The number of Russian naval vessels passing close to the UK has climbed steadily in the last 10 years Although most of this activity is lawful and benign, the RN always deploys vessels to closely monitor these movements in the UK area of interest. Here we summarise this activity, its purpose and messaging.
The relentless vigil
Keeping an eye on the movements of your potential adversary’s military is prudent for any nation and practised in many forms going back centuries with non-aligned navies across the globe continuing to keep a close eye on each other. During the Cold War period, the RN was tasked to gather intelligence on the Soviet Navy and they returned the compliment with similar missions to track NATO vessels.
Although there have been few publicised incidents close to the UK, further afield there were some serious clashes. There is a fine line between shadowing a vessel and harassing or interfering with its passage and safety depends on fine judgement and professionalism on both sides. For example, in 1970 a Soviet frigate collided with HMS Ark Royal (IV) while harassing the ship during flying nations, damage was not serious but it resulted in the death of two Russian Sailors. In the undersea game of cat and mouse that continues unabated today, there have been numerous recorded collisions. At least two RN SSNs suffered significant damage when getting too close to Soviet submarines although fortunately, none of their pressure hulls were penetrated and both were able to return home from patrols in northern waters.
The focus of this article is the movement of surface units this close to the UK but Russian military activity also includes submarines and aircraft. The Russian airforce routinely sends long-range bombers or maritime patrol aircraft to probe UK air defences. Typhoons of the RAF Quick Reaction Force (QRF) are usually scrambled to intercept them. So far these flights have remained inside international airspace and are legal, if unprofessional. They can put civilian air traffic at risk or cause disruption as the Russians do not squawk their position or communicate with UK air traffic controllers.
Precise details are not available in the public domain and the exact level of Russian underwater activity around the British Isles is difficult to assess but is known to have risen sharply in the last 5 years. Russian submarines may frequently attempt to penetrate UK waters and are especially interested in opportunities to trail and record the signatures of the nuclear deterrent boats. The SSBN is more vulnerable to detection in the channels close to home either outbound or inbound from patrol and considerable effort is made to sanitise the routes of any intruders and ‘delouse’ the boat to ensure it is not followed. Other Russian submarine activity takes place around the UK in an effort to observe naval activity, gather intelligence and familiarise themselves with the waters.
Prisoners of geography
To some extent, the passage of Russian vessels near to the UK is a result of geographical constraints. Their Northern Fleet, the largest and most important, is based in Severomorsk inside the Arctic Circle. To access the Atlantic and Mediterranean, ships must pass either to the North of the UK through the GIUK gap or to the South, via the North Sea and Dover Strait. The Baltic Fleet is smaller but must also pass through the NATO-dominated Skagerrak and English Channel. Although some Russian vessels pass through the treaty-controlled Dardanelles, their Black Sea fleet is relatively small and can offer a limited contribution to global operations.
Since 2015 when Russia fully committed its military to propping up the government of President Bashar Assad in the bloody civil war, the deployment of naval vessels to the Mediterranean has increased significantly. The naval base at Tartus is the only such facility Russia has outside the former Soviet Union and in 2017 Assad was pleased to extend their lease on the base for another 49 years. The deal permits Russia to keep up to 11 vessels in Tartus, including nuclear-powered submarines and Moscow is investing $500M in infrastructure improvements at the base.
From a strategic perspective, this is about a Russian influence in the Levant. To support this objective, the maintenance of their Eastern Mediterranean fleet requires a regular rotation of warships, submarines and support ships from distant bases. These vessels also help ensure the regular flow of ships carrying munitions and supplies to the Russian Air Force and Army fighting in Syria.
Activated
The RN was deployed on 17 separate occasions in response to Russian naval activity in the UK area of interest in 2020, a 26% increase over the previous year. In comparison, there were 11 activations in 2014, while 2017 was the busiest year on record with 33.
