Tag Archives: Russia

Strategic Anti-Submarine Warfare (SASW) is a wartime mission of the U.S. Navy today. SASW is attacking Russian SSBNs where they operate in protected bastions under Arctic ice and in shallow coastal waters. The missiles on SSBNs serve as Russia’s reserve for intercontinental nuclear war. They provide Russia’s last answer in war by deterring attacks on Russia’s cities or retaliating for them. The aim of SASW is to alter the intercontinental nuclear balance in the favor of the U.S. on behalf of larger objectives. During the Cold War these strategic purposes included: 1) protecting SLOCs by forcing the Russian GPF navy to stay tied up defending SSBNs; 2) reducing the overall strength of a possible Soviet-Russian nuclear attack on the U.S. and so protecting the U.S. proper; and/or, 3) gaining strategic leverage in nuclear war—so-called “escalation dominance”^[1]—to affect the course of conventional war on the ground.

            Russia’s SSBNs would also unavoidably be attacked by Western SSNs and mines deployed to prosecute naval blockade of Russia, independent of the SASW mission. It may be possible to shape blockade operations to minimize their effects on  SSBNs and the cruise-missile-firing submarines (SSGN and SSN) that fire conventional and nuclear warheads at targets on land and sea in the Atlantic-European theater.^[2]

            This is not a theoretical issue. SASW has long been U.S. policy acknowledged publicly with varying degrees of specificity. During the Cold War the mission was an explicit component of the National Security Decision Directive 238, September 2, 1986, signed by President Reagan.^[3] It was one of the defining features of “The Maritime Strategy,” publicly described by CNO Adm. James Watkins in January 1986.^[4]

            In the “post-Cold War” period when national plans focused on the “war on terror,” SASW received no comment. When Secretary of Defense James Mattis reinstated “great power competition” as the basis for national plans in 2018,^[5] SASW almost immediately appeared simultaneously. A Navy spokesman let it be known that, in a war with Russia, the Navy intends to use its submarines “to deny bastions to the Russians,” on behalf of “defending the homeland,” presumably meaning to destroy Russian SLBMs and so reduce the weight of a Russian intercontinental nuclear strike.^[6] The defense-of-the-homeland objective was repeated in March 2020: An SSN exercise in the Arctic was described as needed “to maintain readiness and capability to defend the homeland when called upon,” according to RADM Butch Dollaga, Commander, Undersea Warfighting Development Center.^[7] Note that the comments in 2018 were offhand remarks during a Q&A at a public conference. The situation in 2020 was quite different. RADM Dollaga was speaking officially to the world via the Navy’s Office of Public Affairs.What threat to the US homeland that might emerge from the Arctic was left unnamed. Russian submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, deployed in the Arctic (and Sea of Okhotsk) are the only plausible candidates.

            Since then, the military purposes of SSN exercises in the Arctic have generally been deemphasized. The latest in a decades-long series of biennial under-ice exercises known as “ICEX,” has been renamed “Ice Camp 2024” and upgraded from “exercise” to “operation.”^[8] Official descriptions state no military, only its environmentally-related scientific purposes.

Assumptions

            Absent any public declarations to the contrary, it must be assumed that the SASW stands as national policy and that plans for prosecuting it continue to be pursued. Whether the Navy possesses the capabilities to execute the mission is not publicly known. It is nonetheless true that the Navy has acquired substantial forces uniquely tailored for Arctic operations.

