Russia, Norway to Hold Barents Sea Drills in June

Russian and Norwegian naval forces will conduct a joint exercise in the Barents Sea on June 4-7, Northern Fleet spokesman Vadim Serga said on Thursday.

Russia’s Northern Fleet will contribute the tugboat SB-523, an Ilyushin Il-38 maritime patrol aircraft and an Mi-8 Hip helicopter to the Barents-2013 exercise.

The two nations' search and rescue services will test their interoperability in evacuation of crews and aircraft in distress at sea, and cleanup of oil spills.

The Barents exercise is conducted every year in accordance with a 1995 Russian-Norwegian intergovernmental agreement, Serga said.

This year’s exercise, which has a rotating command system, will be under Russian control, he said.

Russian Warship ‘Spots’ Foreign Sub on Exercise

The flagship of Russia’s Northern Fleet, the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky made a simulated detection of a foreign submarine in the Barents Sea during a recent exercise and guided other assets to track it, Fleet spokesman Vadim Serga said on Monday.

The simulated submarine contact was located in international waters north of Kildin Island, and an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) ship and two ASW aircraft, an Il-38 and Tu-142, were sent to the area to track and “engage” it, he said.

Serga did not say when the exercise began.

On Monday, the Pyotr Veliky will continue practising ASW missions in conjunction with other Northern Fleet warships, including a live fire exercise.

The war games are being conducted to test the combat readiness of the Northern Fleet’s ASW assets on alert duty.

The Pyotr Veliky's armament includes 20 P-700 Granit anti-ship missiles, 48 S-300F Fort and 46 S-300FM Fort-M (SA-N-20 Gargoyle) medium-range surface-to-air missiles, with an effective range of up to 200 kilometers(120 miles), 128 3K95 Kinzhal (SA-N-9 Gauntlet) short-range SAMs, and six CADS-N-1 Kashtan gun/missile systems. The cruiser also has its own anti-submarine component of three Ka-27 Helix helicopters.

Russian Navy Plans to Assign 30 Helicopters to Each Mistral

Each of the two Mistral class amphibious assault ships being built in France for the Russian Navy will have air wings consisting of 30 Ka-52K and Ka-29 helicopters, Izvestia newspaper reported on Wednesday.

“These will be air wings comprising carrier-based and land-based elements to ensure fast rotation of the helicopters for repairs or replacement due to combat losses,” Izvestia quoted a Defense Ministry source as saying.

A Mistral-class ship is capable of carrying 16 helicopters, four landing vessels, 70 armored vehicles, and 450 personnel.

“The actual number of helicopters on board will vary according to the operational tasks,” the source said.

Prototypes of a naval version of the Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter are under construction at the Progress plant in Russia’s Far East. The flight tests are expected to start in 2014.

Ka-29 Helix has been originally designed for the Soviet navy as a dedicated assault transport helicopter, and its adaptation for Mistrals will be less time-consuming and costly.

Russia and France signed a $1.2-billion contract for two French-built Mistral class ships, including the transfer of sensitive technology, in June 2011. Two more ships are expected to be 80% built in Russia, 20% in France.

The first Mistral class warship is expected to be put in service with the Russian Navy in three years.

The Russian military has said it plans to use Mistral ships in its Northern and Pacific fleets.

The Northern Fleet In Russia’s Grand Strategy – Analysis

Fourteen years after the Kursk disaster, Russia’s Northern Fleet will soon have a new multi-purpose rescue vessel. Currently under construction by the Admiralty Shipyards in Saint Petersburg, the “Igor Belousov” will be able to help out wrecked submarines and engage in complex search operations, as well as take part in military actions. Equipped with a landing pad for helicopters, vacuum chambers, under-water equipment able to operate on 700 meter depths, and an advanced deepwater diving complex, the vessel will also carry advanced weaponry, thereby constituting a formidable, multi-purpose warship.

Established in 1933 with the name of Soviet Fleet of the Northern Sea, the Northern Fleet has access to the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, and is headquartered at Severomorsk, at the top of the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk, with additional home ports at Kola, Motovsky, Gremikha and Ura Guba. Although its mission is to defend Russia’s far north-western region by patrolling the waters of the Barents and Kara seas, in recent years the Fleet has resumed its presence in the oceans in an attempt to recover the primary role played during the Cold War, when it was the pride of the Soviet Union.

In the triennium 2007-2009, the heavy aircraft carrying cruiser “Admiral Kuznetsov” regularly performed training and combat tasks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, carrying out two military services. In the same period, the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser “Pyotr Veliky” twice crossed the Atlantic and made visits to Venezuela, South Africa, India, France and Syria, taking part in the international exercises “Venrus-2008” and “Indra-2009,” while in 2010, along the shortest route through the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, the warship moved to the Far East to take part in the “Vostok-2010” large-scale strategic exercise.

The naval cooperation between the Northern Fleet and the navies of anti-American regimes in the Caribbean like Hugo Chavez’s in Venezuela has a political meaning, being Russia’s response to NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe. A partly similar argument can be made to explain Moscow’s support to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, where the Russian Navy still maintains access to a Soviet-era naval base at Tartus. If it is therefore undeniable the tactical use of the naval army made until now by the Kremlin while promoting missions in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, there is a region where the Russian Navy, and notably the Northern Fleet, is called to play a primary role in Russia’s grand strategy for the future: the Arctic Ocean.

In 2008, almost immediately after coming to power, the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev set out his assertive strategy to expand the country’s borders northward, telling his top security lieutenants that their “biggest task is to turn the Arctic into Russia’s resource base for the 21st century.” According to an assessment conducted by the US Geological Survey (USGS), the region holds an estimated 13% (90 billion barrels) of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30% of its undiscovered conventional natural gas resources. Hence Moscow’s attempts to prove that that the Lomonosov Ridge, in the Central Arctic Ocean, is an extension of the Siberian continental shelf.

In this context, a strengthening of the Russian military presence in the region through the expansion of the Northern Fleet is a means to exercise pressure on the international community, should it not accept the scientific evidence of Moscow’s claims. Supremacy in the Arctic would allow Russia not only to exploit its huge energy resources, but also to turn the Northern Sea Route, which travels east via the region to Asia-Pacific markets, into a major international trade route controlled by Moscow. This is why Russia’s commitment to the strengthening of the Northern Fleet is more than an effort aimed at bringing the Russian Navy back to the times of the Soviet Union, being rather a sign of the Kremlin’s determination to turn it into the cutting edge of tomorrow’s Eurasia, an envisaged geo-economic space stretching from the desert steppes of Kazakhstan to the glaciers of the North Pole.