The passage of Russian vessels is usually known well in advance and the progress of the ships can sometimes even be tracked by amateur OSINT enthusiasts using the AIS signals from support vessels. NATO can call on a large intelligence network for forewarning and the naval units involved are co-ordinated by Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) based in Northwood (North London). Typically the French or Dutch Navy will hand over to the RN as the Russians leave their areas of interest.
“The Russian Navy is a capable Navy, that’s why their ships are a part of our routine surveillance plans… We learn what we can from the group and how it operates, we’ll continue to monitor for any changes in behaviour and continue to work closely within the Alliance to ensure all Allied navies are comfortable with the level of surveillance and information flowing regarding Russian Navy assets.” Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone, Commander Allied Maritime Command, 2017.
The RN maintains a ship allocated as the Fleet Ready Escort (FRE), usually, a frigate kept either at very high readiness or already be at sea around the UK. FRE duties may take it further afield and it may double as the Towed Array Patrol Ship (TAPS) on submarine hunting duties. Should the FRE not be best placed or other frigates or destroyers unavailable, the RN may allocate an OPV or even a minehunter to the escort task. Between 2012-14 the MoD admitted that FRE was gapped for several weeks due to lack of available assets but there have not been reports of this happening recently. As the RN moves to a more carrier-centric surface fleet, it is possible FRE may sometimes have to be gapped again or allocated to an OPV.
Once a warship is engaged in monitoring a warship or a group of vessels, it maintains a safe distance and but may circle occasionally and record electronic emissions and gather imagery with powerful electro-optical cameras. Electronic (ELINT) and Signals (SIGINT) intelligence gathered during routine transits is unlikely to reveal much that is not already known. However, establishing the pattern of habitual operating behaviour helps build a picture and will help quickly spot any departure from the norm. Radio communications with the Russian sailors are usually described as diplomatic, cordial and professional.
Under international law, warships are not permitted to loiter within sovereign territorial waters that extend 12 miles off a nation’s coast but are entitled to pass through the waters and through narrow waterways such as the 22-mile wide Dover Strait under Article 17 of UNCLOS rules concerning ‘innocent passage’. This requires warships to behave in ways that are “not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state” and they may not stop or anchor except in emergencies.
Sending messages
While the movement of Russian warships close to the UK may primarily be necessary transits of ships deploying elsewhere, it has a useful additional benefit for Moscow. In an overt way, it signals power projection capability and forces NATO to devote resources to watching. The political and public relations dimension of this activity is perhaps as important as its military significance.
Occasionally the messaging may be stronger. During December 2020, in the middle of the pandemic and as Brexit negotiations reached their climax, no less than nine Russian warships and submarines were operating close to the UK. Eleven RN vessel and other NATO units were involved at various times in a monitoring operation that lasted 20 days. The sending of messages is not entirely one-way traffic, RN surface ships took part in at least three NATO freedom of navigation operations close to the Russian coast in the Barents Sea during 2020.
When the Russian navy comes calling, the UK media tends to over-react to these mostly routine events, worried that warships are “stalking our coasts”. The unseen threat from ballistic and cruise missile-armed submarines are in fact, of much greater concern than that of their surface fleet. On a day-to-day basis, the activities of Russian hackers in the cyber domain are actually causing far more harm than the activities of Russian ships. Should the Kremlin ever be foolish enough to start a shooting war against NATO, it is very unlikely to begin with warships opening fire without warning in the Dover Strait.
There is a PR benefit for the RN that issues a regular stream of press releases and images soon after it has been involved in these operations. For the general public, a photo of a Royal Navy vessel shadowing a Russian warship offers a simple and easy-to-comprehend example of how the RN is protecting UK interests.
There is often concern that the RN is fielding vessels out-gunned by their Russian counterparts and in particular, the OPVs are under-armed for the task. The offshore patrol vessels are, after all, well suited to patrolling offshore and for surveillance work, not designed to go into combat against foreign warships. In an ideal world, the escort task would be undertaken by frigates, for symbolic reasons at least, but in this instance, employment of OPVs may be the best use of constrained resources. If we imagine for a moment the Russians actually attacked their shadowers, they could achieve a temporary success but are sailing waters dominated by NATO warships and aircraft and could expect quick retribution.
