NATO Has a Russian Submarine Problem
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NATO Has a Russian Submarine Problem
BY ELLIE COOK ON 5/13/23 AT 5:00 AM EDT
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Moscow has invested heavily in its submarine fleet, while NATO has
largely ignored the underwater realm, experts told Newsweek.
Russian subs have been recently detected on "strange routes" including
off the U.S. coast, highlighting NATO vulnerability to "seabed warfare".
NATO is now "playing catch up" to counter this growing Russian threat to critical infrastructure including undersea cables.
Russia's navy has taken a battering in the war with Ukraine, with a
number of several high-profile humiliations, including the sinking of
the Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, in the early days of the war. A
vivid show of a declining surface fleet, the real threat Russia's
military poses to NATO lurks elsewhere.
The bulk of Russia's seafaring investment has been channeled into its
high-tech submarine fleet. Russia's subs are widely considered to be a formidable force, and the U.S., along with its NATO allies, neglecting
the war beneath the waves has left the alliance struggling to make up
ground.
"Russia has massively invested in its underwater capability since 2014,
first of all submarines," former Ukrainian First Deputy Chief of Defense
and Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Navy, retired Admiral Ihor Kabanenko
told Newsweek, pointing to a slew of new Russian nuclear and
conventional submarines being commissioned in the past decade. Questions
remain about how well Russia has maintained its untested underwater
fleet, but a consensus shows a distinct Western wariness of Moscow's capabilities, not least its 11 nuclear-powered ballistic missile
submarines (SSBNs), with the Borei-A class vessels. Russia also has its nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines (SSGNs), including its
Yasen-class subs, in its underwater arsenal.
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NATO's anti-sub capabilities, meanwhile, have "atrophied following the
end of the Cold War and as attention had strayed elsewhere," Nick
Childs, senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank, told
Newsweek.
Finland's accession to the alliance, with Sweden's membership on the
horizon, has brought the Russian submarine question into sharper focus.
The inclusion of these Nordic countries into NATO not only expands
Russia's borders with the alliance by hundreds of miles, but threatens
the security of its critical maritime bases.
Changing NATO, New Threats and 'Strange Routes'
The Kola Peninsula, where Russia bases its key Northern Fleet and much
of its nuclear deterrent, has always been "the most important military
area for the old Soviet Union, the Russian Federation today," according
to Mark Grove, a senior lecturer at the University of Lincoln's Maritime Studies Center at the Britannia Royal Naval College Dartmouth, U.K.
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This Arctic region could become the frontline of tensions again as
relations between Moscow and the NATO bloc become more strained. "The enlargement of NATO, in the minds of the Russians, undoubtedly raises
concerns about the viability and the security of those facilities, and
indeed, of the Northern Fleet itself," he told Newsweek.
NATO's inclusion of Finland, and soon Sweden, pulls the alliance closer
to the peninsula. This may mean Russian submarine bases fall under
"potential long-range artillery," according to Graeme P. Herd, of the
George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. But the same
principle applies to Russia's Baltic Fleet, housed in Russia's
Kaliningrad region between Lithuania and Poland. NATO's Nordic expansion
had an "enormous effect" there, Grove said, effectively turning the
Baltic into what he called a "NATO lake."
"It means that the Russian Baltic fleet, which is a much diminished
force, compared to its Soviet predecessor, anyway, looks extremely
vulnerable," Grove added.
Newsweek has reached out to NATO for comment.
NATO Has a Russian Submarine Problem
A photo illustration showing a Russian submarine. Russia's submarine
fleet is widely considered to be excellent, and recent Western
intelligence has shown the underwater vessels to be following "strange
routes" in key strategic areas.
NEWSWEEK; SOURCE PHOTO BY GETTY
The Ukraine war, spurring Helsinki's and Stockholm's NATO applications, therefore changes the maritime situation not just in the Black Sea, but
in the Barents Sea around the Kola Peninsula, the North Atlantic and the
Baltic Sea. And these are "significant and potentially long-lasting
changes," Kabanenko said.
It is in this context that Moscow's subs have been moving along "strange routes," deviating from the trajectories Western defense officials have
come to expect, British defense minister Ben Wallace noted during a trip
to Washington, D.C. in mid-April. He said the U.K. had been tracking the
paths of Russian undersea vessels in the North Atlantic, Irish Sea and
North Sea "that they normally wouldn't do."
Russian nuclear-powered submarines have also been spotted "off the coast
of the United States and into the Mediterranean and elsewhere along
European periphery," Michael Petersen, director of the Russia Maritime
Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, previously told Newsweek.
Asymmetric Warfare and Undersea Cables
But Russian submarines are not just a strategic nuclear deterrent. A new submarine war is emerging, experts say, bringing maritime security
concerns into the world of "seabed warfare."
The head of the U.K.'s armed forces, Sir Tony Radakin, suggested at the beginning of the year that Moscow could "put at risk and potentially
exploit the world's real information system, which is undersea cables
that go all around the world". Speaking to The Times of London in
January, he said there had been a "phenomenal increase in Russian
submarine and underwater activity" and Russia has "grown the capability
to put at threat those undersea cables and potentially exploit those
undersea cables."
But this emerging tactic is one rooted in changes in Russian military
thinking in the early part of the 21st century. "There was an
understanding that you simply can't compete on terms of scale with the
West, and so the Russians developed an idea of integrated warfare,"
reinvented from Soviet days, U.K. politician and Russian military
strategy expert Bob Seely told Newsweek.