            It is theoretically possible that, with or without actual capabilities to execute, the Navy thinks it is a good idea to talk up the mission in the hopes that doing so will force Russian planners to intensify their concern with the security of the SSBN force and make war plans that amount to keeping their GPF navy hunkered down in a strategic defensive crouch. Such a stratagem—a military ploy—suffers from three serious shortcomings. First, it is entirely unnecessary. The Russian GPF navy, like that of its Soviet predecessors, has long been committed to defend its SSBNs in a wartime “bastion” force employment scheme that blends smoothly with the Navy’s mission to defend the homeland against attack from the sea. Second, to this inherently defensive proclivity, one must add the fleet-in-being effect.^[9] The fact that the U.S. possesses a force of 60-plus of the quietest SSNs in the world means that prudent Russian planners can never relax their commitment to defense no matter what the U.S. actually plans to do with its submarines. The writer will venture that, while the Russians pay attention to what the U.S. says about its strategic intentions, U.S. words cause little change in Russia’s plans. Third, “playing” with a matter as serious as the intercontinental nuclear balance must be ruled off limits. Serious, responsible planners don’t toy with an issue where the survival of the nation would be literally at stake. Other, lesser shortcomings are taken up below.

            Whatever the case, SASW will always be a possibility as long as SSBNs exist. The problems it raises must be recognized and dealt with via the actions suggested here or otherwise. It is one of those rare missions where failure would be a better outcome than success.

The Logic of SASW in the Current Era

            Although the mission is to be carried out with conventional weapons, its consequences are mainly nuclear. Let’s look at three likely effects of prosecuting the mission and the policy actions implied for each.

            Intercontinental Nuclear War

Is an SASW campaign a sensible choice? The answer is an unqualified No. The logic of the Cold War cannot be extrapolated to the situation vis-à-vis Russia today. One particularly misguided idea is that a successful ASW campaign would significantly reduce the damage the U.S. would suffer should there be an intercontinental nuclear exchange. “Defending the homeland” through SASW, as Navy spokesmen have suggested, is impossible. SLBMs comprise a relatively small fraction of Russian intercontinental strike power. Even if the entire SSBN fleet were eliminated, a huge strike potential would remain in Russian ICBMs ashore, and only a small fraction of them would be more than capable of destroying the U.S. as a nation.

            Indeed, Michael Kofman has wondered aloud why the Soviets in the past and the Russians today ever built an SSBN force to serve as a strategic nuclear reserve when they had ample rail- and road-mobile ICBMs that could serve that purpose.^[10] (This same conclusion was reached by Michael MccGwire during the Cold War.) In addition, an SASW campaign could destabilize the longstanding, stable intercontinental nuclear relationship. The Russians might reasonably conclude that U.S. willingness to attack the most secure component of their strategic triad—missiles the U.S. knows are the ultimate guarantors of the Russian state, missiles whose principal targets are the cities of the United States—must presage dire intent: regime change in Moscow, seizure of Russian territory, or even a disarming nuclear first strike. This last, backed up by air and missile defense of U.S. territory against Russian retaliation, would mean that the U.S. contemplates fighting a nuclear war. This idea was correctly rejected as a lethally dangerous impossibility during the Cold War. It makes no more sense today.

            A decision to prosecute SASW is a grave step. Two problems, previously given little attention, are that SASW-like effects can arise—even if SASW is publicly eschewed—from actions taken for entirely different strategic purposes. First, NATO would exert maximum general ASW effort to find and kill Russian GPF submarines that are capable of launching Kalibr and other long-range, precision-guided cruise missiles against NATO land targets (possibly including in the U.S. proper).^[11] Second, in an Article V war the U.S. and its NATO allies will almost certainly “blockade” Russia; that is, deny Russia access of any kind to the world ocean. Although often thought of as optional, blockade is in fact simply unavoidable.^[12] The West would attack all of Russia’s naval forces at sea and drive remaining forces back to their own or neutral ports. The West would obviously do the same to Russia’s civil fleets. To do otherwise would defy the logic of war, would ignore U.S. and British successful historic experience in major war, and would contradict a NATO military-economic strategy that would take peacetime economic sanctions to their extreme conclusion in war.

            The question is how NATO’s anti-“Kalibr” and blockade actions might affect Russia’s SSBN and other intercontinental nuclear forces like the Kanyon nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed autonomous “torpedo.”^[13] SSBNs and Kalibr-firing and Kanyon-carrying submarines may share common bases and in any case share unique support facilities like Polyarny on the Kola peninsula. Is it operationally possible to exclude Russia’s sea-based intercontinental nuclear forces from becoming NATO targets by forces executing these other missions? Would mine warfare measures have to be forgone because they are they have little ability to discriminate among targets? Would it be necessary, or even possible, to rewrite rules of engagement for the West’s offensive forces to ensure that only the right category of submarine target is being attacked?