The routine work of maintaining a presence and patrolling is not especially glamorous but makes up a large part of all peacetime naval tasking. While the RN must be fully prepared to go into combat against a peer adversary if ever called upon, the basics of readiness, seamanship, navigation and surveillance are its bread and butter.
Do Russian vessels still call at Rota and Cueta on there way to the Eastern Med?
Nothing like a unified front from our Spanish allies!
They used to call into Portsmouth as well, but that seems like a different era now
I’ve never understood the Navy’s antipathy towards corvettes. A compact, well armed vessel would be ideal for operations close to base facilities and free up the hard pressed frigate fleet for the jobs only they can perform.
I agreed 6 Visby class Corvettes would be useful as home fleet to patrol and monitor the area around the UK and Baltic region complemented by the opvs for the policing and fishery protection. Never understood why we did not keep a home fleet the frigates can then deal with the global stuff away from home one in the north Atlantic one in South Atlantic one in the med, 2-3 in the Asia Pacific leaving the rest to cover the carrier’s.
Any need for a new class of stealthy plastic corvettes? Give the OPV’s some extra teeth and maybe a few more hulls and thats a fairly credible Home Fleet for the current task of shadowing visiting Russian antiques surely? Maybe upgrade Batch 3 OPV’s to operate an ASW Merlin?
Problem is guys the Royal Navy wouldn’t get 6 new corvettes on top of a fleet of 19 destroyers and frigates – it would be instead of something else.
With pretty dire economic condition the UK broadly and the MoD specifically are in I think retaining 8 OPV’s and a plan to increase the surface fleet to 24 with the Type 32 (albeit pretty slowly) isn’t a bad result – certainly better than the doldrums the 2010 SDSR left the fleet in.
Erm, aren’t we getting the type 32, And the 26 and 31, so finally the fleet is actually growing it’s teeth. I would love to know the 32s plans, 5 would be nice and replaces the sold 23s and 22s.
Think the fleet no’s are way to small as maintenace and overhauls has dropped current fleet to 13 we could do with at least 36 surface fleet and definitely an additional 4 air defence destroyers.
Budget to one side the British solution would be aircraft. The RN sees itself as a global blue water navy with no place for such ships. If there was a threat here in NW Europe a couple of squadrons of FJ with AShM would be the choice. (I do have bizarre thoughts about 2 seat Typhoon with conformal tanks……. 🙂 )
The Visby is a wonderful ship. But the hull isn’t right for us.
I think there is a need for a clutch of fast FP vessel about 750 to 1100 tonnes-ish. But there wouldn’t be a need to arm them for serious combat.
That then sounds as if they do much the same as a B2 River!
Expand on that a bit more as you have lost me. Or I have lost you. Or we are both lost. 🙂 😉
I thought about the two seater typhoons too, to replace the tornados, the Two seater training typhoons look good, I wonder how it affects performance ect, anyone know?
I don’t know how much a second seat impacts performance. Not much I should imagine as they are not short of power. Conformal tanks would of course. But out over the sea a long, long way from opfor it wouldn’t be a problem.
It’s just the body was changed for the two seater mate, it looks a fair bit different to the single seater.
The Buccaneer was a good low level strike aircraft in the past, with internal bays as well.
The capability exceeds that of the 2 seat Tornado with just a single pilot. It can do anti-air and air to ground missions at the same time and can carry the different weapons to do so- except nuclear weapons The electronics to enable this with a single pilot manager just wasnt around in the 1980s.
Maybe the electronic combat mission would need two people as the Germans are buying the F18F/G for nuclear mission and electronic jammer.
AFAIK It was the Squadron’s worth of Two Seat Typhoons that went down the RTP Road.
As the article says, the real security threat is sub-surface. A diesel powered corvette is of little use in ASW operations. To my mind an OPV is fine for escorting passing warships in peacetime. What we are lacking is platforms to counter the under surface security threat.
