The Soviet Naval Threat To Europe

Military And Political Dimensions

Bruce W. Watson, Susan M Watson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367296032
• eBook ISBN: 9781000305746
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1989. Given the events of 1987 and 1988-the death of Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov, who had served as Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy from 1956 to 1985 and was so influencial in the development of the current Soviet Navy, the Soviet policy of glasnost', the U .S.-Soviet arms negotiations, Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Washington, President Ronald Reagan's visit to Moscow, and the treaty concerning intermediate-range nuclear weapons- a study of the Soviet naval threat to Europe is particularly timely. This study begins by examining Soviet military and naval strategy, which provides a view of how the Soviets intend to use their forces. Then the book explore Soviet naval capabilities and operations, because a full understanding of Soviet naval power provides an understanding of the isolation that Europeans often feel. In the fourth and fifth sections of the book we examine the threat to northern and southern Europe.

Part One
Strategy

Introduction

John Erickson

Toward the end of the last century in an exchange that is tinged with the apocryphal, a senior tsarist minister was asked to describe what for Russia would constitute a safe and secure frontier. Quite unblushingly the minister replied that such a frontier would be one that had the Russians on both sides of it. If this were an expression of outright hegemonal ambition, then Soviet military power is the means for achieving this aim.

Many argue for a response to this Soviet challenge-challenge there certainly is, but of whose making is it and in what form is it cast? What, for example, are the ingredients of Soviet "strategic culture" and to what degree are they amenable to rational explanation. In particular, what is the import of the sustained Soviet naval buildup against Europe?

Few on the East-West divide would dispute that there is a pronounced element of morbidity in the Soviet security outlook. Even this disconcerting mixture of power and insecurity does not excuse the manner in which the term "paranoia" is flung around so freely. Such usage entirely begs the question. The prevailing Soviet "strategic culture" is founded in a political environment that combines the concept of territorial empire with an ideology with pretensions to global reach and global relevance. Both, in varying degrees, promote the notion of the permanence of the power struggle, the quest for total security and its counterpart in military invulnerability. Indeed, the Soviet term bezopasnost can be equated with "security" but more aptly with "safety" and "absence of danger." The term also negates any idea of "sufficiency" of force. It inculcates reliance upon and potential resort to unilateral military action and invalidates real reciprocity of restraint. Though war is not admitted as an instrument of policy, least of all nuclear war or the concept of "winning" in any such cataclysm, war cannot be excluded, hence the Soviets' continuing emphasis on combat readiness, "vigilance," and the elaboration of machinery to ensure a rapid transition to a war footing. The Soviet "deterrent-defensive" mix is designed above all to prevent the initiation of any level of hostility by the United States and its allies. The Soviets also mean to block any Western attempt to achieve military gain at the expense of the worldwide socialist camp or subject those states to political intimidation. Part of the Soviets' unsolved problem is how to turn their military power into effective, assertive, proselytizing political influence, in a system in which every effort is subordinated to the survival of the Soviet system in a recognizable military, political and economic configuration. Hence the priority accorded to strategic defense.

If war should come, however, then it probably would be more protracted than heretofore assumed, demanding greater flexibility and survivability for strategic forces, as well as greater sustainability for the entire Soviet military establishment. A war still might be "relatively brief" but if it were protracted, it might involve several prolonged phases: possibly conventional at its opening, but followed by rapid nuclear escalation and then reverting to a sort of joint nuclear and conventional warfare. It followed, therefore, that Soviet forces should be fitted out for all forms and phases of combat-nuclear and conventional, naval, air and ground, and at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. In the maritime arena, impressive progress was made in naval power with the construction of aircraft carriers such as Kiev; surface combatants such as Kirov, Slava, Sovremennyy and Udaloy; and submarines such as Mike and Oscar to provide conventional power, and systems such as Delta and Typhoon for nuclear deterrence.

