Three years ago, this author made a case for the dissipation of the Russian Navy’s doctrinal fog and inability to formulate a set of the objectives for an emerging naval force, after two decades of neglect and catastrophic reductions. It was stated that “the Sea-denial mission for the Russian Navy is not a possibility—it is an inevitability”.[1] As recent global events have demonstrated, it is not only an inevitability, but the only way a new Russian Navy can be built. All navies are built on the shore; all navies’ first and foremost task is to defend their country and that means the shore. Russia, whose naval history is a mixed bag of victories and catastrophic defeats, such as Tsushima, however has not been on the cusp of major technological and operational changes in naval history. A major and spectacular breakthrough in Russian naval thought recently has been achieved. This breakthrough, however, was not achieved by means of a naval technological epiphany. This achievement harkens back to Henri-Joseph Paixhans and his canon-obusier, which was enthusiastically embraced by the Russian Navy and used to devastating effect in the Battle of Sinop in 1853. The Russian Navy caught on to Jeune Ecole’s innovation.
The Russians knew a good technology when they saw one. Knowing their industrial limitations precluded Imperial Russia from direct competition with the Royal Navy, the Russian Navy became a practitioner of Jeune Ecole ideas, abandoning at the height of Jeune Ecole’s popularity its own battleships construction plans.[2] The Russian Navy also dabbled in a completely round-shaped monitor known as the Popovka. A bizarre-looking ship was christened the Novgorod and, if anything else, was viewed more as an oddity rather than a real combat ship and viable naval concept to defend Russia’s shores. What was missed, however, was the intensity and innovation with which Russia’s navy tried to defend her shores. Surely Russia eventually got to building battleships too, but coastal considerations remained important, especially after the humiliating defeat at Tsushima.
As Eric Dahl recites Stephen Biddle, “Stephen Biddle is the primary theorist to make the considerably less popular case that the Jeune École was revolutionary but premature. Biddle has described the Jeune École as an example of a military that attempted too much radical change, too fast, and so failed to achieve a revolutionary effect. For him, the Jeune École, European air-warfare visionaries before World War I, and the U.S. Army pentomic division experimenters of the 1950s “all represent visionary, forward-looking thinkers who decided a revolution was at hand when it was not.”[3] But Biddle is correct, theJ eune École was premature since, apart from the limitations of its torpedo and cannon boats, it didn’t have a proper weapon. The Jeune École proponents got their second chance at the Battle of Sinop in October 1967.
Jeune École Mk.2?
It was 21 October 1967, when a three-missile salvo from a Soviet built 62-ton, Egyptian Komar-class missile boat sunk the INS Eilat with a new weapon, the P-15 Termit-class antiship missile (ASM). Naval warfare changed dramatically. In fact, the revolution Jeune École sought to launch a century before happened because the technology arrived. The Soviet Navy immediately recognized both the advantages and shortcomings of this new technology, and saw its enormous promise. This was not the case with the U.S. Navy, which didn’t consider any cruise missile to be important enough to supplement, let alone substitute, U.S. carrier aviation. Later, Elmo Zumwalt would recite in his memoirs a message he received (at the time he was serving as the head of the Division of Systems Analysis) through the Chief Naval Officer’s aide system that the new Harpoon cruise missile should not have a range of more than 50 miles.[4] The Soviet Navy, not burdened by the politics of internal “trade unions,” had no problems with the range and, wanted both range and speeds of its ASMs to be as great as possible. A new Russian Navy announced its arrival on 7 October 2015 with a salvo of 26 Kalibr (3M14) cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea at Islamic State targets in Syria. Out of the four ships which launched missiles, three of the project 21631 Buyan-class missile corvettes barely displaced 900 tons and would not be considered a serious combatant by any large navy. Yet, there they were small, inexpensive, and designed mostly for boats with a strategic reach of 2500 kilometers for their land attack weapons and ability to strike any surface target 600 kilometers away.