I’d have far rather seen us buy 6 rather than 9 P8’s for maritime patrol, cancel the Type 31 and sell two of the five new Rivers (retaining two for home water patrols and one for Falkland patrol) to raise the money to buy 3 SS’s off the shelf. The SS’s would take care of sub surface security, the OPV’S would escort surface vessels and that would release a high value T23/T26 from the towed array/ foreign warship shadowing missions onto global operations.
The modern corvette is as big as our front line frigates of 50 years ago.
And if the diesels are properly rafted, plus other measures, they can be made quiet. I would say a CODLAD would be effective for second rate ASW with decent sensor fit out.
I agree we need SSK’s. But we need more P8 not fewer.
Hell they are better armed and bigger than old destroyers.
Only mentioned Visby to replace the 13 or so mine sweeper hulls we are loosing with no replacement hulls, t32 we are told are additional frigates as they realise the fleet is too small, batch2 rivers are just patrol boats with limited potential to up arm as seen in the recent arrival. Rivers were always designed as a make shift and expensive patrol vessel to keep the yards employed, a better designed black swan would have been more useful with a hanger/multi mission bay and better accomodations. As for the additional ssk’s is the xluuv not going to be built for additional subs albeit automated.
If the move is towards unmanned system remotely operated we are going to need something much larger than Visby. The new Dutch / Belgian MCM vessel is getting on for nearly 3000 tons. These drone systems aren’t small.
Visby is designed for the Swedish littoral and Baltic. How it would fair mid-Atlantic I do not know.
I didn’t mention Visby beyond saying they were good ships, but not for our needs.
Are you sure that replacement MCM vessels are not envisaged? If Belgium and Holland with a combined coastline of 320 miles are ordering 6 each to operate drones, UK with 7000 miles will need more.The idea that we will use a frigate as the standard mothership for remote systems seems insane. As the article and others have noted, we don’t have enough frigates for other tasks never mind hunting for mines.
The ‘MCM module’ in the ‘mission bay’ talk here drives me batty too. As does ‘we can operate it from land’……..
It is an ideal job for reservists.
With the advances in electric propulsion being propelled by the EV revolution it isn’t out of the question for hybrid River type vessels or even T32 to be hybrid sub hunters. Those might fit your description as battery drive would be dead quiet and I suspect cheaper than rafting everything.
Always struck me as strange to have electric drive in T45 and not quieten it.
I’ve always 5nought we need some we’ll armed corvettes, maybe the new type 32 Might be similar, but I bet it’s Relatively poorly armed like the 31s for their size. Maybe a corvette that’s armed like the 31s would be fine, but a global frigate….
That picture of HMS Liverpool would make a nice painting.
its such a shame we didn’t save a 42 like Edinburgh or Liverpool as a museum, we have the spare room with all our empty ship building yards and dry docks to store her, I would visit, heck I would get married on it.
There was more than enough space next to HMS Warrior for HMS Plymouth but it just didn’t happen. A T42 would have been good. But no.
X,
If you are interested in warship paintings, drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you some images.
DCG
That there should be occasions when the UK cannot field, at least, a frigate or above to monitor and protect territorial and near territorial waters is appalling and a dereliction of the government’s security and defence responsibilities
I totally agree but I think there is a bit of PR in fielding clearly smaller, and at least to the untrained eye, inferior hulls in these encounters. It shows the public that the RN’s strength is not necessarily up to where it should be compared to our peers, hopefully encouraging further support. It also feeds into the popular belief that the RN has quality over quantity which has been the backbone of our naval tradition since the Spanish Amada. If (chance would be a fine thing!) a carrier battle group was fielded every time a Russian ship came nearby, very quickly we would hear cries of a bloated service and the necessity of deep cuts
You are always going to look inferior against a 28.000 ton ‘battle cruiser’ like the Peter the Great.
