That’s the verdict on the once proud Russian Navy, brought low by sustained failure to recapitalize that has left the fleet at the end of its service life with no industrial capacity left to rebuild it, and no money to do so with even if the capacity existed:
The combination of almost two decades of anaemic government funding for the shipbuilding industry and almost no procurement of new naval vessels has produced a navy that cannot maintain operations much longer and an industry that can no longer rescue it. Buying or cooperatively producing warships with France might stave off the inevitable, but modern western European-built ships in sufficient numbers are likely to have price tag that a Russia in an economic tailspin also cannot cope with.
The NVO report does not pull any punches: “The Russian Navy is on the verge of irreversible collapse. Within ten years there will be in the entire navy less than 50 vessels still capable of operations, which would be a number not even the size of one of our ‘lesser fleets’ like the Baltic Fleet or the Black Sea Fleet.”
The report rates the navy’s situation as the worst in almost a century and concludes “this present catastrophe is comparable to what happened in the course of the [post-1917 Bolshevik Revolution] Civil War years when the fleet was left in ruins. If during the oil and gas boom of the 2000s the Russian Navy received practically no funding, now today during a period of difficult [economic] crisis the fleet will–without a doubt–have to die within the next few years. This is not merely a possibility, it is a fact.”
Well, I hope they save their notes as they go through this process. We might need to go over them ourselves in a few years.
A cautionary tale indeed…..
Good riddance! The policy of that nation has been to sow lies, death and destruction wherever it can reach.
And I agree with Virgil — given this administration, we are in danger of hollowing out our military and the industrial capacity to sustain our leadership. Any administration that will cancel missile defense in the face of Nork and Iranian threats has crossed the dividing line between stupidity and criminal insanity.
And yet, as Russia “flexed its muscle” over this past year with its Med Deployment and various other boondoggles, the senior leadership of the USN is practically creaming its jeans at the “re-emergence” of the old Soviet navy. I cannot overstate the obsession with this rump navy, because it’s “real operational stuff,” it’s what they cut their teeth on back in the day. Hours are burned every week in morning meetings every week on this stuff, and as I’ve pointed out more than once, when was the last time a Russian killed an American? (Boy, talk about being a party pooper.) Yeah, we get to use all our technical toys again, but so what? None of this is stopping foreign fighters from getting to Iraq and Afghanistan (and now Somalia) to kill our boys, none of this is slowing China’s monopolization of African resources, or the looming collapse of Europe. Because fighting that stuff is hard, and it means you have to think, and it means you have risk getting blank stares from seniors. It means you have to do that Intel imagination stuff, and imagine a world twenty years from now when have no European allies because of internal domestic pressures, your access to material resources costs you your national left nut, where China presses on every front because it can, and your own nation is bankrupt and chasing Europe down the drainpipe of history.
Yeah, it’s a lot to ask a senior officer to look beyond his next FITREP, but it’s not too much to ask that he start by putting the Russian navy in context.
the cautionary tale, indeed, but mostly in the part talking about complete demise of the ship-design and ship-building industries. Even if they come up the money and resources, they have no people left capable of designing and building these ships…
It’s actually very sad, the Russian Navy was great and its officers has been striving to keep with the noble navy traditions from the pre-1917 days despite all that soviet/communism crap.
You want to see how bad things are?
Go here and scroll down through the pics.
http://englishrussia.com/?p=554
Jesus wept…….
Zane/
The attitude of half our people about the trends you note is like that of the tale of the guy who jumped off the Empire State Bldg, and about half-way down somebody stuck their head out the window and asked him how he was doing as he passed by; to which the jumper/fool replied: “so far, so good.”
Their is ALWAYS a cost to doing nothing as well as the more readily identifiable costs of doing something. Unfortunately, the costs of doing something are always upfront and in democracies usually viewed as distasteful–the costs of doing nothing usually are out of sight and immediately un-felt–but they often greatly dwarf the costs of innoculation and can be utterly disasterous. Like that old Fram oil-filter commercial: “You can pay me now–or you can pay me later.” Or, alternatively: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
(I’ll stop now, I’ve run out of homilies)
One thing the Russians can be honest about is that they never needed a fleet in the first place. All it did was consume resources that could have been better invested elsewhere. I think they realize this fact now and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a working party off to dig up Gorshkov’s bones and throw them into a radioactive pond somewhere.
Us? We have an industrial base totally geared for bespoke weapon systems be they ships, submarines or aircraft.
Yeah, reality bites, so they’re palming off their nuclear carrier, the “Admiral Gorshkov”, an Akula sub, and two squadrons of Mig-29Ks to the Indian Navy.
Probably the only remaining proud part of their military, as such it died of starvation.
We can argue for a week about if they needed a fleet, but I don’t think that anyone who ever saw one of their ships in the wild would disagree that they built some beautiful ships. Graceful lines, fast, wicked looking weapons, and good sea-keeping as well.
Went aboard a Frigate that came to Boston a few years ago. I was wearing my Navy ball cap with the CPO anchor on the front. Our tour guide recognized the anchor and, after the tour, asked what I had done in the Navy. I told him I was a Chief Gunner’s Mate, and he replied so was he, and invited me into his twin 122mm mount. Biggest surprise was the lack of automation; it didn’t look much different from an old 5″/54 mount from my era (the 60’s). Clean and well maintained, though. Had a bit of fun guessing what controls were what, and got most of them right. Left thinking I was glad we never had to go barrel to barrel with them.
Boo-hoo!
b2