Red October to follow Alec Baldwin's acting career.

RED October, the Soviet submarine featured in a Tom Clancy book and subsequent movie, is to be decommissioned for good.

The world's largest - and one of the most celebrated - submarine was the star of 1990s fans of Cold War thrillers as it disappeared – in The Hunt for Red October novel and movie – off the US coast on a secret mission that nearly sparked nuclear war.

In fact, the craft with 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles has been quietly resting in a Barents Sea port, waiting to meet its maker, the Izvestia newspaper quoted navy officials as saying.

Ironically, the US would pay the decommissioning costs because Russia's post-Soviet military is too poor to foot the bill, Izvestia said.

Japan is paying Russia to turn into metal shreds the nuclear subs stationed near its shores in the Pacific.

Red October's demise will leave Russia with only three submarines of its type, known as Typhoon.

Only one of the submarines – the Severstall – is still equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

"Right now, our navy needs new, smaller vessels," Izvestia quoted former naval commander Gennady Suchkov as saying.

Cold war aside, it is sad to see such pieces of hardware get cut up into so much scrap metal. I mean, they were once the icons of a fiercely proud military. Now, the navy can't even pay to have them destroyed themselves, and the air force is having to sell rides to pay for aircraft upkeep. Come to Russia, try the food, fly our Air Force. Still, there are some military adventures that look pretty cool over there, like a range day with small arms or driving a tank.