NAVAL NEWS ANALYSIS SPECIAL

Russia builds up its Navy while the Royal Navy struggles

Amid news of looming defence cuts that will see English naval bases trimmed, with the loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs, it emerges the Russian Navy, which for more than a decade has languished in the doldrums, is on the rise again. A massive new naval base is under construction at Novorossisk, which is twinned with Plymouth. Here Charles Strathdee considers this richly ironic turn of events, which sees the Black Sea port set to welcome an entire battle fleet while Plymouth faces potential economic devastation, as operational activity at Devonport Naval Base seems set to decline dramatically.

AT the height of the Cold War, the renowned Soviet Navy Admiral Sergei Gorshkov - the man who turned a coastal force into a powerful global presence by the late 1970s - hung a framed saying on the wall of his office in the Admiralty at Leningrad.
It stated: ‘Better is the enemy of good enough.’
No doubt Gorshkov, who, as a veteran of WW2 had watched the Royal Navy and United States Navy use sea power to hobble and destroy both Germany and Japan, gazed up at that framed saying in times of turmoil, as the USSR struggled with funding an arms race its economy could not really feed. Somehow, he fielded dozens of nuclear-powered submarines, helicopter carriers, battle-cruisers and new destroyers to contest control of the oceans. Safety and quality of life at sea for Russian sailors came second best to ship numbers and truly lethal weapons systems.  Soviet warships were crudely designed and built, but they were tough.
Today President Vladimir Putin - a latter day Peter the Great - must surely hear Gorshkov’s saying echoing in his mind. For he has decided that a better health service or education system for Russia is not necessary, when billions of dollars raised by oil production and supplying gas to Eastern Europe and the West can be spent on reviving the Russian Navy. Ever since Tsar Peter founded St. Petersburg (as Leningrad is today known) in the early 18th Century, the Russians have always sought greatness and security in possessing a strong navy. In 2007, the wheel of history has turned once more and, having faded almost to the point of invisibility as a global force between 1991 and 2006, this summer the head of the Russian Navy revealed good progress in building a major new naval base on the shores of the Black Sea. He also unveiled plans to construct support infrastructure for surface warships and ballistic missile submarines in the Pacific. Three massive piers are already finished at Novorossisk, and work is underway on breakwaters, forming protection for the 100 vessels of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF). Russian Navy boss Admiral Vladimir Masorin reportedly said that a further US $980 million is needed to construct barracks and married quarters and other “social infrastructure” for the BSF’s sailors, marines and aviators. The Russian Navy will withdraw from Sevastopol in the Crimean Peninsula by 2017, with Novorossisk expected to be fully operational as its home by 2012.  In a pre-echo of how an independent Scotland may one day treat England, the Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union, but now free and aspiring to become a member of NATO – has exacted a heavy price for allowing Russia to station ships of the BSF at Sevastopol. The Russians have decided that rather than allow the Ukrainians to have US $100 a year off their natural gas bill in return for using Sevastopol; they would rather create the new base at Novorossisk. Other statements of intent last month regarding increasing naval capability included Admiral Masorin revealing that Russia is to create two new strike forces.  They will be centred on three carriers each, with one trio assigned to the Northern Fleet, based in the Kola Peninsula, and the other to the Pacific. Pravda stated in an editorial published on July 11: ‘Russia is building a new Navy and aircraft carriers are deemed as its integral part.’
If achieved, this will enable the Russian Navy to maintain a continuous carrier force presence in the Atlantic, the Pacific and further afield. The Russian Navy’s sole existing operational carrier, RFS Kuznetsov, is said by defence sources to be ready to deploy this autumn from Kola, as a precursor to the dramatic upsurge in Russian carrier-based airpower. The five other carrier groups are expected to gradually stand-up over the next 20 years. It is anticipated the carrier programme will get underway in 2015, but possibly sooner. With the Sevmash shipyard at Sevorodvinsk leading the project, the new vessels will each be of around 50,000 tonnes displacement, nuclear-propelled and capable of carrying a strike group of approximately 30 aircraft.  A Statement of Requirement for the carrier design is due before the end of the year. Work on creating a base for the Russian Navy’s new Borey Class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) in the Pacific is to start immediately, the first of the boats, Yuri Dolgoruky, having been launched in April. Construction of such major facilities for the Pacific Fleet will cost an estimated US $350 million and the SSBN base is due to be ready for 2010. At the end of June - in a determined demonstration of naval intent - the Russians successfully test-fired their new Bulava intercontinental Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM). According to Russian Navy sources, the missile hit a target more than 6,000km away, in Kamchatka. The raft of naval announcements made in July, taken together with the missile test and exercises involving not only maritime air power over the Barents, but also off Kamchatka, shows the days of Russian maritime inactivity are over. Russian defence chiefs now seemingly regarding NATO, which has expanded in recent years to Russia’s borders, as a major threat. The American proposal to site Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic has also provoked an angry response from Putin, a former KGB officer. In mid-July, Russia went as far as to notify NATO that it is to withdraw from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which limits where armed forces can be stationed along the fault line between the former Soviet Union and the democracies of the West. It followed a suggestion by the Kremlin that it will counter the placing of elements of the American ABM systems along its borders by moving defensive missile systems into the militarised enclave of Kaliningrad (formerly Konigsberg, the capital of East Prussia). Kaliningrad is still a major base of the Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet, although sandwiched - and somewhat isolated - between Poland and Lithuania, both recent additions to NATO. While the USA has stated that its land-based ABM system is to counter the potential threat from Iran and North Korea, the Russians regard it as a move against them. Russia has also threatened to re-target its nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles on Western cities, once the American ABM system is up and running in Eastern Europe in several years time.

