 two days in a row on Feb. 17 and Feb. 18.

That happened when President Vladimir Putin, who has been determined to revive Russia's maritime power, was at sea with the Northern Fleet in the Barents Sea above the Arctic Sea.

Indeed, Suchkov warned that Russia's entire fleet may disappear by 2008. He told Interfax that the production of RSM-52 missiles -- the same kind that had failed in the February exercises -- had already been ended. As a result, the Northern Fleet's 18th Division, consisting of the giant Akula-class subs Arkhanglesk, Severstal and Dimitry Donskoi had already been shut down, he said.

After the February missile test fiascoes, Pavel Felgenhauer, one of Russia's most respected and influential military analysts, warned in a Moscow Times analysis that the navy was likely to face more problems of a similar kind in the years ahead.

"The nuclear forces are armed with very old ICBMs," he wrote. "Some have been in service in underground silos for over 27 years. ... The number of ICBM replacements is inadequate. Each year the ICBM inventory is getting older and older. The life span of most Russian ICBMs, as guaranteed by their producers, has long since expired."

Indeed, the infamous RSM-53 -- NATO designation SS-N-23 -- was first developed in 1979 and phased into service more than 20 years ago.

Felgenhauer had a very different take on the February exercises than the image of a reviving, still potent Russia that Putin wanted to project.

"The main point of the exercise is to test aging ICBMs and bombers and the war game scenario is also antiquated, involving the West (the United St ates) as the potential foe," he wrote. "The military is caught in a time warp: Its hardware is old, its strategic ideas are outdated, it does not want to change nor does it seem able to -- irrespective of what happens politically in Russia or the world."

There was another reason the exercise was held, Felgenhauer wrote. "If a test-firing of an aging ICBM is successful, the warranted life span of all the other ICBMs of the same class is extended by a year. Typically, one of the oldest ICBMs of a class is launched every year. If the launch fails or there are serious problems, it is repeated. ... That is how it has been now for a decade."

Putin is determined to replace the broken sword of the navy's nuclear missile arsenal with up-to-date weapons. After the February missile failures, he lost no time in announcing ambitious plans to upgrade Russia's Strategic Missile Forces with a new generation of weapons and said he was considering building new anti-ballistic missile, or ABM defense systems, such as the one the Bush administration is now developing for the United States.

But such weapons are years, if not a decade away. Suchkov's claims and the grim continuing record of accidental submarine sinkings and losses indicate that the warships of the old Red Navy shaped by late Adm. Sergei Korshkov, for more than 30 years one of the most potent and feared military forces on the planet, now look doomed to the scrapheap.

Indeed, even Putin, while still determined to revive Russia's military and nuclear might, appears to have finally washed his hands of them. He only backs winners.

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