            Questions of this kind must be given thorough study along with a series of questions posed later in this essay regarding estimates of Russia’s responses to a successful SASW campaign if one should be mounted.

            How has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected the SASW calculus? First and most obvious, in the current era it will be Russia, and not the West, that is most likely to use nuclear weapons first—because all parties know that Russia is generally inferior at the conventional level of war, although it can muster local superiority on the ground on its periphery. This situation may lead to a predictable Russian formula: Russia seizes friendly (in the current case, Ukrainian) territory; Russia then digs in on the defense and threatens, credibly, to use nuclear weapons to thwart a counter-offensive. This formula is open to Russia for use against NATO Baltic members and possibly against Rumania.

            This is totally different from the Cold War relationship of forces. The West was then inferior in conventional ground forces. It threatened SASW as a substitute for, or reinforcement of, Western nuclear escalation at the tactical, the theater, and ultimately the strategic level. U.S. SASW sought to change the intercontinental nuclear balance and increased the threat to the U.S. of intercontinental nuclear attack. Such dire scenarios were credible because the US had made clear that it would risk nuclear war rather than let Europe fall under the control a single power who would then become Europe’s hegemon. Preventing this possibility was exactly the reason that the US had joined in WWI and WWII. All three cases were justified on ideological grounds—the unacceptability of autocracy, Fascism, Communism. The deeper reason was geopolitical—that a European hegemon would dispose of vast economic potential and ultimately would pose an unanswerable military threat to the US.

            Today, Russia poses no direct threat of comparable magnitude to control Europe, through it does pose an obvious threat to states on its periphery. The U.S. should join with its allies to answer these threats. But it should not engage in SASW. Neither the stakes nor the risks justify doing so. As noted earlier, SASW-like effects can nonetheless arise from executing other strategic missions at sea—anti-Kalibr and global blockade. If/where possible, the U.S. and its allies should seek to minimize such effects.

            The general conventional superiority of the West, particularly at sea, in and of itself, is a powerful reason for the West to avoid any actions that push the Russians in the direction of nuclear use. Threat of escalation is a common feature of Russian strategic declarations and seems hardly unexpected from the party that knows itself inferior in conventional capabilities.

            During the Cold War, however, two arguments were made in favor of executing SASW. First, it was said that by attacking Soviet SSBNs the U.S. would tie down the GPF navy on the defensive and thus protect Western SLOCs. But protect against what threat? It is now generally recognized that the Soviet navy never in its 70-year history had any intention of attacking Western SLOCs on the high seas and indeed was not up to that mission if it had been ordered to execute it.^[14]

As noted, the “fleet-in-being” effect of the U.S. SSN force obliged Soviet planners to hold their GPF navy in a defensive stance under essentially all circumstances. If SLOC defense were the goal, actually executing SASW to achieve it would have been superfluous, pointlessly putting at risk irreplaceable naval assets.

            Second, some in the U.S. have argued that attacks on Soviet SSBNs would not have had immediate escalatory effects because Soviet planners expected them. This last is almost certainly true but says little about how the Soviets might have responded to a generally successful U.S. campaign. If success came fairly quickly, the “use-them-or-lose-them” decision would have been extremely fraught for the Soviets. In August 1991, the Soviets conveyed to the world that they were capable of the “use them” option when, reportedly, a Delta IV launched all sixteen of its missiles in less than four minutes.^[15]

            However, if missiles in the nuclear reserve were fired early, then the reserve would have failed to fulfill its reason for being, vitiating the broader Soviet design for war. Launching reserve nuclear missiles is not like committing a reserve battalion of tanks. If the missiles were fired at their presumed targets—U.S. cities—the result would be an answering salvo of U.S. missiles against Soviet cities. Acknowledging that the Soviets would not have been surprised when they found their SSBNs under attack says nothing about how they might actually have responded.

