Sea Control and Sea Denial in the Russian Naval Context
The Russian military continues to undergo a transformation, driven by robust investment in a new generation of advanced capabilities, higher levels of readiness, force structure expansion, and integration of combat experience into training exercises.
While much attention has been paid to capabilities, these have traditionally been interpreted via a Western conceptual lens, making little room for actual Russian operational concepts, or accounting for key tenets in Russian military strategy. Consequently, much of the conversation has been framed as an area denial/anti-access approach (A2/AD), including in the Arctic. Broadly speaking, this is not correct.
Russian military strategy is one of active defense, consisting of defensive and offensive operations, and persistent engagement of an opponent’s forces in wartime. The emphasis is on destroying critically important objects and capabilities essential to an opponent’s ability to sustain the fight in theater, or the political will of leaders. These strikes can be conducted from Russian territory, or near Russian waters, and therefore do not require physically displacing the conflict onto the opponent’s territory with ground offensives. The prevailing military concepts dictate maneuver, counterattack, and engagement, rather than a deliberate or fixed defense, which is often seen as cost prohibitive and unrealistic given the character of modern war.
Within that broader framework, the Russian navy’s missions consist primarily, but not exclusively, of destroying an adversary’s strategic conventional platforms at sea (carriers, surface action groups, guided missile submarines), providing long range strikes against an opponent’s critically important objects on land, and ensuring the survivability of Russia’s sea based nuclear deterrent. Securing a retaliatory strike capability ensures that the Russian military can inflict unacceptable levels of damage upon any opponent. An important subset of Russian naval tasks can be accurately interpreted in Western parlance as seeking to establish sea control, and sea denial, but these merit further elaboration and exploration.
The Russian navy broadly divides the maritime domain into four types of zones, the coastal, near sea, and far sea zone, beyond which lies the world ocean. These are not strict divisions, but they are coherent ways of thinking about the missions and tasks that pertain to each zone, the types of ships that predominate in these operating spaces, their general characteristics, and the operations expected of them. The coastal defense zone lies within a few hundred kilometers of the Russian coast, encompassing its exclusive economic zone. The near sea zone stretches out to seas that are 600-1000km from the coast and closest naval support locations. The far sea zone expands further towards the 1000-2000km range, and the blue water beyond generally comprises the Russian idea of a world ocean, i.e. distant oceanic theaters where the Russian navy seeks to maintain presence or conduct naval diplomacy.
Sea control in the near sea zone
The Russian navy endeavors to establish sea control in the coastal, and near sea zone. Here it pursues local superiority, and the ability to use the maritime domain for its purposes, whether economic or military. Coastal waters are covered by land based coastal defense systems, aircraft, and smaller patrol vessels whose job is to defend naval bases or inland waterways. In the context of the Western Arctic, the near sea zone includes much of the Barents Sea and eastern portions of the Norwegian Sea. This is a space dominated by corvettes, missile boats, anti-submarine vessels of various types, and minesweepers. They are supported by coastal facilities, able to target and engage vessels within much of what constitutes the near sea zone, and thereby assist in establishing sea control.
Russian ships slated to operate in the near sea zone can deploy further out, but are typically limited in endurance, or the types of sea states that they can handle. In general, they are not intended for prolonged operations at substantial distances from the coast or naval support bases. Missions in this space prioritize anti-submarine warfare, counter-mine warfare, air defense, and defending against saboteur groups (counter-SOF). The near sea zone also features relatively close protected maritime regions, which in the West have been nicknamed ‘bastions.’ These are the main patrol areas for Russian ballistic missile submarines, and it would be a priority for the Russian navy to deny access to these areas to an opponent’s surface or subsurface forces.
The theory is clear, but the practice is far from simple. The Russian navy faces significant problems in meeting its mission requirements in the near sea zone. Both capacity and technical capability are essential to make sure Russian ballistic missile submarines can safely deploy and patrol the aforementioned bastions. Yet the vast Soviet navy intended to defend these areas melted away decades ago, along with its land based anti-ship aviation component. The current surface combatant and submarine force is arguably insufficient to defend these areas. Furthermore, Russian anti-submarine warfare capability on legacy Soviet craft or aircraft is doubtfully up to the task. Meanwhile the capacity for counter-mine warfare is not much better, despite investments in a new line of minesweepers, major deficits remain.
Russia’s ability to target surface combatants at sea within the ranges circumscribed by this zone is quite good, given much of it is within range of land based over the horizon radar, maritime patrol aviation, and other means. Integration of land based aerospace forces, the navy, and ground force air defense, can also help deflect an incoming aerospace attack, which is one of the missions required of the navy in the near sea zone. This is especially so in the initial period of war, as ships are expected to sally forth under incoming missile attack against their basing facilities. Therefore, this space can be tackled with a layered defense approach, integrating sea based and land based assets. Russia also has a robust arsenal of sea mines, perhaps more than any country in the world. Nonetheless, it is doubtful that the current capabilities are sufficient to protect ballistic missile submarines and other high value assets which will either operate in this space.
These strikes can be conducted from Russian territory, or near Russian waters, and therefore do not require physically displacing the conflict onto the opponent’s territory with ground offensives
Sea denial in the far sea zone
In the far sea zone, the Russian navy pursues a damage limitation strategy whose goal is to deny use of the sea to a specific set of adversary capabilities. The prioritization is tackling platforms with strategic conventional capabilities, namely long-range land attack cruise missiles, and naval aviation capable of delivering similar types of weapons. This is impossible to execute close to Russian waters, because of the extended strike ranges of said systems, and the technical limitations of missile defense. To be clear, this is not a new phenomenon. Rote positional defense has not been a viable approach for decades given the range of naval aviation, and the advent of sea based land attack missiles.
