by James Jinks
The Coalition Government’s 2010 decision to cancel the Nimrod MRA4 Maritime Patrol Aircraft programme on cost grounds has left a serious capability gap in respect of the Nimrods’ role in ship surveillance, search and rescue and anti-submarine warfare. To mitigate the risks the Navy has been forced to make greater use of frigates and helicopters to protect sea-lanes and prosecute possible submarine contacts.50 The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, claimed that ‘the risk can be mitigated under the current threat levels we are expecting to envisage’ both ‘in terms of the delivery of the strategic deterrent as well as in terms of force protection of deployed task groups’. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff, claimed in 2010 that he had ‘made it clear in the defence review that if we went ahead with the decision to get rid of maritime patrol aircraft, in the circumstances of a resurgent submarine threat we would not be able to send a naval taskforce to sea unless someone else provided that capability.’ ‘It was not a case of taking a bit more risk; we simply would not be able to do it, should that particular threat level rematerialize. Nobody is saying that it will or that it won’t, but we would have to look for somebody else to provide that capability.’51
Since the decision to abandon Nimrod was taken in 2010, relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated. Following the 2014 Ukraine crisis Russian submarine activity has increased significantly. In April 2015, the head of the Russian Navy, Admiral Viktor Chirkov, admitted that ‘From January 2014 to March 2015 the intensity of patrols by submarines has risen by almost 50 percent as compared to 2013.’52 In November 2014, the Government was forced to call in NATO Maritime Patrol Aircraft from France, the United States and Canada after a fishing trawler spotted an ‘unknown submarine periscope’ off the west of Scotland, not far from Faslane. Two US Orions, a Royal Canadian Air Force Aurora and a French Dassault Atlantique Maritime Patrol Aircraft operating out of RAF Lossiemouth spent early December 2014 searching for the mysterious submarine.53 A month later, two US aircraft alongside the Type 23 frigate HMS Somerset were again involved in a search for a mysterious submarine contact lurking near Faslane. In March 2015, a Scottish fishing trawler was nearly dragged underwater after an unidentified submerged object was caught in its trailing nets. The trawler’s Skipper, Angus Macleod, was forced to rev the trawler’s engine to keep pace in front of the net for around fifteen minutes, until the boat’s propeller finally severed the rope. What this submerged object was remains a mystery. The Royal Navy confirmed that there were no Royal Navy or NATO submarines operating in the area at the time. ‘It was not a whale,’ said Macleod, ‘we have had whales in the nets before and the net is all twisted afterwards. Whatever it was, it was human powered – of that we are convinced.’54
If these probings are Russian submarines, the frequency is still far short of the Cold War patterns and are designed not just for the purposes of testing the US, UK and NATO but to play to President Putin’s domestic audience, many of whom no doubt found it as difficult as the British previously did to cope with the pangs of geopolitical decline – in the Soviet case, the swiftest collapse ever experienced by a superpower – in 1989–91. The nuclear-triad renewal programme, therefore, has national pride as its propellant as well as military reach and prowess.
This is why a 2015 assessment of what the Royal Navy Submarine Service might be facing in the coming decades would still begin with Russian capabilities, though it would now go much wider to embrace a number of other navies of varying levels of sophistication. What kind of underwater world might the ‘Vanguard’ class and their successors and the ‘Astute’ class be facing with the best that submarine Britain can equip them? It’s a world paradoxically of enhanced technical threats since Cold War days. Cyber attacks occur on almost a daily basis; though the UK Government shrinks from admitting it publicly; crucial parts of Britain’s defence capabilities and what is known as our ‘critical national infrastructure’ are under attack by Russia and China or those who act as their instruments. There are some intriguing continuities. The Russians still put great faith in human intelligence: there are almost exactly the same number of Russian intelligence officers in the Kensington embassy and the trade mission in Highgate as there were in the 1980s. And they continue to make great efforts to penetrate Operation ‘Relentless’ – the maintenance of continuous at-sea deterrence since 1969 – whose integrity and protection are a permanent priority for UK Defence Intelligence and its sister secret services. This is what a 2015 version of that 1985 assessment might look like.55
Russia
Post-Soviet Russia kept a viable submarine capability throughout the lean and stretched twin decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its SSBNs, guarded by a full panoply of air, surface and underwater protectors in their cold bastions, remained the ultimate, last-resort defence of the Russian homeland, a constant and absolute top priority for the occupant of the Kremlin. And if, in the words of the 1985 JIC assessment, they are ‘deployed to the Arctic waters … the ice-cap can give extra protection from Western anti submarine warfare forces’ and ‘SSBNs can fire their missiles on the surface either where there is open water or by breaking through the ice-cap.’56
In 2011, two years after stepping up patrolling, Vladimir Putin declared publicly that all branches of the Russian military would be funded for a 30 per cent modernization by 2015 (equivalent to £89bn) rising to 70 per cent by 2020. Western Intelligence was sceptical that on the naval side this would convert into the number of new hulls promised by 2015 and 2020 as Putin may have been aiming high deliberately.57
By 2015, the end of the first surge of new defence spending, the average age of the submarines of the Russian Northern Fleet was twenty-two years. As in the Cold War, Putin’s naval construction programme is weighted heavily towards submarine construction. It is now at its highest level since the breakup of the Soviet Union, with three major submarine programmes receiving considerable investment:
The ‘Borey’ class SSBNs (Borey is the Russian word for the Greek god of the north wind).
