Great Ships
in Search of a Navy

Modern Russian Ships
are Worldwide Best Sellers

I: Soviet Naval Decline: Russian Retrenchment

By Jim Bloom

On all the world’s oceans one beholds elegant, rakish surface vessels bristling with firepower and sensors; below, inconspicuous, but prevalent nonetheless, stealthy black undersea prowlers calibrate the trajectories of their lethal projectiles. Most of this naval power is designed and built in Russian shipyards. Highly capable warships “made in Russia” regularly ply the world’s waterways. Curiously, few of these ships fly the blue X on a field of white - the naval flag of the Russian Federation. If you travel to the bases for the once ubiquitous Northern Fleet, you might spot Federation ships lying at anchor, immobilized for lack of fuel, spares, mechanics and crews.

In order to behold what the esteemed Russian naval architects and naval yards are producing at the beginning of the 21st century, look in JANE’s All the World’s Fighting Ships at the entries for India, China, and diverse minor naval powers of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The latest and best products of Russian naval ingenuity are only sparsely represented in the articles describing the active fleets of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, or any of the separate navies once embraced by the former Soviet Union. That’s because these navies can’t afford to buy, man and maintain them.

In the mid 1970s, western naval experts were declaring the “arrival” of the Soviet Union as a naval contender on the high seas. With the appearance of the sleek, clearly formidable Kirov class battlecruisers and the Kiev class “cruiser, helicopter carriers” it seemed that the USSR had mounted a very serious challenge to a US Navy in turmoil. The imposing ships symbolized the rebirth of once proud but lately languishing Russian seapower. At that time, the specter of undetectable Soviet strategic ballistic missile and attack subs lurking in the depths of the US eastern seaboard gave the Pentagon pundits nightmares. Reflecting this trend was the vogue for popular and academic histories of Russian and Soviet seapower.

The Soviet naval fiasco in the Cuban Missile Crisis (eyeball-to-eyeball with American destroyers in the Caribbean, the bear blinked) far from demoralizing the Red Fleet, had stimulated an era of naval development reminiscent of the Russian navy’s auspicious beginnings under Peter the Great. Soviet power projection athwart maritime chokepoints endangered NATO naval command of the Persian Gulf, and the transport of petroleum supplies vital to the West’s defense and well being.

The translated writings of Admiral Gorshkov commended him to the world’s great naval powers as the Red Mahan, while US naval theory, like its ships, was in disarray, struggling to define its mission. Now, just about 20 years after the high point of the Red fleet, the warships of the US Navy once again ply the seas unconcerned about the possibility of Russian subs or missile cruisers contesting their passage of the once hazardous Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap. That menace lives on only in the techno-thrillers of Tom Clancy, and kindred naval fictionalists.

The Kursk

Russia’s maritime decline was tragically demonstrated in August 2000, when one of the once-feared subs, the Kursk, lay disabled on the seabed, its doomed crew trapped beneath 370 feet of water. Two explosions had crippled the boat, killing all 118 men on board. The Russians had no deep submergence vehicles or trained crews prepared to even attempt a rescue, and her leadership appeared too arrogant and ashamed to request outside assistance. The Kursk’s condemned sailors had not died fighting their homeland’s enemies, but because of the mechanical neglect and torpid leadership of their naval bureaucracy.

For the Soviet Navy of the 1970s and early 80s, attack submarines were more important than their vaunted surface warships. The Kursk was one of 12 Oscar II class cruise missile submarines designed in the Cold War to counter the US Navy's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier-led strike groups. Armed with 24 "Shipwreck" supersonic cruise missiles which carried almost a ton of high explosive or a 500 kiloton nuclear warhead to a range of 300 nautical miles, the Oscars, along with the Kirov and Kiev battle groups, had once symbolized Russia’s challenge on the high seas.

The tragic loss of the Kursk was widely interpreted as being a symptom of the parlous state of the Russian Navy. However, the objective of the Northern Fleet’s summer exercise, the setting of the incident, had been a very different message. The largest Barents Sea maneuvers for several years were to have heralded the new naval doctrine that had been promulgated on 4 March 2000. The exercise, entailing a task force made up of some 30 submarines and surface units, was to conclude with the deployment of the Navy's largest surface vessel, the carrier Kuznetsov to the Mediterranean.

While it is tacitly accepted that it is futile and extravagantly unaffordable for Russia to challenge the United States on a worldwide basis, the new Russian doctrine defined a number of important maritime responsibilities that assert an important and continuing role for the Russian Navy. Russia, for all the size of its landmass, remains a maritime nation with large areas of interest that include the strategic approaches to the country from east and west, a large exclusive economic zone, reliance on extensive maritime trade and a big merchant fleet. The significance of a major worldwide deployment of major warships is also not lost on the leadership.

Consequently the Kursk incident could not have come at a worse time as, rather than conveying a perception of steadfast naval might, the exercise only served to point up Russian inadequacies, both real and imagined. The catastrophe rekindled all Russia’s post-Soviet anxieties of decline and humiliation

The Russian fleet’s badly deteriorated state is a product of continued political, economic and societal chaos in Russia. Even those ships that remain in commission and theoretically operational are generally unable to deploy, due to lack of trained crews and lack of funds to buy fuel and stores. In general maintenance is minimal or nonexistent, and there are no funds to conduct much-needed overhauls, even for major fleet units. Many ships have been abandoned when repairs or refits came due. Many ships, especially auxiliaries, have been operating in commercial or charter freight or passenger service to raise operating funds. It is a measure of Russian desperation that these are listed as “active” units on the premise that they could rapidly return to naval roles if required - assuming that crews and dry-dock technicians could be found. Despite this grave state of affairs, however, the Russians still retain some semblance of an important navy, if only from the historical perspective and perhaps a future potential. The handsome and efficient products of their shipyards proclaim their determined spirit and promise.

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NOTE: Jim Bloom's article uses a significant number of images in "III: Ship Models" pulled from elsewhere on the web. We chose to leave them in, despite the slowness of the download, because they are quite good. But be warned. It will take a while to download the entire section III and associated images. And we also warn that given the nomadic tendencies of web sites, these images may not necessarily be there in the future.--RL

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© Copyright 2002 by Jim Bloom.
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