            Suggested Actions:

Careful analysis of probable Russian calculations must be completed before reaching a decision about the desirability of the SASW mission—or the absence thereof. Such analysis should be carried out at a level within the government commensurate with the potentially catastrophic national impact of its results. This is a case where conventional war only has nuclear consequences. Perhaps an assessment akin to the Nuclear Posture Review would seem appropriate. It is obvious that decisions of such gravity for the nation should not be made by one of the military services on its own, especially where within the Navy its submarine service is uniquely central to Navy decision-making regarding the mission.

            NPR-level assessment of SASW would appear to be mandatory. There are other reasons to reconsider the NPR itself. Technological advances in long-range, precision-guided conventional strike weapons dictate that, if a future NPR is to meet that document’s stated purposes, its scope must widen. The NPR needs to address conventional weapons whose use can directly affect the nuclear balance. That balance specifically means not just the numbers and performance parameters of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. It also includes the early warning and command and control systems on which their effective use depends. To this increasingly complex conventional-nuclear nexus, we must also take note that our Russian “great power competitor,” has made clear that for some years Russia has considered that attacks by conventional weapons on its strategic forces (as just defined) or against its critical governmental infrastructure will be answered with nuclear weapons.^[16] Thus SASW might take its place in a new conventional-cum-nuclear category in a revised remit for the NPR.

            During the Cold War the Navy introduced the concept of SASW, first through intensely private planning but, after a fairly short interval, quite publicly. It has now put SASW back into the public domain. Thus far, it appears to be acting on its own. Saying things like “what we [the Navy] are doing [SASW] aligns with the National Security Strategy” (based on a GAO report reflecting strong Navy input) does not suffice. As far as can be inferred from information in the public domain, nothing suggests that the JCS, OSD, or the National Security Council have approved, much less ordered, the Navy to voice SASW intentions and to exercise forces in preparation to execute the mission.

            An SASW campaign would put the survival of the nation directly at risk. The national decision-making process should be fully engaged. The NCA should issue explicit directions to the Navy on what to do, and not to do, regarding SASW vis-à-vis the Russians and the Chinese and generically for the long-term future of a mission that will likely be a potential as long as SSBNs are a factor in naval planning. If the NCA’s decision goes against SASW, then the mission should, at a minimum, be held in abeyance. That decision should become the object of national declaratory policy and of military-to-military diplomacy with the Russians.

            Words should be accompanied by deeds. For over 30 years the Navy has been acquiring capabilities for anti-SSBN operations in the Arctic. Much of the cost of the most expensive class of attack submarines ever purchased, the Seawolf class, was owed to giving it unprecedented capacity to operate under-ice and also in shallow waters, both areas where Soviet SSBNs were estimated likely to seek concealment. Seawolf and later classes with similar capabilities are in the Navy’s active inventory. The message of SASW intent they bespeak cannot be changed.

            Potential discussions with Russia regarding the inviolability of the SSBNs of both sides in war might afford an opportunity to engage with Russia in a cooperative mode. It is difficult think of another area—certainly not one of comparable importance—in the naval sphere where such a thing might be possible. Competition dominates Navy thinking, as it does the writer’s.

            On this score, here is one, entirely hypothetical, strategic case to consider: that US SSBNs become detectable and so subject to Russian attack. In addition to mounting a defense of its own SSBNs, the US would want to be able to answer in kind. (Note that this would not be “SASW” at U.S. initiative.) Thus the possible need for under-ice torpedoes would arise. But if very quiet, essentially stationary U.S. SSBNs on patrol had become detectable, presumably by non-acoustic means, would not the same Russian detection systems be brought to bear on US SSNs moving forward to fire under-ice torpedoes?

            Possible radical breakthroughs in submarine detection would obviously transform naval warfare. Whether to continue to develop and exercise under-ice torpedoes as a hedge against a breakthrough in submarine detection and so be needed in the hypothetical scenario described here should be analyzed carefully and a deliberate decision made.

