Newsweek: NATO has Russian submarine problem

Russia's navy has taken a battering in the war with Ukraine, with a number of several high-profile humiliations, including the sinking of the Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, in the early days of the war.

A vivid show of a declining surface fleet, the real threat Russia's military poses to NATO lurks elsewhere, according to Newsweek.

The bulk of Russia's seafaring investment has been channelled into its high-tech submarine fleet. Russia's subs are widely considered to be a formidable force, and the US, along with its NATO allies, neglecting the war beneath the waves has left the alliance struggling to make up ground.

"Russia has massively invested in its underwater capability since 2014, first of all, submarines," former Ukrainian First Deputy Chief of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Navy, retired Admiral Ihor Kabanenko told Newsweek, pointing to a slew of new Russian nuclear and conventional submarines being commissioned in the past decade. Questions remain about how well Russia has maintained its untested underwater fleet, but a consensus shows a distinct Western wariness of Moscow's capabilities, not least its 11 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), with the Borei-A class vessels. Russia also has its nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines (SSGNs), including its Yasen-class subs, in its underwater arsenal.

NATO's anti-sub capabilities, meanwhile, have "atrophied following the end of the Cold War and as attention had strayed elsewhere," Nick Childs, senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank, told Newsweek.

Finland's accession to the alliance, with Sweden's membership on the horizon, has brought the Russian submarine question into sharper focus. The inclusion of these Nordic countries into NATO not only expands Russia's borders with the alliance by hundreds of miles but threatens the security of its critical maritime bases.

Changing NATO, New Threats and 'Strange Routes'

The Kola Peninsula, where Russia bases its key Northern Fleet and much of its nuclear deterrent, has always been "the most important military area for the old Soviet Union, the Russian Federation today," according to Mark Grove, a senior lecturer at the University of Lincoln's Maritime Studies Center at the Britannia Royal Naval College Dartmouth, UK

This Arctic region could become the frontline of tensions again as relations between Moscow and the NATO bloc become more strained. "The enlargement of NATO, in the minds of the Russians, undoubtedly raises concerns about the viability and the security of those facilities, and indeed, of the Northern Fleet itself," he told Newsweek.

NATO's inclusion of Finland, and soon Sweden, pulls the alliance closer to the peninsula. This may mean Russian submarine bases fall under "potential long-range artillery," according to Graeme P. Herd, of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. But the same principle applies to Russia's Baltic Fleet, housed in Russia's Kaliningrad region between Lithuania and Poland. NATO's Nordic expansion had an "enormous effect" there, Grove said, effectively turning the Baltic into what he called a "NATO lake."

"It means that the Russian Baltic fleet, which is a much-diminished force, compared to its Soviet predecessor, anyway, looks extremely vulnerable," Grove added.

Newsweek has reached out to NATO for comment.

The Ukraine war, spurring Helsinki's and Stockholm's NATO applications, therefore changes the maritime situation not just in the Black Sea, but in the Barents Sea around the Kola Peninsula, the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. And these are "significant and potentially long-lasting changes," Kabanenko said.

It is in this context that Moscow's subs have been moving along "strange routes," deviating from the trajectories Western defence officials have come to expect, British defence minister Ben Wallace noted during a trip to Washington, D.C. in mid-April. He said the UK had been tracking the paths of Russian undersea vessels in the North Atlantic, Irish Sea and North Sea "that they normally wouldn't do."

Russian nuclear-powered submarines have also been spotted "off the coast of the United States and into the Mediterranean and elsewhere along European periphery," Michael Petersen, director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College, previously told Newsweek.

Asymmetric Warfare and Undersea Cables

But Russian submarines are not just a strategic nuclear deterrent. A new submarine war is emerging, experts say, bringing maritime security concerns into the world of "seabed warfare."

The head of the UK's armed forces, Sir Tony Radakin, suggested at the beginning of the year that Moscow could "put at risk and potentially exploit the world's real information system, which is undersea cables that go all around the world". Speaking to The Times of London in January, he said there had been a "phenomenal increase in Russian submarine and underwater activity" and Russia has "grown the capability to put at threat those undersea cables and potentially exploit those undersea cables."

But this emerging tactic is one rooted in changes in Russian military thinking in the early part of the 21st century. "There was an understanding that you simply can't compete on terms of scale with the West, and so the Russians developed an idea of integrated warfare," reinvented from Soviet days, UK politician and Russian military strategy expert Bob Seely told Newsweek.

