Watching Russian Air & Sea Activity

[AdamG]

MURMANSK, Russia (Reuters) - The nuclear icebreaker Lenin, the pride and joy of the Soviet Union's Arctic great game, lies at perpetual anchor in the frigid water here. A relic of the Cold War, it is now a museum.
But nearly three decades after the Lenin was taken out of service to be turned into a visitor attraction, Russia is again on the march in the Arctic and building new nuclear icebreakers.
It is part of a push to firm Moscow's hand in the High North as it vies for dominance with traditional rivals Canada, the United States, and Norway as well as newcomer China.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/putins-rus...102944933.html

[AdamG]

The Russian ship was in international waters, 70 miles off the coast of Delaware and heading north at 10 knots, according to one official. The U.S. territory line is 12 nautical miles.
It was not immediately clear where the ship is headed

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/02/14...cials-say.html

[davidbfpo]

Is this Fox News report really news? How many such Russian ships are offshore from the USA today and has there been an increase?

Via my Twitter feed for the last two days there has been a detailed report, with mapping, on a USAF RC-135 Joint Rivet heading east over the Baltic Sea and no doubt staying in international airspace. Would Fox report that?

[davidbfpo]

From a Twitter thread started by Fox News, so maybe inaccurate, but one thread had a map display:

Russian spy ship now located 30 miles south of Groton, CT home to a US Navy submarine base. Russian ship "loitering," US official

Now in these times of peace and harmony there is no requirement to gather information on each others nuclear submarines.

[OUTLAW 09]

Rus Su-24 jets were armed with FAB-250 bombs when buzzed near USS Porter
SU-24 fighter jets flying low & fast above destroyer USS Porter in the Black Sea on February 10, DOD said they were"unsafe & unprofessional"
http://liveuamap.com/en/2017/16-feb
ruary-russian-su24-jets-were-armed-with-fab250-bombs#
pic.twitter.com/TlWiveh0hs

Let's see...Russia violates the INF...Russia buzzes US warships.....Russian is hacking and conducting influence operations against the US....Russia is attacking heavily Ukraine ...Russia stations spy ship 30nm off US coast......AND the Trump WH response.....

ZERO....

[AdamG]

Russia remains a threatening adversary of the U.S., but the country's recent aggressive military actions aren't signs of an imminent conflict, U.S. officials told NBC News
Traditional media and social media have been atwitter with reports of a Russian spy ship off Connecticut, the "buzzing" of a U.S. ship by Russian fighters and reports of new cruise missile deployments by Russia.
But U.S. military and intelligence officials said concerns about these incidents are, in the words of one, "highly overstated."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...m_npd_nn_fb_ma

[AdamG]

Viktor Ozerov — the head of#the Russian Federation Council’s defense committee – said planning work was underway to start the expansion of the Russian logistics hub in Tartus, Syria into a full-fledged naval base capable of supporting 11 ships.

https://news.usni.org/2017/03/13/rus...pansion-spring

[AdamG]

Navy Admiral Michelle Howard, who heads NATO's Allied Joint Force Command in Naples and commands U.S. naval forces in Europe and Africa, said Russia had clearly stepped up its naval actions in recent years although the size of its navy was smaller now than during the Cold War era.

*

Howard cited a wide range of activities, including Russia's deployment of its Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, increased patrols in the north Atlantic and Arctic region, significant out-of-area submarine deployments, and submarine movement in the Black Sea.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/russian-na...145438979.html

[AdamG]

Fear the Russian Reindeers.

Russia unveils its new Arctic military base housing nuclear-ready warplanes and REINDEER-powered special forces as it seeks to claim the region's huge oil and gas reserves

Russia has unveiled five-storey military base on Alexander Land in the Arctic Ocean's Franz Josef Archipelago
The top-secret polar complex, painted in Russia's red, white and blue, can house warplanes and 150 troops
Comes as Russia looks to lay claim to region's enormous oil and gas reserves thought to be worth £23trillion

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4ehvfQxhA

[Azor]

Fear the Russian Reindeers.

Russia unveils its new Arctic military base housing nuclear-ready warplanes and REINDEER-powered special forces as it seeks to claim the region's huge oil and gas reserves


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4ehvfQxhA

A bit of overhype from The Daily Mail on the "nuclear capable aircraft" part, no?

[AdamG]

Last Updated Apr 27, 2017 8:53 AM EDT
MOSCOW -- A Russian naval reconnaissance ship sunk in the Black Sea Thursday after colliding with a freighter near the Turkish coast.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the collision occurred about 25 miles northwest of the Bosphorus Strait and left a hole in the hull of the Liman. The ministry statement, carried by Russian news agencies, said none of the crew members was hurt.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-...ion-black-sea/

[AdamG]

overhype from The Daily Mail

Redundant descriptor and subject in the same sentence, when it comes to the Daily Wail.

