Watching Russian Air & Sea Activity

[OUTLAW 09]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/busine...to/526277.html

New Russian Naval Doctrine Enshrines Confrontation With NATO

By Matthew Bodner

Jul. 27 2015 21:19

During the height of the Cold War the Soviet Navy never was a "blue water fleet" and now it is still not regardless of the tones coming from Putin.

NOT when they depend on gas turbine engines from the Ukraine that have been stopped.

[OUTLAW 09]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/busine...to/526277.html

New Russian Naval Doctrine Enshrines Confrontation With NATO

By Matthew Bodner

Jul. 27 2015 21:19

But first they have to pay for the new Navy-----

Russia's ruble is tanking today..
Over 60 to a US$
And almost 95 to GBP pic.twitter.com/UfIGogBaGs

AND the price of Brent oil is tanking as well----

[OUTLAW 09]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/busine...to/526277.html

New Russian Naval Doctrine Enshrines Confrontation With NATO

By Matthew Bodner

Jul. 27 2015 21:19

After boosting Russia defense spending, announcing many new missiles, Putin blames it all on US withdrawal from ABM Treaty... which Bush administration announced in 2001. Putin did not object then. Now seems to resurrect issue as an excuse. Hardly plausible.

Notice Russian says nothing about their blatant violation of the INF and the threatened withdrawing from the INF over being accussed of their violation.

[OUTLAW 09]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/busine...to/526277.html

New Russian Naval Doctrine Enshrines Confrontation With NATO

By Matthew Bodner

Jul. 27 2015 21:19

Putin fails to see he needs money for his militay visions---

Russia is in trouble as Gazprom, producing 10% of GDP, collapsed by 19% last year
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/e...al-crisis.html … pic.twitter.com/VmxJASyqp7

Of Russia’s over 215 surface ships, only a quarter of them are capable of blue-water operations"

Rogozin: To effectively project force into Atlantic, requires Russia to push ahead with militarization of Arctic http://www.themoscowtimes.com/busine...to/526277.html …

[davidbfpo]

Eight recent posts by Outlaw 09 on Russian naval doctrine and operations have been moved here. A post on activity in Kalingrad remain in teh Ukraine thread, as tri-service matters. Three posts have been copied here.

[AdamG]

Netcall Netcall.

A Russian intelligence ship, capable of cutting undersea communications cables and other sensors, has been spotted by the U.S. military off the coast of Kings Bay, Ga., home to the U.S. Navy’s East Coast ballistic missile submarine fleet.

U.S. military satellites have been tracking the Russian spy ship since it was spotted in the north Atlantic last month and slowly began transiting toward its next destination -- Cuba. A senior military official said the ship is now about 300 miles off the coast of the U.S., as it heads toward the island.

Another senior defense official told Fox News that while the Pentagon is tracking the Russian intel ship, the Russian ship “remains in international waters.”

When asked if the U.S. had similar spy ships off the coast of Russia, he answered, “Of course we do, what do you think all those ‘oceanographic ships’ are doing, studying whales?”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...r-us-sub-base/

[AdamG]

On 3 September 2015 two Ropucha class large landing ship of Russian Navy made their southbound passage through Bosphorus.
Their passage would not be remarkable if one of the ships had cargo stored on her forecastle.

http://turkishnavy.net/2015/09/05/ru...o-on-her-deck/

[AdamG]

Reuters confirmed Wednesday what The Daily Beast first reported last week—not only have Russian troops been deployed to Syria but they are indeed taking part in active combat operations, although against which of the manifold enemies of the Assad regime remains unclear.

U.S. government sources told the news agency that two tank landing ships, aircraft and naval infantry forces have arrived in Syria in the past 24 hours, with the largest buildup occurring in Latakia, the northwest coastal province—ancestral home of the Assad family—which Islamist rebels have been fiercely contesting of late. Russia, Reuters confirmed, is constructing a new airfield in Latakia, which would represents its second military installation in Syria after its decades-old naval supply base in Tartus, also its only warm-water port since the end of the Soviet Union.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-to-syria.html

[AdamG]

Counterpoint -

Russia's busy fleet schedule masks an underlying seagoing weakness. Moscow's warships are old and unreliable. Yet the government is finding it increasingly difficult to replace them with equally large and powerful new vessels.

Russia is a geriatric maritime giant surrounded by much more energetic rivals.

http://theweek.com/articles/572496/r...-falling-apart

[davidbfpo]

Don't you just love "leaks"? No, I don't.

The headine in the Sunday Express:

How close we came to Armageddon: Russian bombers began to arm nuclear bomb near UK airspace

(Sub-title) PILOTS in one of the two Russian supersonic bombers intercepted near UK skies last week had started the countdown to arm a nuclear bomb, sources revealed last night.

Link:http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/606...mb-UK-airspace

The article's credibility is reduced IMHO by showing a TU-95 'Bear' when the story refers to a TU-160 'Blackjack'.