SOME experts point out that the Russian economy could collapse if the price of oil slumps, but Putin has already salted away 25 billion dollars in a contingency fund and no doubt more is pouring in. Compare the attitude of Putin, who plainly believes totally in hard power, with that of the Brown government in the United Kingdom where a prime strategic asset for the Royal Navy – Devonport Naval Base and its associated dockyard – is under threat of being scaled back dramatically as an operational centre. Russian twin city Novorossisk will soon welcome dozens of warships, while Plymouth possibly loses its remaining frigates to Portsmouth while its nuclear-powered submarines may sail north to Faslane in Scotland sooner than expected. Plymouth will be left with the amphibious ships (Ocean, Albion and Bulwark), 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines, possibly the Hydrographic Squadron and will still be home to the Operational Sea Training organization. Devonport will become an even bigger graveyard for decommissioned nuclear submarines in coming years, due to investment in a nuclear de-fuelling facility.  And, while Russia girds itself to create battle groups centred on half a dozen carriers, UK Secretary of State for Defence Des Browne has boasted about spending £3.9 billion on just two new 65,000 tonnes conventionally-powered aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy. The Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales are part of an increase of just 1.5 per cent in defence spending, in real terms, over the next three years. It is estimated by 2011, in reality there will be less of the public purse devoted to defence than there is today. Yes, the UK Government promises better ships in the future, but are they too few? Only six Type 45 destroyers will be hard-pressed to protect the future carriers and conduct other missions. And what about the Royal Navy of today, which is reckoned by many to already have too few frigates, destroyers and submarines to handle all its many missions around the world? Is destroying the current front line fleet, together with cutting naval bases and dockyards like Plymouth, really the way to go? In the past nuclear-powered submarines from Plymouth have made headlines on scientific expeditions under Arctic ice – a means of rehearsing tactics for undersea warfare of the most demanding kind. Soon, Russian nuclear submarines may stand in the way of British attack boats surfacing at the North Pole. In his latest confrontation with the West, Putin has ordered a ‘scientific’ expedition composed of a research ship and an icebreaker to head for the North Pole, where mini-submarines will be deployed to plant the Russian flag on the seabed, claiming new areas of mineral wealth for Russia, including vast reserves of oil and gas. Such moves make speeches by Labour ministers about ‘soft power’ ludicrous and the need for a bigger Royal Navy more pressing than ever. Does Gordon Brown think the Royal Navy as it stands is good enough to meet not just the Russian challenge but also a myriad other developing threats around the world? If so, he needs to do better.

• Charles Strathdee was one of the first Western journalists to visit Russian naval bases at Murmansk, Kronstadt and Sevastopol at the end of the Cold War. He has also visited Novorossisk to cover naval activities. A version of this article is also published in the September edition of WARSHIPS International Fleet Review magazine www.warshipsifr.com

Above: The Admiral Kuznetsov at sea in the late 1990s. She is due to be replaced by six new carriers, if the ambitious plans outlined last month come to fruition.

Photo: US Navy.

Above: Russian Bear maritime surveillance aircraft like this one - pictured being intercepted by a US Navy Tomcat fighter during the latter stages of the Cold War - are back in the business of spying on NATO naval exercises.

Photo: US Navy

Above: A Russian Navy Delta III Class ballistic missile submarine of the Northern Fleet, a type that is to be replaced by Borey Class boats.

Photo: US Navy.