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Russia to scrap world's largest nuclear-powered warship amid mounting costs Russia looked towards asymmetrical warfare and at nurturing new
capabilities where Moscow could undercut Western military dominance,
which could mean targeting internet cables and pipelines, Seely added.
Areas in the North Sea, including oil extraction operations, appear to
be increasingly monitored by Russian submarines, Paul van Hooft, a
senior strategic analyst at the Hague Center for Strategic Studies
(HCSS), told Newsweek.
Seabed warfare of this type is an area in which Russia has "invested considerable amounts," Childs said, focusing on technology such as special-mission submarines. It is also an area "in which it is dawning
on NATO governments that they need to invest more in countering such
threats," Childs said.
"This is something definitely that we've been slow to appreciate," Grove agreed. The modern world runs on these underwater cables, which are out
of sight but of huge importance, he said. With a growing anxiety around undersea fibre optic connections and energy pipelines after last year's
Nord Stream explosion, experts say decision-makers have finally
appreciated the threat is a real and present one, and are "giving
considerable assets to this."
In February, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the
creation of a Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell,
spurred on by the Nord Stream explosion and the "vulnerability of
undersea energy pipelines and communication cables."
"In response, NATO allies have significantly increased their military
presence around key infrastructure, including with ships and patrol
aircraft," the alliance said in a press release.
"It is clear that this kind of asymmetric Russian underwater activities
are taking on an increasingly prominent role in maritime strategic
visions," Kabanenko said.
The underwater battle, with its submarines, increasing use of uncrewed underwater technology, and asymmetric warfare, should absolutely be a
concern for NATO, experts say. Overall, NATO navies are "collectively significantly stronger than Russia's" but anti-submarine warfare, in all
of its forms, is a "challenging business," Childs said.
NATO Enters The Underwater Race
A concerted change has taken place in NATO consciousness in recent
years, experts say, waking up to what Frederik Mertens, another
strategic analyst at the HCSS, called a "uniquely threatening weapons
system."
Back during Cold War-era relations, the "most hot it got was
underwater," Mertens told Newsweek. Yet after the simmering tensions of
the 20th century, NATO countries looked away from the war underneath the
waves, experts say. Moscow, however, did not.
Russian Submarine in Kola Peninsula
This file picture fated July 23, 1995, shows Russian navy sailors
pulling the rope to help a Russian nuclear submarine of the Project 971 Shchuka-B type, or Akula-class (Shark) by NATO classification, dock at
the military port of Murmansk, in the Kola peninsula, northern Russia.
Moscow has continued to invest in submarines and undersea warfare after
the end of the Cold War.
DIMITRI BARINOV/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Throughout the past 30 years, NATO countries "were not particularly
thinking about it," his colleague Van Hooft added, while NATO states saw
the strategic landscape "too much through our own eyes" since the 1990s
and "failed to study potential adversaries," Seely said.
Although Russia could not produce significant numbers of advanced
submarines at the time, Moscow did invest in new submarine designs,
Grove said. Despite Russia's relatively few submarines, they are what is
known as a force multiplier, Grove added, meaning Moscow's fleet can
have a "strategic effect out of all proportion to that small number."
In recent years, "NATO navies have spent a lot of time and effort
reviving their anti-submarine warfare skills and capabilities," Childs
said. This includes initiatives such as new maritime patrol aircraft
that have a "good capability to track submarines."
Yet NATO may still be hard-pressed to keep track of even small numbers
of submarines for a long period of time, experts argue, although opinion
is split on just how ready NATO now is to confront one of Russia's
strongest military arms.
"There's definitely space for improvements," Dmitry Gorenburg of the
Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S. think tank, told Newsweek. Taking
nuclear weapons and destruction out of the equation, "the Russian
submarine threat is the greatest threat that Russia poses to NATO,"
Gorenburg added. However, there is now "definitely an appropriate level
of awareness of the threat," he said.
"The U.S. and its allies have been playing catch up," Grove commented,
although there has been considerable investment in anti-submarine
warfare capabilities within NATO in recent years, experts note. Just
last month, NATO embarked on a large-scale anti-submarine warfare
exercise involving a dozen nations, intended to make sure its crews can "respond to threats posed by sub-surface forces."
After a slower start, some experts say NATO now matches up to or exceeds Russia's submarine capabilities, arguing that the alliance does not have
"some objective, incredible weakness towards Russia in this domain." But
Moscow has understood "that we haven't really invested in this, so they
might be pressuring those weak points," Van Hooft added.
Crucially, Russia does not view confrontation with NATO as taking place
in just one region or sphere, experts emphasize. The war in Ukraine is perceived in the Kremlin, and by top military commanders, as part of a
larger face-off with the West, Gorenburg said.
Sending out submarines in the world's oceans reminds the West of the consequences of direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, he added, pushing back into NATO's minds that Moscow can directly threaten cities
across the U.S.
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Kejjer
6 hours ago
Moscow has invested heavily in its submarine fleet, while NATO has
largely ignored the underwater realm, experts told Newsweek.
What Bunk---
Russian has the 11th largest economy in the world--with less than 2% of
the worlds GDP.
The US --alone--almost 25% of the worlds GDP---not counting NATO countrie...
See more
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