Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 11 – Moscow has
announced an ambitious program to expand its military fleet especially in the
Arctic, but Norwegian defense analysts say that the Russian government is
unlikely to be able to complete this program in the timeframe it has announced.
As they put it, “bragging about new vessels is one thing; building them is
another.”
Many in the West have been impressed
and even alarmed by Moscow’s declarations of plans to build a modern fleet in
order to project power into the Arctic and elsewhere; and if Moscow were to
have such a fleet, it would fundamentally change the balance of forces there
and elsewhere given the absence of similar plans in Western capitals.
But as Thomas Nilson of “The Independent
Barents Observer” points out, there is a huge gap between what the Russian
authorities have announced and their ability to implement these plans within the
short time frames they outline (thebarentsobserver.com/security/2016/08/no-breaks-russias-warship-program-experts-question-timeframes).
Katarzyna
Zysk of Norway’s Institute for Defense Studies, told him that “there is no
doubt that Russia is willing to build the new warships,” but its current time
frames and scope are “another question” entirely given Russia’s economic
difficulties, including those resulting from the sanctions regime.
Since
Vladimir Putin called in 2013 for a boost in Russia’s military presence in the
Arctic, Russian naval planners have come up with a variety of proposals for new
ships, including next-generation nuclear-powered icebreakers that Moscow claims
will be able to “cross the North Pole in any direction, any time of year, in
any ice thickness” (izvestia.ru/news/624429).
Zysk
says that Russia’s program envisages three stages: “First,
building ships with focus on the littoral zone with the Steregushchij class
corvette as the main ship; second, constructing vessels intended for long-range
operations, with new frigates of the Admiral Gorshkov class as the main asset,
and at the third stage, building a new class of destroyers.”
If that
program is realized, Russia would represent a far larger threat in the region;
but the Norwegian expert points out that “Russia has been struggling with
implementing the program even at the first stages due to economic, financial,
as well as structural problems in the military-industrial complex, which
continues to struggle with corruption, ineffective use of resources and
exorbitant prices, as well as waning expertise and professional skills.”
At
present, she says, the Russian navy is enthusiastic as is the Russian political
elite, but “the future of the surface shipbuilding programs” has “fragile
foundations.” That is because Moscow “has
been prioritizing warfare over welfare in the past few years, financing the
military build-up on the expense of health budget, social spending and
education. This comes with a high social price, as the steep fall in living
standards has demonstrated.”
Moreover,
the shipbuilding effort has been hampered by Western sanctions which have meant
that Russian construction firms cannot buy gas turbine engines from Ukraine or
diesel engines from Germany as they had planned. There are no good substitutes
at present for either, Zysk suggests.
Kristian
Åland of the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment agrees. He doubts that
Russia will be able to put the new class of destroyers to sea before 2025 “at
the earliest,” far later than Moscow claims or that many Western commentators
fear. He adds that the icebreaker program is also likely to be delayed given “technological
or financial constraints.”
This
will have other consequences for Russia, Zysk says. “If Russia [ends] up not being able to pay
salaries, the naval construction and other military projects will obviously be
negatively affected … Broader consequences such as political instability,
domestic, as well as in terms of foreign policy, are among likely outcomes,”
she says.
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