The ‘Yasen’ SSNs (Yasen is the Russian for ash tree).
The ‘Lada’ conventional submarines (Lada is the name of a Slav pagan goddess who had the lot – youth, beauty, love, harmony and merriment).
The first of the huge 24,000 ton ‘Borey’ class, the Yuri Dolgoruki, is already at sea after a programme that has been beset with delays. Originally conceived in 1982, the development of the ‘Borey’ class SSBN was frustrated by both funding difficulties and considerable missile development problems. When the first of class was laid down in November 1996, the plan was to use a new strategic missile, the SS-NX-28. That missile was cancelled in 1998 and replaced with a navalized version of the SS-27 Topol-M, known as Bulava 30. The Bulava’s development programme has been marred by embarrassing and increasingly public test failures (missiles exploding mid-flight and violently cartwheeling through the night sky in flames). Despite these problems, Bulava entered service in January 2013 (and in September 2013, a Bulava missile failed in flight following a submerged test launch).58 Overall, there are plans for eight ‘Borey’ class submarines in all, each carrying sixteen Bulava missiles with up to six warheads apiece. The six Delta IVs of the Northern Fleet have been refitted to keep them going until the 2020s but the three Delta IIIs in Vladivostok are in poor condition, as is Russia’s SSBN capability in the Pacific. As a result, the Russians are thought to be giving the construction of the Boreys priority over all other programmes. Three are under construction at Russia’s nuclear-submarine naval yard at Sevmash: the Knyaz Oleg, the Vladimir Monomakh and the Knyaz Vladimir.59
The first of the ‘Yasen’ class, the Severodvinsk, impressed Western intelligence analysts before, during and after its trials in the White Sea in 2012. It is a dual-purpose missile carrier with its cruise missiles a mix of the nuclear-tipped and conventional anti-ship warheads, and carrying too a substantial complement of torpedoes. The ‘Yasen’ may represent the pinnacle of Russian SSN design, benefi
ting not only from all the information from the Walker Spy Ring, but the considerable technological advances that have occurred in the years since the end of the Cold War. The quietness of the Yasen’s signature makes it very hard to detect. Its sensors are very advanced but the US Navy’s newest ‘Virginia’ class SSNs and the Royal Navy’s new Astutes will still have a technical edge when and if they come up against one. Four are currently under construction at Sevmash: the Kransnoyarsk, the Khabarovsk, the Kazan and the Novosibirsk.60 Three more are planned by 2023, although four in service by 2023 is probably a more likely figure.
The ‘Lada’ conventional submarines too are very advanced with greatly extended underwater endurance and will pose a stiff test to the US Navy and the Royal Navy. Like the Yasens, the first of the line, St Petersburg, and its sisters will represent a step change in Russian conventional submarine capability and seven of them are planned to be in service by 2020. Western intelligence reckons the Russians may go into partnership with the Chinese Navy in building the Ladas.
There are other more puzzling developments. One of the six remaining Delta IVs, K-64, has been converted into an auxiliary submarine to replace a specially converted Delta III to serve as a mother ship to an unusual titanium-hulled mini-submarine known as the Project 1851 ‘Paltus’. In each case the central section, where the missile compartment once sat, has been removed and replaced with a 43-metre plug into which the mini-submarine is able to dock and undock. The purpose of Paltus is unknown, but it is capable of diving to extreme depths of up to 1000 metres. It is also equipped with two forward manipulators, long arms capable of reaching out from the submarine and carrying out various tasks, which suggests it is used for a combination of oceanographic research and search and rescue operations, but also possibly for underwater intelligence gathering.61 Here, the US ‘Ivy Bells’ programme to tap Soviet underwater communication cables immediately comes to mind (see here).62 As of 2014, 99 per cent of international communications are routed via 263 submarine fibre-optic cables, which are cheaper and quicker than satellite communications.63 Many more are due to be laid down in the future. Are the Russians using this mini-submarine and its mother ship to tap underwater cables? Do they have a modern day equivalent to the ‘Ivy Bells’ programme?
