Russia Submarine Activity Earns Top US General's Attention

[william]

Since Moscow began waging war in Ukraine, Western officials and experts say they have detected Russian submarines, a vital part of the Kremlin's Northern Fleet, moving along "strange routes" and appearing close to the U.S. coast.

"Increased Russian submarine activity in the northern Atlantic and Arctic is a stark reminder that the threat posed to NATO by Vladimir Putin's regime is not limited to Ukraine and Eastern Europe," said Emma Salisbury, an associate fellow at the U.K.-based Council on Geostrategy think tank.

"The close partnership between the USA and Iceland is vital in ensuring that this threat can be responded to," Salisbury told Newsweek.

Russia, the only one of the eight countries with Arctic territory that is not a NATO member, has the largest military presence in the region and is plugging away with efforts to reopen a number of its Soviet-era facilities.
Washington has denounced what it has called Moscow's "excessive claims over Arctic waters." Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said last month that it was "fully ready" to defend its interests in the region.

The U.S. government is trying to "signal to Russia that this is not a Russian zone, it's international waters," when up against Russia's "very aggressive" posture in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and current distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Washington wishes to "demonstrate presence, but try to avoid making it look like a military competition," he told Newsweek. "Russia continues to want to test this."

Russia's Northern Fleet vessels dominate the High North. Moscow—although tied up in the Black Sea and sinking manpower into the hundreds of miles of front lines in Ukraine—has a formidable number of submarines untouched by the two and a half years of war with its neighbor.

Experts consider the Kremlin's underwater capabilities a force to be reckoned with, and in a far stronger position than many of Russia's surface vessels. Moscow has worked hard to advance its submarines in recent years, while NATO anti-sub warfare capabilities faded away in the post-Cold War period. NATO has since pressed ahead with catching up.

While the Kremlin may be tied up in Eastern Europe, Russia does have capabilities not currently being utilized in and around Ukraine that could be deployed in the Arctic, Icelandic Foreign Minister Thórdís Kolbrún Reykfjörd Gylfadóttir told Newsweek at the Keflavík airbase in August.

And now, "things are changing" in the Arctic, she said.

Washington is keeping a close eye on Russia not just around Ukraine, but across the world, Brown said. American and Icelandic officials said the U.S. top general's visit to Keflavík showed that Pentagon operations in the High North had changed because of the war in Ukraine, The Post reported.

"There has been a steady uptick in the activity of Russian submarines in the High North over the course of the last decade," said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow for sea power at the U.K.-based defense think tank, the Royal United Services Institute.

One part of this is that the Northern Fleet's nuclear attack submarines have been deployed more regularly recently, after a lull in the immediate post-Cold War period, Kaushal told Newsweek. Another is that Moscow's secretive Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research, or GUGI, is operating in the region, and "oversees a number of special purpose assets capable of tampering with undersea cables," Kaushal said.

"The U.S. views Russia's Northern Fleet as a serious challenge," he added.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the U.K.'s armed forces, said in January last year that there had been a "phenomenal increase in Russian submarine and underwater activity" over the past two decades. He sounded the alarm over the security of the world's undersea cables, out of sight but critical infrastructure where Russia is in a position to dominate.

Russia's increased activity should be "a further spur towards increased investment in subsea and ASW [anti-submarine warfare] capabilities for the U.S. Navy and allied navies in the Atlantic region," said Salisbury. There is a general sense of a return to Cold War attitudes coming through, said Volker. Russia appears to have "determined that that's what they want to do," he added.

The U.S.' top ranking military officer, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., said that "we want to be so good at what we do that every day our adversary wakes up and says, 'Not today.'"

"And if they do say that today is the day, you want to be their worst nightmare," he said in remarks reported by The Washington Post.

Russia submarine activity earns top US general's attention—"stark reminder"

The Pentagon has called Moscow's heavy military presence in the Arctic an "acute threat."

www.newsweek.com