The Soviet and Russian Navy placed a great emphasis on its Mosquito missile fleet. So much so, that deploying those small ships to the Mediterranean became a permanent feature in operations of what was the Soviet Fifth Operational Squadron. But only with the maturing of missile and targeting technologies, which was demonstrated in Syria to a devastating effect, has the Jeune École promise envisioned by Admiral Aube has been fulfilled:
Tomorrow war breaks out; an autonomous torpedo boat—two officers, a dozen men—meets one of these liners carrying a cargo richer than that of the richest galleons of Spain and a crew and passengers of many hundreds. . . . The torpedo boat will follow from afar, invisible, the liner it has met; and, once night has fallen, perfectly silently and tranquilly it will send into the abyss liner, cargo, crew, passengers; and, his soul not only at rest but fully satisfied, the captain of the torpedo boat will continue his cruise.[5]
The operations of Russian Navy’s Buyan-class missile ships made an impression globally, so much so that Milan Vego, a long-time authority on small combat craft and professor of joint military operations at the U.S. Naval War College, noted that many navalists overlook the capabilities of smaller craft. “We have been somehow dismissive about the increasing combat power of small combatants,” he said. “The US Navy and other navies, blue water navies, really have to pay more attention to what is going on. These smaller ships are less than 1,000 tons. It is very dangerous to be dismissive, especially in smaller straits where they can do a lot of damage.”[6]
The Soviet and Russian Navy has never been dismissive of smaller ships. In fact, today these ships play an important role in a multipronged approach to Russia’s antiaccess/aerial denial (A2/AD) force structure, including the ability for inter-theater maneuvers with such ships, using Russia’s river waterways. Construction plans for both the Buyan-class and the brand new Karakurt (project 22800) small-missile ships are impressive. Karakurts, unlike their Buyan-class predecessors, despite smaller displacement are much better sea keeping platforms, which also feature a more respectable organic air defense capability represented by a navalized version of the Pantzir air defense complex. Construction of 18 of these ships is planned. Together with a dozen operational or under construction Buyans, such a force gives the Russian Navy both operational flexibility and distributed lethality. When operational, these small ships will give the Russian Navy around 240 missiles, both land attack and antiship, in a theoretical “first salvo” across several theaters. When integrated into Russia’s A2/AD force with its air defense and air force components and combined with other naval assets, these small combatants will become a game-changer. They also are a perfect indicator of Russia’s limited naval ambitions, which are primarily defensive. Considering a transitional period for Russia’s shipbuilding industry from foreign (Ukraine, Germany) power plant suppliers to domestic ones, and the inevitable delay in commissioning larger combatants such as the Frigates of project 11356, the role of Russia’s Mosquito fleet grows even larger in defense of Russia’s interests in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Blue Water Navy?
Western media and analysts have been consistently wrong in assessing Russia’s intentions and military and economic capabilities.[7] While by no means drowning in cash, the Russian armed forces—and the Russian Navy in particular—continued their steady transition to a more capable and modern force. Sometimes this transition is done by backing into the future, including returning to a division structure in the ground forces or launching major modernization programs such as the Admiral Nakhimov nuclear cruiser. In this respect, a decision to modernize several Oscar-II-class SSGNs and Project 971 SSNs into Kalibr and P-800 Oniks missile-carriers seemed natural and organic to Russian views on naval warfare.[8] The Russian Navy’s non-nuclear and nuclear submarines increased their importance as a main strike force and a strategic non-nuclear deterrent. The latest edition of Russia’s Military Doctrine is explicit (Article 26) in stating conventional high precision weapons are a means for “force (kinetic) strategic containment”.[9] A single modernized Oscar will be able to carry up to 72 long-range land-attack cruise or antiship missiles—firepower capable of deploying into the ocean zone. The 3M22 Zircon missile may change naval warfare completely and it may happen very soon.[10] In twist, the future development of Russia’s carrier force may have been corrected precisely by what the Soviet and later the Russian Navy emphasized in its naval fighting views—long-range, stealthy and hypersonic antiship missiles.