All this was prelude to or accompaniment for the grand integration effected under Marshal Ogarkov, building a military system to see the Soviet Union through to the year 2000 at least. Overcoming whatever opposition there was (principally from the Soviet Navy) Ogarkov rammed through the establishment of an integrated Strategic Nuclear Force as an integrated command element controlling ICBMs, the SSBN/SLBM force and long-range bombers. Each force element was controlled by a "nuclear" commander-in-chief who reported to the nuclear "supremo" (a post apparently occupied by Marshal Akhromeyev before his further elevation to Chief of the General Staff and now possibly held by Marshal Ogarkov).

Ogarkov proceeded to develop his own ideas of "planned development" of the Soviet Armed Forces. His emphasis was on the missions discharged by the armed forces rather than on the traditional land-sea-air compartmentalization: the main operational distinction now seems to lie between strategic-intercontinental forces and those committed to operations in the various theaters of military operations (TVDs). The whole is designed to produce a synergistic effort which applies the totality of available military power-whether in strategic or theater warfare or the overlapping of both-in a combined arms mode. This is more than the cross-attachment of arms since at the operational-tactical level it maximizes available assets by unification and integration. The five branches of the Soviet Armed Forces-the navy, nuclear forces, ground forces, air force and air defense troops-exist as peacetime administrative entities, but in war they form the combined/combined arms Soviet Armed Forces-"force packages" that are structured to the requirements of given theater operations.

The move to mission-related forces has resulted in two Soviet "triads." The first is the recently integrated offensive-defensive mix with its ICBMs, SLBMs and bombers. It is steadily upgraded with new ICBMs, new bombers and long-range missiles, all furnishing more flexibility and versatility. Increasing MIR Ving of submarine-launched missiles is offsetting land-based missile vulnerability and is backed by a sophisticated strategic defense system encompassing a form of "space weapon" system with its co-orbital anti-satellite capability. At the theater level a similar triad has involved furnishing and improving naval and air strike capabilities, all-round sea and air defense, and firepower. These field forces too are configured in a combined-arms mode, committed to high speed conventional operations or to the exploitation of nuclear strikes with highly mobile and survivable forces.

The Soviet command now must respond to the notion of "aggressive defense" being touted in NATO as "Airland Battle 2000." One problem Soviet planners must consider in the European theater is the absence of an effective second echelon that in any event may be quickly expended and a time lag of a week might well elapse before reserve armies can be brought into action. Their clear task requires Soviet forces deployed forward in east-central Europe to advance westward as rapidly as possible. To this end, to east and to west, Eurasia has been divided into three main theaters of war (Western, Southern and Far Eastern), these selfsame theaters being further subdivided into "theaters of operations" (TVDs). Thus, the Western theater comprises the Arctic, Atlantic and Mediterranean, while the Southern theater commands not only an axis running from Odessa to Haifa, but also southwestern Asia.

This indicates that the Soviet Union has developed an integrated strike force which undergoes relentless modernization. The same is true of the theater forces that are designed to implement the strategy of tous azimuths, and have the ability to respond to any conceivable threat. Yet the present strategy that has been set out by Marshal Ogarkov is designed to prevent the conflict, any conflict, from becoming nuclear, while at the same time reducing the impact of the surprise factor. It is intended that any "aggressor" should not be able to use his weapons with impunity. For once-and it is an astonishing admission-the Soviet command admits to a surplus of nuclear potential, a condition that makes it inconceivable that any side could launch a disarming first strike.¹ The Soviet position in INF clearly reflects this attitude.

If the threat to the West is seen by some to lie more plausibly in Soviet conventional capability, then the figures should be examined with some care. In the event of war hundreds of ships and submarines and some 200 Soviet divisions could be mobilized, but all that takes time and a degree of efficiency which strains the imagination. The strains on the Soviet system are immense and cannot be dismissed simply by quoting numbers. In the event of any incursion into Europe, the Soviet command must achieve both strategic and tactical surprise, mobilize maximum shock power, win the air and naval battles, paralyze NATO's C³ system and disorganize its rear, disrupt the defense and maintain an operational tempo of some 50 kilometers a day, concluding the entire operation within some two weeks. The answer may well be that Soviet forces, in their one-echelon formations, could seize a great deal of territory but still not unhinge or debilitate NATO's nuclear capability-indeed, they might simply trigger it.