Russian interest in small submarines does not end there. In 1990 construction of a nuclear-powered mini-submarine known as ‘Losharik’ started at the Soviet Admiralty shipyard in Leningrad. Construction was suspended following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the submarine was completed in 2007. Built of titanium to withstand pressures at extreme depths, the highly classified submarine took part in Russia’s Arctic expedition in autumn 2012, where it dived 2.5–3 kilometres in the Mendeleyev Ridge and remained submerged for twenty days. During the dive, the crew conducted geological surveys and collected 500 kg of rocks, which Russia probably intends to use to reinforce its claims to the Arctic region.64 According to recent reports, construction of a second mini-submarine, smaller than the ‘Losharik’, has also started.65
The funds pouring into submarine Russia will finance a range of other significant upgrades tasked for anti-submarine warfare including three new classes of frigate – the ‘Steregushchiy’, the ‘Admiral Gorshkov’ and the ‘Admiral Grigorovitch’. There is a big push too on underwater sensors, both magnetic and passive/active acoustic. The old Ilyushin 38 May Maritime Patrol Aircraft will be replaced by a new aircraft at what looks like the rate of one a year and the old Tupolev Bears will be upgraded again. Add to this modernization programmes for heavy and light torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles and mortars and mines and there is, or soon will be, a truly testing Russian-shaped underwater world in which today’s Perisher graduates and their crews will have to operate on their peacetime patrols, let alone in the scarcely thinkable conditions of any other kind. The silent deep today and in the foreseeable future has the characteristics of a front line just as it did in Cold War times.
For the Royal Navy Submarine Service, the Russians will always be their Champions League opponents, their maritime benchmark. In the 2020s Russia will certainly have the capacity to mount another deep Cold War should the occupant of the Kremlin wish it. But it is important not to neglect another rising set of hulls just one or two of which might find themselves up against a Royal Navy SSN in the warmer waters East of Suez.
China
Since the mid-1990s, China has put a significant effort into building up its submarine strengths. By 2013 the inventory included 55 conventional submarines, 7 SSNs and at least 4 SSBNs. They were by Western standards relatively noisy and technologically backward. But the Chinese leadership has been making considerable investment in technical improvements. China increased military spending by 9.7 per cent to an estimated $216bn in 2014. Its anti-submarine warfare capacity would execute a generation leap if it procured the Russian-designed Ladas. China’s considerable gifts in the world of espionage are also expected to help narrow the gap with Western submarine forces.
Top-level political support in Beijing for underwater China will almost certainly be sustained as the country proceeds bit by bit with its longer-term plans to acquire a serious naval presence in the Indian Ocean and possibly even the Middle East. The Chinese are well aware of the West’s lead in underwater technology – hence the big investment in improving China’s anti-submarine warfare capabilities. As China’s maritime reach widens, there is an increasing chance that Chinese surface vessels and submarines will be operating in the same waters as the Royal Navy’s ‘Astute’ class. Chinese developments are naturally closely monitored by Western intelligence and spark a special attention from those responsible for calibrating future possibilities of another huge rising power.
India
India has made great strides in its anti-submarine warfare. It has leased an Akula I from the Russians, which became active in early August 2013. It has developed its own ‘Arihant’ class SSBN. The Indians created their own sonar improvements for the old Kilos and are building an entirely new French-designed ‘Scorpene’ class of SSKs. In addition India has considerable strength in the air with a mix of Maritime Patrol Aircraft acquired from both East and West – the US P-8 Neptunes and the Russian IL-38s upgraded with the new Russian Sea Dragon ASW suites – an aerial abundance the UK could only envy when the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review took away the new Nimrods. India is also procuring a new fleet of frigates in the ‘Talwar’ class. If its forces can integrate all the elements they possess successfully, Western analysts rate India’s chances of becoming a formidable ASW power. For all their progress with nuclear enrichment, however, it is unlikely that a democratic Commonwealth partner like India would ever use its underwater assets to put the Royal Navy under threat, unlike contemporary Iran.
Iran
In and around the tightly constrained waters of the Gulf, the Iranians have frequently exercised a range of underwater, surface and aerial capabilities in an area where there is always a Royal Navy presence often including a ‘Trafalgar’ class submarine. The Iranians operate coastal surveillance systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, some rather old Maritime Patrol Aircraft left over from the days of the Shah and a very substantial range of small combat vessels, rigid raiders and the like. Iran also operates five British-designed ‘Alvand’ class frigates.
Western intelligence has detected quite a large home-grown Iranian R & D and investment programme in underwater and ASW capabilities designed to get around sanctions. Of particular concern are the Iranian Yonos, their midget submarines. Though the threat such boats pose to Royal Navy submarines is low, that is not so for surface vessels as the Yonos have very similar capabilities to the North Korean midget submarine which sank South Korea’s Cheonan in March 2010.
When assessing future threats to Royal Navy submarines great attention is paid to the capabilities of those countries which just might trouble her in the future. Intense concentration is also devoted to those technologies that might trigger a leap in vulnerability. One in particular
has preoccupied her naval and intelligence analysts since the first big investments in nuclear boats in the late 1950s to today – will there be a technical breakthrough that makes the deep dramatically less opaque, tilting the balance away from the hunted to the hunters?