            In any case, it is theoretically possible that under-ice torpedoes are needed for purposes other than SASW. If so, those purposes should be articulated and evaluated in light of their inescapable SASW implications. If, despite the logic and evidence adduced above, the NCA should decide that SASW is desirable, then the Navy should be prepared to address, and answer with confidence, two questions that arise should execution of the mission become successful: first, would it lead to tactical nuclear war at sea?; and/or, second, would it have undesirable nuclear ecological consequences of catastrophic  scale?

Tactical Nuclear War at Sea

            The Russians would be highly unlikely to accept the loss of their SSBN force at the hands of U.S. conventional SASW forces without resorting to use of their tactical nuclear ASW weapons. They, like their Soviet predecessors, have many such weapons in their arsenal,^[17] and the threshold for their use is relatively low for at least two reasons: 1) in contrast to their use ashore, nuclear weapons fired at sea targets produce no immediate collateral damage; and 2) the Russians have placed great emphasis on their readiness to go nuclear in response to Western conventional superiority. But because the U.S. no longer possesses nuclear ASW weapons it could not answer in kind at sea, even if it wanted to.

            Independent of these military factors, the Russians could reasonably expect their decision to use nuclear weapons at sea to have a powerful demonstration effect on their adversaries, perhaps inducing a fracture in the Western alliance. Some states might choose to fight on, but others might wish to withdraw from a war that has turned nuclear. The ranks of the latter would likely be larger if the U.S. is viewed as taking actions at sea, on a unilateral basis, that lead to nuclear escalation.^[18]

            The Intelligence Community should be directed to estimate the capabilities for, and the likelihood of, the use of Russian nuclear ASW weapons in a campaign to defend SSBNs. The Navy itself should evaluate its readiness to fight an SASW campaign in a tactical nuclear environment with existing conventional ordnance or, if deemed necessary, a new generation of U.S. nuclear ASW weapons.

            Further, policy analysis should focus on the expected effects on the West should the Russians cross the nuclear threshold at sea in a variety of scenarios of war ashore. The course of war ashore is likely to be an important, if not the dominant, factor in determining the decisions of the Alliance—primarily the U.S. NCA—regarding responses at sea and ashore. The degree of endorsement of U.S. SASW plans by allies should be assessed and, if need be, sought in advance.

Nuclear Ecological Damage

            A successful campaign to kill Russian SSBNs would result in unavoidable and possibly catastrophic damage to the environment. At a minimum it would leave the sea floors of the Arctic Ocean, the Sea of Okhotsk, and adjacent Pacific waters littered with large amounts of radioactive material from nuclear reactors and from the many megaton-scale missile warheads that would be destroyed or damaged. The amount of radioactivity released would depend the losses on both sides, on the number of Russian SSBNs sunk, and what happens to the missiles aboard them. A typical Russian SSBN is estimated to carry at least 100, individual nuclear warheads.^[19] Thus sinking even one or two could produce considerable loose radioactive material. In a worst case, a missile warhead might detonate and vaporize a considerable volume of radioactive materials in other warheads, if not trigger their detonations as well. The intensity of the radiation and the area of its dispersal would likely be large. Immediate effects on US territory in Alaska and on allies like Canada, Norway, the UK, Japan, and Korea might be severe. Should longer-term contamination of the global ocean follow, the continental US itself could be threatened, indeed life in all its forms on land, sea, and in the atmosphere could be extinguished.

            During the Cold War, ecological damage of this kind was seen as a lesser included case in the nuclear Armageddon that confronted the world. Today, there are no issues yet at stake between the US and Russia that are remotely comparable to those faced vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. There is no justification for accepting potentially higher risk of radiological damage whose actual risk has not even been estimated.

            Needed Action

            The Navy should review existing studies or initiate new studies of the ecological consequences of even a moderately successful wartime  campaign against Russian SSBNs, including estimates of the probability that attacks might detonate strategic nuclear warheads. The aim would be to verify that a SASW would not be environmentally self-defeating: a 21st century twist on the Pyrrhic victory concept—gaining sea control of waters that have become a threat to humankind and other lifeforms.