[AdamG]

A TINY stretch of Arctic water has become a hotbed of military activity amid fears it could become the next flashpoint in a global conflict between the US and Russia.
Locals on the tiny Norwegian island of Vardo have seen an increase in military action through the upgrade of a critical radar system, Globus III, due to be completed by 2020.
The windswept outpost is just 30 kilometres from Russia’s Kola Peninsula, from where a fleet of nuclear armed submarines operates, in a bid to strengthen Russian presence in the Arctic region.
Norwegian author Bard Wormdal, who wrote The Satellite War, about the close and secretive military and intelligence alliance between Norway and the US, said there has been significant uptick in activity recently from both sides.

http://www.news.com.au/world/europe/...ac25f6d6371e70

[AdamG]

Saint Petersburg (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin on Sunday oversaw a pomp-filled display of Russia's naval might as the Kremlin paraded its sea power from the Baltic Sea to the shores of Syria.
Some 50 warships and submarines were on show along the Neva River and in the Gulf of Finland off the country's second city of Saint Petersburg after Putin ordered the navy to hold its first ever parade on such a grand scale.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-sho...085242851.html

[AdamG]

September 14 2017

Vladimir Putin’s warships destroyed “control centers, communication hubs, militant weapons and ammunition warehouses in ISIS-controlled areas in southeast Deir ez-Zor”.
Russia has been waging war against ISIS in support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
ISIS are facing military defeat in the Middle East as they are pushed out of their final strongholds in Syria.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/worl...di-Deir-ez-Zor

A Russian Navy ship with a fishy past is currently sailing around the eastern Mediterranean. Described as an oceanographic research ship, outside observers believe the Yantar is actually a spy ship using mini-submersibles to conduct cloak and dagger work on the bottom of the sea.
The Yantar is a Russian Navy ship that joined the fleet in 2015. Officially described as a "special purpose ship" or "oceanographic vessel," the ship is operated by the Russian Navy's Main Directorate of Underwater Research, which is thought to control Russia's undersea espionage efforts.

Yantar is designed to act as a mothership to mini-submarines, with hangars for storing manned and unmanned submersibles and cranes for lowering them into the water. While that's useful for legitimate scientific research, the reality is that the ship is often spotted lingering above the undersea cables that carry data across the ocean floor, linking entire countries and even continents in the global telecommunications network

http://www.popularmechanics.com/mili...mediterranean/

[AdamG]

Russia is in the process of setting up a new naval base in the Pacific Ocean, on an island chain disputed with Japan for decades, a senior Russian senator has said.

“The decision has been made,” Senator Franz Klintsevich, deputy chairman of the Defense and Security Committee, told the Interfax news agency on Thursday, speaking about a new naval port on the Kuril islands. “It is in the realization stages,” he added, noting that what lay ahead now were “organizational matters” about the constitution of the base.

The Kuril islands are a chain of islets, stretching between eastern Russia and northern Japan, across the Sea of Okhotsk. Klintsevich did not say on which island the base will stand—a significant matter, considering Japan and Russia have been locked in a dispute over four of the islands since World War II.

The four southernmost islands in the chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan, are under Russia’s control, seized by the Red Army in the closing stages of World War II combat. Its native Ainu population faced a swift deportation campaign and despite Japanese objections, Russia has kept control of the territories off the coast of Hokkaido.

http://www.newsweek.com/russian-navy...senator-693642

[AdamG]

Indicator

Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that his country’s biggest enterprises must show that they can step up arms production and important services on short notice to be war-ready.
“The economic ability to increase the production of defense products and services quickly is a vital element of military security,” Putin told military leaders and senior officials in the defense industrial complex on Wednesday. “All strategic and simply large companies, regardless of the type of ownership, must be able to do this.”

http://www.newsweek.com/putin-says-r...economy-720802

[AdamG]

The Russian navy’s maneuvers in the Pacific Ocean far exceeded what Moscow had planned for 2017, almost quadrupling the time originally allocated to drills, patrols and other activities, amid peaking tension over neighbor North Korea’s nuclear program.
Russian military vessels spent over 9,000 days on water in the past 11 months, Pacific Fleet spokesman Nikolay Voskresenskiy told state news agency Itar-Tass on Monday. This exceeded last year’s sailing time and was roughly “four times” the planned length of deployment Moscow had for its Pacific ships, Voskresenskiy said

http://www.newsweek.com/russian-forc...ensions-734961

[AdamG]

Britain’s military has prioritised the protection of undersea cables from Russia because if they are cut or disrupted there would be an immediate and “potentially catastrophic” hit to the economy, the chief of defence staff has said.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach said the vulnerability of communication lines under the sea poses a “new risk to our way of life” as Russia modernises its navy and perfects unconventional and information warfare.
Conservative MP Rishi Sunak warned earlier this month that a successful attack on the UK’s network of undersea communications cables could deal a “crippling blow” to the country’s security and economy

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a8111536.html

Track the Yantar's shenanigans from your easy chair.
http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/.../vessel:YANTAR

Details on the Yantar
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/r...bles-2kzrxpq9q

Historical perspective
http://www.bryensblog.com/sea-cables-real-threat/

Does your Admiral need a desktop model?
Have to do a briefing slide for Monday?
Have some plans.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/ino-producti...jpg?1462345384

[davidbfpo]

This reporting was probably stimulated by the publication two weeks ago by a Policy Exchange (PX) 48 pgs. report 'Undersea Cables: Indispensable, insecure' by a Conservative MP, Rishi Sunak (PX is a right wing think tank).
Link:https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-con...sea-Cables.pdf

When you read the paper the biggest current threat is not Russian sabotage (or Chinese in the South China Sea), but fishing trawlers damaging the cables 100-150 times per year.

For the US military there is an issue, the reliance on cables to pass the very high data load for drone operations; cables severed in the Mediterranean in 2008 drastically reduced deployments.

There are only a very small number of "choke points" at sea and on land, which make the system vulnerable. Notably this one:

The location is the single cross‑connect for all cable traffic between Africa, Europe, and Asia. 80% of all European to Middle Eastern connectivity passes through this one building.

Which is in Alexandria, Egypt.

Two BBC reports, one "beating the drum" for this old problem, which has a small map of the cables routes:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-42365191 and a historical piece on WW1 cutting of cables:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42367551