Future of the Undersea Deterrent feb2020

Chapter 9 The Role of Nuclear Forces in Russian Maritime Strategy | Michael Kofman
Chapter 9
The Role of Nuclear Forces in Russian Maritime Strategy
Michael Kofman
Although Russia is one of the world’s preeminent continental
powers, Russian leaders have historically rendered considerable
attention to sea power. Through sea power, Moscow could
establish Russia as a great power in international politics outside
of its own region. Sea power served to defend Russia’s expansive
borders from expeditionary naval powers like Britain or the
United States, and to support the Russian Army’s campaigns.
With the coming of the atomic age, the Soviet Navy took on new
significance, arming itself for nuclear warfighting and strategic
deterrence missions. The Soviet Union deployed a capable nuclear-armed
submarine and surface combatant force to counter
American naval dominance during the Cold War. The modern
Russian Navy retains legacy missions from the Cold War, but has
taken on new roles in line with the General Staff’s evolved thinking
on nuclear escalation, while adapting to the inexorable march of
technological change that shapes military affairs.
The Russian Navy has four principal missions: (i) defence of
Russian maritime approaches and littorals; (ii) executing longrange
precision strikes with conventional or non-strategic nuclear
weapons; (iii) nuclear deterrence by maintaining a survivable
second-strike capability at sea aboard Russian nuclear-powered
ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs); and (iv) naval diplomacy, or
what may be considered to be status projection. 1 Naval diplomacy
in particular rests with the surface combatant force, chiefly the
retinue of inherited Soviet capital ships (cruisers and destroyers),
which while ageing remain impressive in appearance. Meanwhile,
the Russian Navy, like the Soviet Navy before it, is much more
capable beneath the waves, arguably the only near-peer to the
United States in the undersea domain. 2
Regionally, Russian policy documents convey a maritime division
in terms of the near-sea zone, the far-sea zone, and the “world
ocean,” while functionally the Russian General Staff thinks in terms
of theatres of military operations. The Navy is naturally tasked
with warfighting and deterrence in the naval theatre of military
operations, defending maritime approaches, and supporting
the continental theatre. 3 Russia’s navy remains a force focused
on countering the military capabilities of the United States, and
deterring other naval powers with conventional and nuclear
weapons. Over time, it has also acquired an important role in
Russian thinking on escalation management, and the utility of
non-strategic nuclear weapons in modern conflict. 4
Continuity in Naval Strategy: The “Bastion” Concept
Endures
Russian naval strategy has proven to be evolutionary, taking its
intellectual heritage from the last decade of the Cold War. Nuclear
and non-nuclear deterrence missions are deeply rooted in concepts
and capabilities inherited from the Soviet Union; namely, the
bastion deployment concept for ballistic submarine deployment,
together with the more salient currents in Soviet military thought
derived from the late 1970s and early 1980s, being the period
of intellectual leadership under Marshal Ogarkov, Chief of Soviet
General Staff at that time.
Strategic deterrence and nuclear warfighting in theatre proved
anchoring missions for the Soviet Navy during the Cold War. In
the 1970s it had become widely accepted that the Soviet Union
adopted a “withholding strategy,” as opposed to an offensive
strategy to challenge US sea lines of communication. The Soviet
Northern and Pacific Fleets would deploy ballistic missile
submarines into launch points in the Barents Sea and the Sea of
Okhotsk, protected by attack submarines, and a surface force
geared around anti-submarine warfare (ASW). US analysts termed
these protected ballistic missile submarine operating areas “bastions,”
and the name stuck. 5
The merits of the strategy were always questionable, since the
Soviet Union was geographically short on unconstrained access
to the sea, unlike the United States, while having a plethora of
land available for land-based missiles. However, the Soviet Navy
1
Michael Kofman and Jeffrey Edmonds, “Why the Russian Navy Is a More Capable Adversary Than It Appears,” The National Interest, August 23,
2017, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-the-russian-navy-more-capable-adversary-it-appears-22009 and http://cimsec.org/russian-navy-strategies-missions-force-transition/20144;
see also Richard Connolly, “Towards a Dual Fleet? The Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation and the
Modernisation of Russian Naval Capabilities,” NATO Defense College, 2017, http://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1061.
2
Eric Schmitt, “Russia Bolsters Its Submarine Fleet, and Tensions With U.S. Rise,” New York Times, April 20, 2016, https://www.nytimes.
com/2016/04/21/world/europe/russia-bolsters-submarine-fleet-and-tensions-with-us-rise.html.
3
“Указ Президента Российской Федерации от 20.07.2017 № 327 ‘Об утверждении Основ государственной политики Российской Федерации
в области военно-морской деятельности на период до 2030 года,’” Official Internet Portal of Legal Information, July 20, 2017, 14–15, http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001201707200015?index=14&rangeSize=1.
4
Jay Ross, “Time to Terminate Escalate to De-escalate – It’s Escalation Control,” War on the Rocks (blog), April 24, 2018, https://warontherocks.
com/2018/04/time-to-terminate-escalate-to-de-escalateits-escalation-control/.
5
Walter M. Kreitler, “The Close Aboard Bastion: A Soviet Ballistic Missile Submarine Deployment Strategy,” (Master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate
School, 1988), 19–20, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a201696.pdf.
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