            The Navy must study these environmental questions internally and be able to answer them satisfactorily in public. Such questions seem certain arise in the Congress from Alaska’s delegation, for example, or from private parties with deep commercial commitments in the Arctic like Exxon-Mobil.

            They will also likely come from close allies like the UK, Norway, Japan, and Korea who may fear exposure to radiologic toxicity. Indeed, it will be surprising if U.S. critics abroad, who have long charged that the US is indifferent to the fate of its allies in war, do not pick up this line of argument. The specter of apocalyptic damage to the world ocean would likely be raised. It seems impossible for anyone to believe that the world’s most powerful nation would engage in possible planet-threatening military actions without bothering to find out the likely consequences.

Conclusion

            The weight of fact and logic means that prosecuting SASW in the current era is simply a stunningly bad idea. It subjects the United States to a high risk of national extinction, a risk that is in no way justified by the importance of what is being threatened. During the Cold War Soviet Russia had the capability to conquer all of Europe in war at the conventional level—which is precisely why the West planned to fire nuclear weapons and chose to engage in SASW in the first place. Russia will take a giant step toward regaining a comparable Europe-conquering potential if it completely subdues Ukraine. Brzezinsky has long warned, “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”^[20]

            Until a newly reestablished Russian “empire” appears on the strategic horizon,^[21] SASW should be held in abeyance. Instead, a carefully managed relinquishing of the SASW mission may offer the opportunity for useful cooperative exchanges with Russia (and China).

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^[1] The term was introduced in 1986 by CNO Admiral James Watkins. CNO Adm. James D. Watkins, “The Maritime Strategy,” Proceedings Vol. 112/1/995 Supplement, January 1986, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1986/january-supplement/maritime-strategy-0.

^[2]  See the  writer’s “Freedom of Navigation and Blockade On an Ocean-less Planet, Revising the National Defense Strategy of the United States, forthcoming.

^[3] “It [the strategy] may also include conventional attacks on … Soviet ballistic missile submarines. Such actions would be intended to deny the Soviets the ability to operate from sanctuaries and to deter or control escalation. p. 17, https://NSDD 238 1986-CIA-RDP01M00147R000100130003-0.pdf.

^[4] CNO Adm. James D. Watkins, “The Maritime Strategy,” Proceedings Vol. 112/1/995 Supplement, January 1986,) “It [the strategy] may also include conventional attacks on … Soviet ballistic missile submarines. Such actions would be intended to deny the Soviets the ability to operate from sanctuaries and to deter or control escalation. p. 17.

^[5] In early 2018, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that henceforth US defense planning would be based on “Great Power competition.” James Mattis, “Remarks by Secretary Mattis on the National Defense Strategy” (speech delivered at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, 19 January 2018), available at dod.defense.gov/. The transcript uses initial upper case in Great Power. Mr. Mattis was announcing the recent release of the National Defense Strategy, the summary of which uses the less-specific term inter-state competition [emphasis added], “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge,” U.S. Department of Defense, p. 1, www.defense.gov/.

^[6] Jeffrey Barker, deputy branch head for Policy and Posture in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (Op 515B) in remarks delivered Dec. 4, 2018, at a forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, entitled “The Arctic and US National Security.” The Forum was streamed in real time and is available from the Center as a Webcast. Mr. Barker’s remarks were not a part of his prepared presentation. In Part 1, starting at 2h 9m, during Q&A, Mr. Barker observed that the purpose of bastion denial was “So that the Russians don’t have bastions to operate from—defending the homeland.” And “what we [the Navy] are doing [strategic ASW] aligns with the National Security Strategy.” First reported by Richard R. Burgess, “Navy Must Be ‘Agile But Sustainable’ in the Arctic,” Sea Power Magazine, 04 Dec 18, https://seapowermagazine.org/navy-must-be-agile-but-sustainable-in-the-arctic. To confirm the enduring persistence of the SASW idea in 2019 see Magnus Nordenman, The New Battle for the Atlantic, Emerging Naval Competition with Russia in the Far North, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD, 2019), p. 201. The point is repeated in Admiral, USN, James Foggo’s, highlights of Nordenman’s book found in “The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic, the Nordics and the Direct Defense Challenge,” 08/17/2019, https://sldinfo.com/2019/08/the-fourth-battle-of-the-atlantic-the-nordics-and-the-direct-defense-challenge.