Plus starting a countdown does not mean a nuclear weapon was aboard and ready to be dropped. In this new not-so Cold War why would Russain aircraft deploy with 'live' working nuclear weapons? Ah, the USAF has a few times, but in recen times by accident or incompetence.

[AdamG]

The Russian military build up continues as six Su-34 Fullback attack planes arrive in Syria.

Six Sukhoi Su-34 aircraft have eventually arrived at Latakia to join the Russian contingent already there.

Images allegedly shot around the al-Assad International Airport clearly show one Russian Fullback about to land at the airbase in western Syria where 28 Russian aircraft have arrived last week.

http://theaviationist.com/2015/09/29...edium=facebook

[AdamG]

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government, Lebanese sources said on Thursday, a further sign of the rapid internationalization of a civil war in which every major country in the region has a stake.

Russian warplanes, in a second day of strikes, bombed a camp run by rebels trained by the CIA, the group's commander said, putting Moscow and Washington on opposing sides in a Middle East conflict for the first time since the Cold War.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0RV41O20151001

[Bill Moore]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0RV41O20151001

This war was internationalized within the first year. A number of Muslim and Western states have been involved since the beginning at various levels, with each supporting their surrogates in different ways. Iran has been fighting there with conventional and their Hezbollah surrogate forces taking heavy casualties for years. Russian forces involved in direct combat (via airpower) is new, but their interests in Syria is not new. Their role is not overly surprising, since they have been given a green light to behave anyway they please. Our lack of a strategy supported by credible deterrence is sapping our strategic globally, not just in the Middle East.

[AdamG]

A large deployment of ships that Russia sent to the eastern Mediterranean under the guise of naval exercises at the end of September are actually being used to provide an aerial defense zone for Russian jets, Sam LaGrone reports for USNI News.

The "Black Sea-based Russian surface action group" in the eastern Mediterranean are based along Syria's coast by the Bassel al-Assad Airport and the Tartous naval facility, which is home to a Russian port.

The ships are intended to provide aerial defense for the Russian aircraft that Moscow is currently using to carry out airstrikes against Syrian rebels throughout the country.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia...152600867.html

[AdamG]

WASHINGTON: “We are observing the manifestation of a more aggressive, more capable Russian navy,” the US Navy’s top commander in Europe said today. And if that fleet is Putin’s seagoing hammer, missile bases ashore are his land-based anvil. Complementing Russian naval modernization, Adm. Mark Ferguson said, we have seen “the construction of an arc of steel from the Arctic to the Mediterranean”: land bases from the far north to Kaliningrad on the Baltic, Crimea on the Black Sea, and now Syria, whose batteries of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles threaten NATO forces far out to sea.

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/10/r...-adm-ferguson/

[AdamG]

Russia says it has launched rocket strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria from its warships in the Caspian Sea - about 1,500km (930 miles) away.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said four warships fired 26 sea-based cruise missiles on 11 targets, destroying them.
Meanwhile, Syrian ground troops have launched an offensive under Russian air cover, Syrian officials say.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34465425

Four warships of the Caspian fleet were involved in the missile attacks, the Gepard-class frigate Dagestan and the Buyan-M-class corvettes Grad Sviyazhsk, Uglich and Veliky Ustyug . They fired cruise missiles from the Kalibr NK (Klub) VLS launchers. The missiles used are capable of hitting a target within 3 meters at a range of up to 2,500 km.

https://www.rt.com/news/317864-russi...ssiles-launch/

[AdamG]

Happy Funtime Launch Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv3QNyxeXKk

[AdamG]

Washington (CNN)A number of cruise missiles launched from a Russian ship and aimed at targets in Syria have crashed in Iran, two U.S. officials told CNN Thursday.

Monitoring by U.S. military and intelligence assets has concluded that at least four missiles crashed as they flew over Iran.

The U.S. believes, based on intelligence reports of damage assessments, that some buildings were damaged and civilians may have been hurt.

http://us.cnn.com/2015/10/08/politic...ran/index.html

[AdamG]

On Oct. 7, Russian warships in the Caspian Sea fired 26 high-tech cruise missiles at rebel targets in Syria—a staggering 1,000 miles away.

The missiles in question, which the Pentagon calls SS-N-30s, were mostly unknown to the outside world before the Oct. 7 raid. Even close watchers of the Russian military were surprised to see them. The missile attack was also highly visible. In many ways, it was an announcement to the world, and America in particular, that the once-dilapidated Russian navy is back in action—and that Putin’s missileers are now among the planet’s most advanced.*

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...DB&via=FB_Page

In a story that should have most certainly been Duffel Blog but is actually real-life, a Russian weather forecaster proclaimed the skies over Syria were perfect “flying weather” for Russian jets bombing rebel positions, The Guardian reported.

“Experts say the timing for [the airstrikes] was chosen very well in terms of weather,” Ekaterina Grigorova said in her report for Rossiya 24 on Sunday, according to The Washington Post.

http://www.wearethemighty.com/intel/...-bombing-syria

* Unless Boris the Missileer fails to clear the old targeting cache.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...&postcount=138

[AdamG]

Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/wo...s-us.html?_r=1