Faslane, Russia and risks of hosting UK nuclear submarine fleet

There has been discussion relating to this issue in the comments to our earlier story on the recent and hilarious scare tactics on defence from former junior Defence Minister, Lord West. Also a former First Sea Lord,  the West comments were made as part of the campaign from Westminster to combat the possibility of Scottish independence.

There is – of course, a very great deal that the general public do not know and, in some cases, cannot know about defence matters.

We understand on good authority that, back in the early-to-mid 1970′s,  Russian ‘trawlers’ regularly laid mines in the Clyde. These were to be activated should UK submarines leave the Clyde in any emerging situation of conflict involving the then USSR.

On one occasion, at least, at that time, a Royal Navy team of clearance divers from Faslane spent three weeks clearing new Russian mines out of the Clyde.

Evidently the routines were a sort of game of threat – with the Russian ‘trawlers’ laying mines, the navy removing them , the ‘trawlers’ laying more….

While this was during the cold war, it would be naive to imagine that nations either with a grudge against the UK or preparing the means to neutralise this particular UK defence capability, should the need arise, would  not have similar plans today.

It would also be naive to imagine that Faslane – and Glen Douglas – are not on a shortlist of UK locations set to receive long range missiles at or before the start of any major conflict in which the UK might engage. Our peripheral monkeying around in stand offs with Iran, in the wake of the Americans as usual, is foolishly provocative and particularly so in the case if nation which has just admitted to recent tests of  long range missiles.

While one nuclear submarine is on station somewhere in international waters at all times, this news does mean that other submarines leaving Faslane on deployment at a time of conflict might not make it out of the Clyde – with the surrounding area taking the literal hit and the consequent radioactivity from damage to the ships’ reactor cores and warheads.

It is interesting to note that with the loss of the UK’s aircraft carriers and their aircraft to defence cuts, there has been a noted resurgence of Russian naval activity in UK waters – particularly in Scottish waters.

On 13th December 2011, SKY News UK reported that the Royal Navy mounted an emergency scramble of a warship (yes, singular) and fighter jets in response to – guess what – a Russian aircraft carrier carrying around 12 fighter jets – off the east coast of Scotland.

The Type 42 destroyer, HMS York – had been dispatched from Portsmouth a week earlier and  found the  the Admiral Kuznetsov and her escorting ships north east of the Orkneys in the early hours of Monday, 12 December 2011. The carrier’s escort group consisted of a destroyer, two frigates, two tankers and an ocean-going tug.

The story was that the Russian ships  were on their way to the Mediterranean, off Syria, for exercises. The Russian Navy does have a base at Tartus in Syria – but the move was obviously a game and its purpose was clear – testing response times and saying ‘Look what we’ve got that you haven’t’.
The next day, 14th December, STV reported that this aircraft carrier, the 65,000-tonne Admiral Kuznetsov, with other Russian warships, had ‘taken shelter from severe weather ‘ 30 miles off the Moray Firth. This is in international waters.

HMS York, which was then shadowing the Russian fleet, saw sailors dumping black bags overboard – and this was confirmed by the Royal Navy. What was being dumped was thought to be waste – and presumably the York will have checked that – but the dumping of waste in plastic bags in environmentally irresponsible and a serious threat to marine life. It is also against international maritime pollution regulations. The Royal Navy reported the Russian action to the relevant authorities over these concerns. The regulation allows naval fleets to dump some waste, including food waste, overboard, but the use of plastic bags is not permitted.

We can probably expect to see more of such visible games around Scottish waters and with Argentina limbering up again on the issue of the Falkland Islands,  where we are indeed now prospecting for oil and minerals, these are not going to be easy times.