Russia and the strategic challenge to the North

Russia is able to challenge NATO’s security through a variety of avenues in the North, stretching and testing the West’s ASW capabilities and the security of deep-sea infrastructure. Dr Sidharth Kaushal explores Russia’s strategic challenge to the North in this piece of analysis. 

Due to its continental size, it is often easy to forget that Europe is in the final instance a large peninsula in strategic terms – with a hostile neighbour to its east and sea in every other direction. Access to key parts of Europe is heavily constrained by chokepoints such as Gibraltar and the Suez Canal and the continent is linked to the wider world by a network of undersea infrastructure that is fragile in several areas. Furthermore, threats to critical infrastructure and other targets on land have their origins in the maritime domain. This reflects a careful set of force structure decisions made by Russia in the last two decades, which has seen the VMF (the Russian Navy) carry the majority of Russia’s throw-weight in terms of cruise missiles which can be used for both conventional and nuclear functions. Although the land domain is unsurprisingly given considerable attention in current defence discourse in light of the emergence of a continental power as Europe’s pacing threat, the maritime domain is, in many respects, the centre of gravity for both the continent and Russia. 

Beyond Europe’s immediate environs, several key sea lines of communication remain straddled by hostile actors, such as Iran and its proxies, the Houthis in particular, which have received a degree of support from Russia. It might, of course, be noted that the market has largely adapted to chokepoint disruption and the Houthi blockade had a marginal impact on inflation in Europe. Similarly, 76% of the oil transiting the Strait of Hormuz reached Asian markets. As such, one might reasonably ask whether SLOC protection at reach should be a priority for European navies, given the impact of disruption can be mitigated and in many instances will affect regions other than Europe more severely. It is clear that the strategic challenge to the North will have to take precedence, but the threats to SLOCs cannot be entirely ignored. 

The Strategic Challenge to the North

The commander of Russia’s Northern Fleet, as a former senior naval officer observed to the author, has a great deal to be pleased about. Despite Russia’s significant losses elsewhere, the Northern Fleet has seen steady increases in capability measured in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The fleet has received three of Russia’s new Yasen-class SSGNs and will receive further boats in this class over the next decade as part of Russia’s second tranche of purchases. The Yasen represents a significant improvement in quietness relative to previous Russian submarines, a function of design characteristics such as its monoblock OKP-6 reactor and a pump jet propulsion system. Its UKSK-P vertical launch system can allow it to carry up to 40 3M-14 Kalibr cruise missiles for land attack roles, or faster anti-ship missiles such as P-800 Oniks and Zircon. The fleet’s Project 971M/I Akula-class submarines are slowly returning to readiness after a trough in capability during the last decade, with SSNs such as the K-328 Leopard and K-154 Tigr completing refits in the early 2020s. 

To be sure, the Northern Fleet is not ten feet tall- one Russian article describing the 2019 Grom exercise in which Russia surged eight SSNs as being effectively the fleet’s entire combat capability. However, the number of contacts which the fleet can generate is likely to exceed the defensive capacity of NATO without the US. This is because anti-submarine warfare (ASW) typically involves multiple defensive platforms being tasked to any given target. Given the land attack capability of Russian submarines and the high likelihood (per articles written by figures such as Konstantin Sivkov, a former general staff officer) that some of the LACMs will be nuclear tipped, tracking the Russian SSN fleet is a nondiscretionary task which could absorb the majority of allied naval capacity. 

There are several dimensions to the Russian threat which bear considering. First, submarines such as the Yasen appear to share design characteristics with the Alfa class, which was built for speed. With a top speed of 35 knots, it is likely that the Yasen is expected to transit chokepoints such as the GIUK gap in crisis, during which noise is less of a consideration (since Allied vessels cannot engage) and speed allows tracking vessels to be outrun until the boats enter the Atlantic. This design choice would seem indicative of a focus on surging capabilities rather than withholding them for bastion defence per Soviet doctrine. This would be further corroborated by exercises such as Grom. Relatedly, Russia’s SSBNs appear to regularly operate under thicker ice than has been the case for most Soviet-era SSBNs which in turn holds out the prospect of their being employed from positions deeper in the Arctic, reducing the demand for protection considerably and freeing SSNs for offensive roles.

Third, the SSN threat has in many ways evolved into a land attack threat. While there are too few SSNs in Russia’s ORBAT to close off most SLOCs to Europe, in a land attack role Russian SSNs could play a critical role in striking key targets such as BMD radars and command and control nodes – a role which would be consistent with the focus on surging them to the Atlantic from where they can launch missiles from a number of vectors.