Land based strike capabilities cannot target that far out, or bring to bear their anti-ship missiles upon vessels in the far sea zone. Therefore, rather than defense, the Russian approach towards denial of the use of this space requires sallying forth and attritioning an opponent’s forces before they are able to conduct their strikes, thereby limiting the damage inflicted. The goal is to defend Russian critically important objects from a sea-based vector of attack. In the Arctic context, the far sea zone stretches from the Norwegian Sea to Iceland, or what is often known as the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, but not beyond it.
This area also includes more distant reaches of the Arctic Ocean, from which a transpolar aerospace attack may come, employing long range cruise missiles. This is the primary reason why Russia is building a string of forward bases with radars, air defense, and tactical aviation. It is a screening picket line, designed to detect, and possibly engage, a transpolar aerospace attack. The Russian military is also concerned with sea-based missile defense, which is viewed as a conventional strategic defensive capability that they expect opponents to deploy in the far sea zone, especially the Arctic, and would therefore seek to prioritize such vessels in targeting.
Operations in the far sea zone are chiefly allocated to what the Russian navy considers to be its first and second rank ships. These are principally nuclear-powered submarines, destroyers, cruisers or larger frigate types, supported by a second rank of diesel-electric submarines, light frigates, and heavy corvettes. These vessels generally have the endurance necessary, and seaworthiness required of operating in the far sea zone. However, they face equally significant challenges in the means available for the forms of warfare required. Engagement in the far sea zone requires the ability to target enemy forces at extended range, and to attack them first, ideally with the element of surprise.
Yet the Russian navy is poorly equipped in terms of maritime patrol aviation, and has a weak supporting remote sensing layer, i.e. space based targeting, to enable combat operations in the far sea zone
Yet the Russian navy is poorly equipped in terms of maritime patrol aviation, and has a weak supporting remote sensing layer, i.e. space based targeting, to enable combat operations in this zone. This of course is a work in progress in the Russian military, but given the current superiority of Western intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, together with cooperative engagement tactics and procedures, there is no delusion in Russian naval circles about the challenges they face in executing this mission. While the Russian roster of offensive strike capabilities may seem impressive, fighting at extended ranges is about reliably finding and fixing the target, dealing with decoys, and a contested electronic warfare environment. The Russian navy nonetheless remains a deterrent force in being, by its sheer presence, it may deter an opponent’s forces from deploying closer to the Russian border and thereby substantially reduce the range of targets that could be attacked in the Russian homeland. Thus, the effect may be outsized relative to the functionality of the capability on hand.
However, sea denial is not a sweeping interdiction mission. The focus of the Russian navy is not interdicting sea lines of communication, and historically had not been so. Interdiction was a tertiary mission in the Soviet Navy in the event of a prolonged conventional conflict. Denial and control are interpretive terms most useful when looking at the maritime domain, and oceanic theaters of military action. They are not broader concepts in use by the Russian military, or useful terms for understanding Russian military strategy writ large. The overuse of the terms ‘area denial and anti-access’ has generated false impressions; chief among them is a depiction of Russian military strategy as though Russia is a maritime power seeking to deny access to the theater akin to China in the case of Taiwan.
More importantly, the Russian navy has higher order priorities. It is tasked with bringing its own land attack capabilities to bear, targeting critical infrastructure of military or economic significance on land in the theater of military operations. These capabilities, consisting of new generations of missiles, and vertical launch tubes, continue to proliferate across the Russian navy. Consequently, it is increasingly able to contribute to strategic operations that employ single, grouped, or mass strikes against an opponent’s infrastructure with conventional weapons. Similarly, the Russian navy retains a substantial arsenal of Russia non-strategic nuclear weapons, and can employ them in selective fashion for the purpose of escalation management, or on a larger scale for theater nuclear warfighting.
Critical infrastructure on land can include high value military objects, such as command and control, logistics, and bases where strategic conventional capabilities are based. This is doubly so for locations which house capabilities that might enable U.S. forces to execute an aerospace attack, bases that host strike assets with long range precision guided weapons, or other capabilities that might threaten Russia’s strategic nuclear forces. The Russian approach is best characterized as disorganization, targeting command and control, and destruction of critical objects that would prove important nodes for sustaining the military effort. Permanent or semi-permanent objects, those that require hours to displace, are logically lucrative targets. That said, the Russian arsenal of conventional strike capabilities is believed to be rather limited which suggests that in practice plans will call for high levels of selectivity.
The Russian navy may appear a green water force, but the programmatic goal is to build ‘balanced’ fleets which feature vessels able to tackle the mission sets of both the near sea and far sea zones. The important consideration is not tonnage, but the missions these ships can execute, and the effects they can attain in support of strategic offensive and defensive operations. Handicapped by the limitations of its shipbuilding industry, the Russian navy has been slow to transform itself, focusing first on the coastal and near sea zone, along with the strategic deterrence mission. Unsurprisingly, the Russian navy prioritized fielding effective long range strike capabilities to contribute to core strategic operations as devised by the General Staff. This is not the desired end state, but an intermediate point in Russian naval development, as the force seeks to fix deficits in capability, and position itself to successfully execute the requisite missions and tasks in both the near sea and far sea zones.