The Admiral Kuznetsov’s deployment to the shores of Syria, ordered personally by Vladimir Putin, proved Colonel Douglas Macgregor’s point in his seminal Breaking the Phalanx.[11] Ratios of equivalent air wings (EAWs) between naval and air force aviation, to which Macgregor refers to in his treatise, proved generally correct again in Syria.[12] Even without the problems with her arresters, which forced temporary redeployment of part of the Kuznetsov’s air wing to Khmeimim Air Base, the Russian Air Force was better and more effective in its campaign against terrorist targets. It also was more flexible and fast on deployment than Kuznetsov’s air wing. Yet, Kuznetsov’s rather mediocre performance during its Syria deployment revealed not only its need for modernization, but for a more realistic and operationally sound departure from the idea of CVN-esque mastodon such as “project Storm”—being peddled not so much as a viable and most likely immensely expensive operational concept, but also as a possible commercial project.[13] Here, getting back to the future may work again—the Russian Navy will never be a carrier-centric navy with its primary task being power projection. Nor is Russia going to compete with the U.S. Navy’s nuclear carriers. But midsized, relatively inexpensive, and relatively numerous multipurpose aircraft carriers can find their place as ASW and potentially as the air defense core of surface groups operating in support of Russia’s missile-carrying submarines. Russia may afford one hypothetical Storm-class carrier which will create huge issues both with risk aversion and with being alone, and possibly not being built at all. But today, the Russian Navy can look realistically at the possibility of having two or three midsized (45-55,000-ton) aircraft carriers eventually added to the order of battle. It is yet to be seen if such plans exist or if they will be realized. In the end, the speed with which new weapon systems are being developed and procured is unprecedented. We are living in the missile age and the future development of missiles may finally spell the doom of massive strike carriers.[14]
Such carriers and their battle groups would be able to meet any challenge in remote areas and would provide Russia with strategic stability near her shores ,and a few zones of interest in a time of dramatic global power rebalancing. The Russian Navy doesn’t need to fight for a global sea control. The Russian Navy is not going to challenge the U.S. Navy’s global maritime dominance. The Russian Navy’s main task is to provide a reliable defense of Russia’s shores and avoid war by presenting a defensive and forbidding posture. The Russian Navy is an organic part of the larger military force of Russia, whose only concern is preventing a global conflict. In this sense, the Russian Navy is completely integrated into the Russian tradition of national security, which spreads across the wide spectrum of activities, encompassing diplomacy, coherent foreign policy, intelligence and military force—a set of security imperatives erroneously dubbed in the West “hybrid warfare.”[15] Sergei Gorshkov prided himself on turning the Soviet post-World War II Navy into a modern fighting force by the end of 1960s. That fleet was called the “Raketno-Yadernyi,” the Missile-Nuclear Navy. Today, the Russian Navy is on its way to becoming a leaner and more potent Raketno-Yadernyi version of its former Soviet self, capable of carrying out any task in defense of its country. By doing so, the Russian Navy has finally found its mission. Considering Russia’s immense and tragic experience with warfare, such an accomplishment is no small feat. Especially in the absence of a coherent navy specific doctrine.
Endnotes
- Andrei Martyanov, “Russia’s Navy In Search Of A Mission,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 140, no. 12 (December 2014).
- Eric J. Dahl, “Net-Centric Before Its Time. The Jeune Ecole And Its Lessons For Today,” U.S. Naval War College Review, vol. 58, no.4 (Autumn 2005).
- Ibid.
- Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., On Watch (New York: The New York Times, 1976), 81.
- Dalh, “Net-Centric Before Its Time,” U.S. Naval War College Review.
- Christopher P. Cavas, “Is Caspian Sea Fleet a Game-Changer?” DefenseNews.com, 11 October 2015.
- Nicholas K. Gvosdev “America Must Rethink Its Assumptions about Russia,” The National Interest, 17 January 2017.
- Russia’s Antey nuclear submarines to be rearmed with Kalibr missile systems. http://tass.com/defense/934400
- Военная доктрина Российской Федерации (Military Doctrine Of Russian Federation), 30 December 2014, Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
- Весной Россия впервые испытает гиперзвуковую ракету “Циркон” с морского носителя (In Spring Russia Will Test Hyper-sonic Missile “Zircon” From The Sea Platform For The first Time), 8 February 2017, Interfax.
- Путин заявил, что инициатива отправить «Адмирала Кузнецова» в Сирию была его личной (Putin Stated That the initiative to send “Admiral Kuznetsov” to Syria Was His), 23 February 2017, VZ.ru
- Breaking The Phalanx. By Douglas A. Macgregor. Praeger, 1997. page 205.
- Ведущий разработчик: на авианосце проекта “Шторм” смогут базироваться до 90 самолетов и вертолетов (Chief Designer: aircraft carrier “Storm” will be able to accommodate 90 aircraft), 20 March 2017, Interfax.
- The Age of Strike Carrier Is Over, By: LT X, 22 February 2017, The National Interest.
- Getting Gerasimov Right, By Charles K. Bartles, http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20160228_art009.pdf