Finally, as things currently stand, Russian SSNs have several advantages over the vessels which must engage them in many instances. For example, the Futleyar heavyweight torpedo to be carried on the Yasen has a maximum range of 50km – well in excess of the MK54. While this excludes capabilities such as helicopters and should not be taken as an indicator of absolute vulnerability, it is nonetheless the case that the alliance has relatively few navies with long-range heavyweight torpedoes capable of reliably killing an SSN.  Moreover at an institutional level, NATO ASW training often omits elements of realism such as the tracking of multiple contacts and the elimination of vessels from an exercise upon detection. As such, the Russian submarine threat is at present an acute if not irresolvable one.

Russian ASW, by contrast, is somewhat less developed. The role appears to have been made primarily the responsibility of the VKS when the latter received control of the Tu-22 from the VMF. The navy still retains considerable ASuW capabilities, including the modernized Oscar II submarines (capable of carrying 72 P-800 each) as well as the Gorshkov class frigate. However, its balance of investment suggests a focus on land attack – something indicated both by the use of older platforms for ASuW and by the relative underinvestment in satellites such as the Pion and Lotos, which were meant to replace the Soviet era Tselina and Legenda satellite constellations.

The Threat to CNI – A Bounded But Evolving Challenge

The second way in which Russian maritime power can pose a threat to Europe, particularly in peacetime, is through threats to critical national infrastructure at sea. As evidenced by events such as damage to the Baltic connector pipeline by the Chinese-flagged vessel Newnew Polar bear (which dragged its anchor over the pipeline) as well as subsequent damage to several cables, targeting critical infrastructure is likely to be an important part of Russia’s approach to coercion at sea.

Russia has a range of assets capable of targeting critical infrastructure, the most capable of which are held by the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research (GUGI) a body independent of the VMF and which answers directly to the Russian MoD. GUGI operates a range of deep-diving submarines, such as the titanium-hulled Losharik, Paltus and X-Ray, which are capable of operating at extreme depths, where the impact of sabotage would be particularly difficult to repair. It also operates vessels such as the Belgorog (a stretched Oscar-class submarine, which acts as a mothership for vessels like the Losharik) and surface vessels such as the Yantar, which can act as operational hubs for  deep-diving, remotely-operated vehicles like the Harpsichord.

Presently, the threat posed by undersea sabotage is bounded in several respects. First, there is considerable redundancy in the CNI upon which Europe depends in many areas. For example, 200 undersea cables break every year due to natural causes, with little disruption. An attacker thus faces a tradeoff between deniability and impact – sustained sabotage to cause maximal impact is likely to not be deniable. However, cable networks may become more fragile due to a market-driven consolidation of data flows within a smaller number of low latency cables being laid by companies such as Amazon, which reflect a growing demand for cables capable of handling the data volumes associated with cloud computing and AI.

In other areas, however, the threat is more acute. For example, the European gas grid has relatively little redundancy and some nations have critical dependencies on pipelines like the Langeled pipe, which meets 20% of the UK’s gas demand. The challenge is greater in the Baltic region due to poor integration of the area’s gas grid with the wider European network. This has led organizations such as ENTSOG to infer from modelling that the impact of significant reductions in gas supplies would be especially problematic. The impact of sabotage to the European gas grid can be compounded significantly by events elsewhere. For example, a 2023 strike at Australian LNG terminals drove a 40% increase in the main European gas price benchmark – something which would have been greatly exacerbated by a concomitant sabotage campaign. One might also consider the potential impact of attacks in the Red Sea or the Strait of Hormuz in tandem with sabotage in Europe.

Given the wider Russian focus on strategic operations to destroy critically important targets (SODCIT) in a conflict, it is likely that sabotage at sea will be an important component of this approach and it is likely to characterize peacetime coercion as well. Presently, the threat is a manageable one due to factors such as network redundancy and the fact that platforms like the Belgorod and Yantar may not be survivable in a shooting war. However, several of the factors discussed above may considerably complicate the challenge moving forward, which may become especially dire if Allied ASW capabilities are absorbed tracking targets such as the Yasen. Moreover, comparatively cheap means of attacking targets at longer ranges, such as XLUUVs including the Russian Sarma-D, could enable wider target sets to be engaged without the requirement to risk scarce platforms. As such, the threat to CNI is a bounded but growing one which could become more severe in the next decade and beyond.

Conclusion

Europe faces a range of threats to its maritime security, the most acute of which emerge from the north. Containing these threats and imposing dilemmas on opponents such as Russia, which also increasingly depend on the sea, is thus a strategic imperative for Europe. This imperative is one that many European navies, emerging from two decades of focus on constabulary operations, are currently poorly set up to deliver upon.

Author: Dr Sidharth Kaushal, the Senior Research Fellow for Sea Power at RUSI. His research covers the impact of technology on maritime doctrine in the 21st century and the role of sea power in a state’s grand strategy. He has specific expertise in the Russian armed forces and their approach to naval warfare. The lead image is AI-generated, and shows a Russian submarine holding undersea cables at risk.