Russia looked towards asymmetrical warfare and at nurturing new capabilities where Moscow could undercut Western military dominance, which could mean targeting internet cables and pipelines, Seely added. Areas in the North Sea, including oil extraction operations, appear to be increasingly monitored by Russian submarines, Paul van Hooft, a senior strategic analyst at the Hague Center for Strategic Studies (HCSS), told Newsweek.

Seabed warfare of this type is an area in which Russia has "invested considerable amounts," Childs said, focusing on technology such as special-mission submarines. It is also an area "in which it is dawning on NATO governments that they need to invest more in countering such threats," Childs said.

"This is something definitely that we've been slow to appreciate," Grove agreed. The modern world runs on these underwater cables, which are out of sight but of huge importance, he said. With growing anxiety around undersea fibre optic connections and energy pipelines after last year's Nord Stream explosion, experts say decision-makers have finally appreciated the threat is a real and present one, and are "giving considerable assets to this."

In February, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the creation of a Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell, spurred on by the Nord Stream explosion and the "vulnerability of undersea energy pipelines and communication cables."

"In response, NATO allies have significantly increased their military presence around key infrastructure, including with ships and patrol aircraft," the alliance said in a press release.

"It is clear that this kind of asymmetric Russian underwater activities are taking on an increasingly prominent role in maritime strategic visions," Kabanenko said.

The underwater battle, with its submarines, increasing use of uncrewed underwater technology, and asymmetric warfare, should absolutely be a concern for NATO, experts say. Overall, NATO navies are "collectively significantly stronger than Russia's" but anti-submarine warfare, in all of its forms, is a "challenging business," Childs said.

NATO Enters The Underwater Race

A concerted change has taken place in NATO consciousness in recent years, experts say, waking up to what Frederik Mertens, another strategic analyst at the HCSS, called a "uniquely threatening weapons system."

Back during Cold War-era relations, the "most hot it got was underwater," Mertens told Newsweek. Yet after the simmering tensions of the 20th century, NATO countries looked away from the war underneath the waves, experts say. Moscow, however, did not.

Throughout the past 30 years, NATO countries "were not particularly thinking about it," his colleague Van Hooft added, while NATO states saw the strategic landscape "too much through our own eyes" since the 1990s and "failed to study potential adversaries," Seely said.

Although Russia could not produce significant numbers of advanced submarines at the time, Moscow did invest in new submarine designs, Grove said. Despite Russia's relatively few submarines, they are what is known as a force multiplier, Grove added, meaning Moscow's fleet can have a "strategic effect out of all proportion to that small number."

In recent years, "NATO navies have spent a lot of time and effort reviving their anti-submarine warfare skills and capabilities," Childs said. This includes initiatives such as new maritime patrol aircraft that have a "good capability to track submarines."

Yet NATO may still be hard-pressed to keep track of even small numbers of submarines for a long period of time, experts argue, although opinion is split on just how ready NATO now is to confront one of Russia's strongest military arms.

"There's definitely space for improvements," Dmitry Gorenburg of the Center for Naval Analyses, a US think tank, told Newsweek. Taking nuclear weapons and destruction out of the equation, "the Russian submarine threat is the greatest threat that Russia poses to NATO," Gorenburg added. However, there is now "definitely an appropriate level of awareness of the threat," he said.

"The US and its allies have been playing catch up," Grove commented, although there has been considerable investment in anti-submarine warfare capabilities within NATO in recent years, experts note. Just last month, NATO embarked on a large-scale anti-submarine warfare exercise involving a dozen nations, intended to make sure its crews can "respond to threats posed by sub-surface forces."

After a slower start, some experts say NATO now matches up to or exceeds Russia's submarine capabilities, arguing that the alliance does not have "some objective, incredible weakness towards Russia in this domain." But Moscow has understood "that we haven't really invested in this, so they might be pressuring those weak points," Van Hooft added.

Crucially, Russia does not view confrontation with NATO as taking place in just one region or sphere, experts emphasize. The war in Ukraine is perceived in the Kremlin, and by top military commanders, as part of a larger face-off with the West, Gorenburg said.

Sending out submarines in the world's oceans reminds the West of the consequences of direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, he added, pushing back into NATO's minds that Moscow can directly threaten cities across the US.