NAPLES: Russian attack submarines, the most in two decades, are prowling
the coastlines of Scandinavia and Scotland, the Mediterranean Sea and
the North Atlantic in what Western military officials say is a
significantly increased presence aimed at contesting US and NATO
undersea dominance.
Adm Mark Ferguson, the US Navy's top
commander in Europe, said last fall that the intensity of Russian
submarine patrols had risen by almost 50 percent over the past year,
citing public remarks by the Russian navy chief, Adm. Victor Chirkov.
Analysts say that tempo has not changed since then.
The patrols
are the most visible sign of a renewed interest in submarine warfare by
President Vladimir V Putin, whose government has spent billions of
dollars for new classes of diesel and nuclear-powered attack submarines
that are quieter, better armed and operated by more proficient crews
than in the past.
The tensions are part of an expanding rivalry
and military buildup, with echoes of the Cold War, between the United
States and Russia. Moscow is projecting force not only in the North
Atlantic but in Syria and Ukraine and building up its nuclear arsenal
and cyberwarfare capabilities in what US military officials say is an
attempt to prove its relevance after years of economic decline and
retrenchment.
Independent US military analysts see the increased
Russian submarine patrols as a legitimate challenge to the United States
and NATO. Even short of tensions, there is the possibility of accidents
and miscalculations. But whatever the threat, the Pentagon is also
using the stepped-up Russian patrols as another argument for bigger
budgets for submarines and anti-submarine warfare.
US naval
officials say that in the short term, the growing number of Russian
submarines, with their ability to shadow Western vessels and European
coastlines, will require more ships, planes and subs to monitor them. In
the long term, the Defense Department has proposed $8.1 billion during
the next five years for "undersea capabilities," including nine new
Virginia-class attack submarines that can carry up to 40 Tomahawk cruise
missiles, more than triple the capacity now.
"We're back to the great powers competition," Adm John M Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said in an interview.
Last
week, unarmed Russian warplanes repeatedly buzzed a Navy destroyer in
the Baltic Sea and at one point came within 30 feet of the warship, US
officials said. Last year some of Russia's new diesel submarines
launched four cruise missiles at targets in Syria.
Putin's
military modernization program also includes new intercontinental
ballistic missiles as well as aircraft, tanks and air defense systems.
To
be sure, there is hardly parity between the Russian and US submarine
fleets. Russia has about 45 attack submarines — about two dozen are
nuclear-powered and 20 are diesel — which are designed to sink other
submarines or ships, collect intelligence and conduct patrols. But
Western naval analysts say that only about half of those are able to
deploy at any given time. Most stay closer to home and maintain an
operational tempo far below a Cold War peak.
The United States
has 53 attack submarines, all nuclear-powered, as well as four other
nuclear-powered submarines that carry cruise missiles and Special
Operations forces. At any given time, roughly a third of America's
attack submarines are at sea, either on patrols or training, with the
others undergoing maintenance.
US Navy officials and Western
analysts say that American attack submarines, which are made for speed,
endurance and stealth to deploy far from US shores, remain superior to
their Russian counterparts.
The Pentagon is also developing
sophisticated technology to monitor encrypted communications from
Russian submarines and new kinds of remotely controlled or autonomous
vessels. Members of the NATO alliance, including Britain, Germany and
Norway, are at the same time buying or considering buying new submarines
in response to the Kremlin's projection of force in the Baltic and
Arctic.
But Moscow's recently revised national security and
maritime strategies emphasize the need for Russian maritime forces to
project power and to have access to the broader Atlantic Ocean as well
as the Arctic.
Russian submarines and spy ships now operate near
the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet
communications, raising concerns among some US military and intelligence
officials that the Russians could attack those lines in times of
tension or conflict. Russia is also building an undersea unmanned drone
capable of carrying a small, tactical nuclear weapon to use against
harbors or coastal areas, US military and intelligence analysts said.
And,
like the United States, Russia operates larger nuclear-powered
submarines that carry long-range nuclear missiles and spend months at a
time hiding in the depths of the ocean. Those submarines, although
lethal, do not patrol like the attack submarines do, and do not pose the
same degree of concern to US naval officials.
Analysts say that
Moscow's continued investment in attack submarines is in contrast to the
quality of many of Russia's land and air forces that frayed in the
post-Cold War era.
"In the Russian naval structure, submarines
are the crown jewels for naval combat power," said Magnus Nordenman,
director of the Atlantic Council's trans-Atlantic security initiative in
Washington. "The US and NATO haven't focused on anti-submarine
operations lately, and they've let that skill deteriorate."
That
has allowed for a rapid Russian resurgence, Western and US officials
say, partly in response to what they say is Russia's fear of being
hemmed in.
"I don't think many people understand the visceral way
Russia views NATO and the European Union as an existential threat,"
Ferguson said in an interview.
In Naples, at the headquarters of
the US Navy's European operations, including the 6th Fleet, commanders
for the first time in decades are having to closely monitor Russian
submarine movements through the maritime choke points separating
Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, the GIUK Gap, which during
the Cold War were crucial to the defense of Europe.
That stretch
of ocean, hundreds of miles wide, represented the line that Soviet naval
forces would have had to cross to reach the Atlantic and to stop US
forces heading across the sea to reinforce America's European allies in
time of conflict.
US anti-submarine aircraft were stationed for
decades at the Naval Air Station Keflavik in Iceland — in the middle of
the gap — but they withdrew in 2006, years after the Cold War was over.
The Navy after that relied on P-3 sub-hunter planes rotating
periodically through the base.
Now, the Navy is poised to spend
about $20 million to upgrade hangars and support sites at Keflavik to
handle its new, more advanced P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.
That money is part of the Pentagon's new $3.4 billion European
Reassurance Initiative, a quadrupling of funds from last year to deploy
heavy weapons, armored vehicles and other equipment to NATO countries in
Central and Eastern Europe, to deter Russian aggression.
Navy
officials express concern that more Russian submarine patrols will push
out beyond the Atlantic into the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Russia
has one Mediterranean port now, in Tartus, Syria, but Navy officials
here say Moscow wants to establish others, perhaps in Cyprus, Egypt or
even Libya.
"If
you have a Russian nuclear attack submarine wandering around the Med,
you want to track it," said Dmitry Gorenburg, a Russian military
specialist at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington.
This
month, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency christened a
132-foot prototype drone sea craft packed with sensors, the Sea Hunter,
which is made with the intention of hunting autonomously for submarines
and mines for up to three months at a time.
The
allies are also holding half a dozen anti-submarine exercises this
year, including a large drill scheduled later this spring called Dynamic
Mongoose in the North Sea. The exercise is to include warships and
submarines from Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway,
Poland and the United States.
"We
are not quite back in a Cold War," said James G Stavridis, a retired
admiral and the former supreme allied commander of NATO, who is now dean
of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. "But I
sure can see one from where we are standing."