That is unless the RN uses the right sort angle in its telephoto pictures released..its all down to ‘staging’
No. The public just see a ship. If they bother to look at all. I think perhaps you over estimating or not understanding how the modern RN Wardroom thinks too. Where we here see problems in terms of well equipped hulls with well trained crews operating for our national interest the modern officer sees capabilities in the broader context of Western defence………..The latter is why we are in the mess we are in today. Governments that don’t put the UK first, and ‘civil servants’ who follow suit……
Agreed. The only naval threat the UK faces is Russia; in essence we are back to the Cold War after a fairly brief respite. Given this single threat, the decision to build aircraft carriers at the inevitable expense of ASM frigates and submarine numbers looks utterly perverse. Britain now has only 8 ASM frigates and has ordered 5 cheap Type 31 s which will have no ASM capability, to maintain the illusion that overall fleet power is not falling further.
Here we go again! How many times you have to be told Peter, that the cost of the QE carriers is small when compared to the cost of Big Ticket projects like Astute, Typoon and Deadnought?
I am Not saying either that we should cancel Astute, most of them have been built already. Same with Typhoon.
The Royal Navy is not a Blue Water navy without aircraft carriers!
You remind me of Iqbal, remember him?
The large carriers were born out of Blair wanting the UK to be seen as the globe’s second policeman after the USA. As an aid perhaps to him becoming leader of the EU. The Rules Based International System and all that. And the peace dividend with unlikely rise of a power to compete with the US. All very short sighted, but hindsight is a wonderful thing! The carriers as part of a fleet compromising 32 decent escorts, 12 SSN’s, 3 (ok-ish) amphibs, and a clutch of good support ships make sense. The carriers as part of a fleet of 6 destroyers with a wonderful missile system but woefully armed and mechanically problematic, 13 aging ASW frigates to be replaced with 8 good but woefully armed (compared to other sub classes and peers), 2 ageing amphibs, 6/7 SSN’s, and smaller number of support vessels doesn’t make as much sense. The USN must have given the nod to us acquiring carriers, but that was the USN that gave birth to Zumwalt, LCS, etc. and today’s USN is now struggling for escorts and SSN’s. And that is before we talk about the air group, T31, etc.
At the end of the Cold War we had the second best submarine flotilla, just about the best ASW in NATO, and the RM were still on form. Despite what many here think fixed wing aviation was an added bonus. Nice to have in the limit way we had it but not really essential. It might shock many here but Argentina isn’t going to invade the Falklands again. With hindsight two large fleet carriers probably weren’t the best option for us. We should have gone down the large LHD route with them as a support to the rest of the fleet not at the centre of it. We cannot as we are seeing now within the mindset of the current political class afford to operate strike carriers. It is a Top Gun Top Trumps fantasy too many on sites like this have. A 40k tonne LHx would have allowed 6 F35b, 4 cabs for Crowsnest (more important than FJ TBH), 6 Wildcat, and 12 Merlin. Three or so big fast dock ships and a cruise every year with the duty commando aboard would have seen us set. As for escort numbers and SSN’s well though I can understand why numbers were cut they went too far. I can’t believe the RN just dropped the ball. But it did. So…….
Just noticed from excellent photo posted that Kirov’s still have portholes… 2 levels!
Insert jokes along the lines of at least you can see the toilets that don’t work half of the time…..
That ship may look big and impressively but I’d be amazed if most of its systems still worked.
Hopefully the kettle is still working properly……..
Every Russian ship I have visited smells of cabbage.
Back in the late 80s on the oldest surviving T42 we spent lots of time escorting the Red Banner ships when they came out to play. Kuznetsov and Kirov especially. It was really really boring. You pick them up in say the western approaches, stand a couple of Nm’s off for days or weeks at a time as you make your way up to the North Cape and then hand them over to Norway.
got some good pictures though.
No radars on bar navigation sets. Very little in the way of radio transmissions. CTs embarked to monitor Sigint if there is any, The cab goes up and takes pictures, theirs go up and take pictures.
The RAF come out to tickle them to see if they respond…they don’t…
Nothing changed in the 90s on B2 T22s except the Sigint gear was better. Same routine.
New millenium on T23s…same routine…
Its a well worn path.
I remember stories of Leanders following Soviet ships because of mysterious deck houses only to find them to be hen houses.