That Soviet military power is immense and expanding is not in question. It is backed by an attention to military affairs which has been consistent and cogent, displaying a continuity which does shame to the fiddling Western attempts in military matters. The Soviet threat seems to be real, and is evidenced by the thrust of Soviet naval and other power outward into the world to challenge Western interests and positions. An important aspect of that threat is the persistence with which the Soviet Union pushes its "offensive-defensive" mix of weapons, seeking an invulnerability which becomes increasingly elusive. It can be argued with some justification that the Soviet military program does not display great rationality. Yet it cannot be denied that the program demonstrates a degree of foresight, if only of the crudest sort: "if the animal is attacked, it will defend itself." This is not to excuse the international "purchase price" of Soviet security that generates insecurity and hence irrationality in nations that see themselves as potential targets of Soviet power, nor does it excuse the perceived need to pile weapons upon weapons in order to match "total" enemy forces or to respond to the widest possible range of threats.

This, then, brings us to the focus of this study-the Soviet naval threat against Western Europe. In the first chapter, William and Harriet Scott examine the navy's role in Soviet military strategy towards Europe; in chapter two Peter Tsouras focuses on. Soviet naval strategy. Both exercises are valuable to introduce the rest of the book and to identify the navy's role in Moscow's combined arms strategy. However, before these discussions are presented, it is necessary to examine the retirement in 1985 of the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei G. Gorshkov, and his replacement by Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Vladimir N. Chernavin.

A submariner by trade, Chernavin commanded the Northern Fleet from 1977 until January 1982, when he became Chief of the Main Naval Staff. He came to this post during a time of major discussion concerning the role of the Soviet Navy that had been initiated by Admiral Stalbo in two articles in Morskoy sbomik in April and May 1981. In this dispute the navy opposed the centralization of strategic forces and reaffirmed the traditional view of a "naval mission" that had been presented in Admiral Gorshkov's Sea Power of the State. However, the navy's argument fell on deaf ears, and in November 1981, Rear Admiral Kostev argued for a comprehensive review of what constitutes a navy and what form it should take.

Chernavin, in turn, immediately called for a radical review of the basic tenets of Soviet naval doctrine and clearly challenged Stalbo when he insisted on a basic revision of "the principles of the naval art." More importantly, Chernavin argued for the combined arms principle, discussed above, that viewed the form and use of the Soviet Armed Forces as a complete entity, with the "integration of all military knowledge within the framework of one, unified military science." In essence, this signified that the up and coming command group in the Soviet Navy supported both the restructuring of Soviet nuclear forces and the principle that the naval mission of "defense of the homeland" be defined in concert with the entire defense community, which would include an integration into the theater command structures. A greater focus on the navy's defense requirements in both European and Northwest Pacific waters was implicit in this argument.

While Chernavin will continue to support Gorshkov's argument concerning the navy's defensive mission, his navy will probably be significantly different and may be based on a reexamination of Soviet defensive requirements. Given his commitment to the restructured strategic forces and forward defense of extended perimeter lines, Chernavin's navy may implement improved readiness and develop, in theory and practice, the requirements of future naval warfare, along with revised or radically new methods of training, given the advanced technology and complex command and control systems of today. In short, it is Chernavin's job to bring the Soviet Navy up to and through the year 2000, and g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART ONE STRATEG
• PART TWO HARDWAR
• PART THREE OPERATION
• PARTFOUR THE THREAT TO NORTHERN EUROPE
• PART FIVE THE THREAT TO SOUTHERN EUROPE
• PART SIX AFTERWORD
• Appendix A: Soviet Northern Fleet Order of Battle
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index