^[7] RADM Butch Dollaga , “U.S. Navy completes ICEX 2020,” The Flagship, (March 19, 2020), https://www.militarynews.com/norfolk-navy-flagship/u-s-navy-completes-icex-2020/article_4c141cb8-6790-11ea-b602-bb7b0dc50930.html.

^[8] Commander, Submarine Force Atlantic, press release, Lt. Michela White ,NAVY LAUNCHES OPERATION ICE CAMP 2024 IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN, 8 March 2024 (https://www.sublant.usff.navy.mil/Press-Room/News-Stories/Article/3702201/navy-launches-operation-ice-camp-2024-in-the-arctic-ocean/).

^[9] See the writer’s post on cliosmusings.blog “ Fleet-in-Being – The 17th Century Calls Out to the 21st Century” https://cliosmusings.blog/2021/03/22/fleet-in-being-the-17thcentury-calls-out-to-today. Future references to posts refer to cliosmusings.blog.

^[10] Michael Kofman, “The Role of Nuclear Forces in Russian Maritime Strategy,” March 12, 2020, https://russianmilitaryanalysis.wordpress.com/author/twentydunhills.

^[11] Joshua Menks, CDR, USN, and Michael B. Petersen, “The ‘Kalibrization’ of the Russian Fleet” Proceedings, May 2022, Vol. 148/5/1,431.

^[12] See the post “Blockade: Military-Economic Warfare vs. Russia,”

(https://cliosmusings.blog/2022/01/23/blockade-military-economic-warfare-vs-russia).

^[13] Thomas L. Siu, Ltjg., USN, “Autonomous Nuclear Torpedoes Usher in a Dangerous Future,” Proceedings May 2022 Vol. 148/5/1,431, (https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/may/autonomous-nuclear-torpedoes-usher-dangerous-future.)

^[14] Bradford Dismukes, “The Return of Great-Power Competition—Cold War Lessons about Strategic Antisubmarine Warfare and Defense of Sea Lines of Communication,” Naval War College Review, Vol 73, No. 3, Summer 2020 (https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8127&context=nwc-review).

^[15] Caleb Larson, “Russia’s Delta-Class Block IV Submarine Has a Prestigious History,” National Interest, May 11, 2021 (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/russias-delta-class-block-iv-submarine-has-prestigious-history-184882).

^[16] Vladimir Isachenkov, “Russia Warns It Will See Any Incoming Missile As Nuclear” (Associated Press 09 August 2020), (https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-weapons-international-news-moscow-europe-russia-888e0816c6fa7f58b9ad4f1e97993643).

^[17] Bott quotes Christensen and Korda: “As far as we can ascertain, the biggest user of non-strategic nuclear weapons in the Russian military is the navy, which we estimate has an inventory of approximately 820 warheads for use by land-attack cruise missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, anti-submarine rockets, anti-aircraft missiles, torpedoes, and depth charges.” Christopher Bott, CAPT, USN [ret.], “Responding to Russia’s Northern Fleet,” Proceedings

Vol. 147/3/1,417, March 2021 (https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/march/responding-russias-northern-fleet). CAPT Bott is a former naval intelligence officer.

^[18] See the post “Blockade: Military-Economic Warfare vs. Russia,” (https://cliosmusings.blog/2022/01/23/blockade-military-economic-warfare-vs-russia).

^[19] NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative) Country Spotlight, Russia (https://www.nti.org/countries/russia/)

^[20] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2012), p 95.

^[21] At the time of this writing in March 2025, a new Russian “empire” seems alarmingly within Moscow’s reach.