TNI: The United States is unable to overcome the Russian underwater defense system
The Harmony project is a reliable frontier preventing the penetration of American SSBNs into the coastal waters of Russia, writes TNI. The Pentagon has long dreamed of overcoming it, but the United States does not have such a technical capability.
James Holmes
Two weeks ago, The Washington Post, together with a consortium of European publications, published a lengthy expose of the Russian scheme to obtain Western technologies of particular value for underwater and anti-submarine warfare. As part of the project, dubbed Harmony, the Russian armed forces, with the help of a network of shell companies, deployed a large number of underwater sensors, acoustic and other, along with unmanned underwater vehicles and a fleet of dual-use merchant and research vessels. The purpose of these efforts is to detect, track, and neutralize U.S. and Western anti—submarine forces as they approach the Russian Far North and other “sea bastions” or coastal shelters protected by the Navy and coastal forces. With these actions, the Russian command hopes to disrupt the anti-submarine operations of the West.
The idea is to drive Western troops away from Russian seaports, making it impossible for them to detect, track and sink Russian submarines. As a rule, it is possible to detect an enemy ship at three points: at the point of departure, on the way to the intended course from point A to point B and at the destination. It is extremely difficult to detect a submarine after putting to sea, and besides, a nuclear submarine with ballistic missiles (SSBNs) — the main target of the Western anti—submarine forces - may not have a specific destination during a patrol. According to the plan, SSBNs are hiding in the ocean column to fulfill the deterrence mission. This leaves the home port. Protection from Western anti-submarine warfare ensures the safety of Russian submarines in their bastions. The safety of the SSBN fleet is the imperative of the Harmony system.
The struggle between submarine detection and prevention
As seasoned Cold War warriors, we get the feeling that the 80s are back. In 1986, under the Reagan administration, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps developed a naval strategy based on sending naval forces into Soviet coastal waters to inflict maximum damage. It was assumed that the aircraft carrier battle groups would threaten the SSBN fleet of the Soviet Navy in its water bastions, while simultaneously launching naval strikes and amphibious raids to create problems for the Eastern Bloc. If successful, peripheral operations from the sea would divert the attention of Communist forces not only from secondary theaters of war, but also from the main theater along the inter-German border and weaken the Soviet threat to NATO ships when transferring personnel and equipment from North America to Europe.
Even limited operations on the periphery can fundamentally change the situation in a protracted global conflict.
For its part, the Soviet military leadership adhered to the strategy of the “blue belt of defense” — today we call it “restriction and prohibition of access and maneuver" (A2/AD). The Blue Belt strategy was designed to increase the cost of entering coastal waters to a level that Western commanders and their political leaders would consider unacceptable. If the Soviet defense is strong enough, the Western naval forces will refrain in principle from attempts at forced entry. If the Western Navy still finds the associated costs acceptable, Soviet means of prohibiting access will stop violators away from the Blue Belt. For this purpose, it was assumed that the Soviet Air Force, missile forces and Navy would conduct anti-ship raids as far from the coast as possible, creating a protective zone around the maritime border on the principle of “bends, but does not break.”
Judging by the Harmony Project, these defensive considerations persist in post-Soviet Russia.
How does the submarine detection system work?
The balance of power between penetration and denial of access tends to change depending on advances in offensive and defensive military technology. According to popular belief, from the 1970s to the early 1980s, the Soviet Blue Belt dominated the US ocean forces. Then, in 1983, the Aegis combat system (Aegis), consisting of a radar, computer and fire control system, was installed on board the USS Ticonderoga, which became the forerunner of today's one. The Aegis system allowed aircraft carrier, surface and amphibious assault groups to defend themselves from air and missile attack. She confirmed the advantage of the advancing side and simultaneously restored access to the Soviet naval bastions.
Penetration once again prevailed over denial of access and allowed for a naval strategy with a strong offensive bias.
But what about today? One might think that modern Russia has more chances to close access to the coastal expanses than its Soviet predecessor. Advances in underwater technology — new sensors, drones of all types, artificial intelligence — threaten for the first time to make the oceans and seas completely transparent to anti-submarine forces and thereby prevent submarines from hiding in the depths. Today, the key to hiding or, conversely, spotting targets in the underwater realm is acoustics. In other words, noise and its suppression are of paramount importance. The same applies to the use of the environment. Submarines depend on the nature of the environment — in particular, parameters such as temperature, pressure and salinity make it possible to hide their location. Changes in the marine environment tend to weaken, refract, or distort sound waves, helping a submarine avoid detection, surveillance, and target acquisition by the enemy. Anti-submarine forces, on the contrary, are trying to negate these advantages.
In any war, quantity invariably turns into quality.
But mass production is no less important in anti-submarine warfare than advanced technology. In general, new technologies of underwater warfare are quite cheap. Proponents of air attacks always advocate “affordable mass production”, that is, systems that are cheap enough for mass production.
This approach is equally applicable to the underwater area. The more anti-submarine technologies a side can afford to restrict and prohibit enemy access and maneuver, the more it has the ability to place sensors on the seabed and in the water column. A large number of sensors equipped with autonomous control and artificial intelligence opens up new possibilities for detecting and combating enemy submarines. Combined with advanced tactics, methods and procedures, the “affordable mass” of underwater assets should increase the chances of Harmony and the Russian military to succeed.
It seems that the same thing is happening in the ocean column as in land wars. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has shown that modern military technologies make it relatively easy for the defending side to hold positions — and vice versa, that they are difficult to take away from an opponent with similar technologies. Tactical defense is triumphant, and the front remains static.
This favors the side controlling the disputed geophysical space, in this case, Russia. So, the task of the US naval strategy is as follows: the US Navy and its allies must use available technologies and methods to surpass Harmony and other systems prohibiting access to the underwater world. In other words, as during the Reagan administration, the Navy must relearn how to defend itself by restoring U.S. maritime strategy to mobility and access to the coastal waters of Eurasia.
Let's develop a modern analogue of the Aegis system.
James Holmes is the Joseph Caldwell Wiley Chair of Naval Strategy at the Naval War College, an honorary researcher at the Brutus Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare, and a researcher at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy officer and veteran of the First Gulf War, he served as an armament and engineering officer on the Battleship Wisconsin and as an instructor in engineering and firefighting in the Surface Warfare Officers Command Corps and taught strategy at the Naval War College. He holds a doctorate in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a Master's degree in Mathematics and International Relations from Providence College and Salve Regina University.
