"The Russian Navy is making enormous efforts to undermine the supremacy of the US NAVY." At 24 years after the last dossier carried out by US Navy intelligence, a new document was drafted and made public.
"The clear intention of the Russian leadership to continue in a rapid and increasingly aggressive rearmament emerges".
The dossier consists of 68 pages, many of which are illustrated. It was written by top US naval intelligence expert George Fedoroff. He is considered one of the few analysts in the world to have continued to study the involution of the Soviet navy and the evolution of the Russian one. Unlike what time and resources have invested in analyzing the alleged or real capabilities of Iran and North Korea, Fedoroff has never lost sight of the Kremlin's naval asset. Perseverance returned useful to the Pentagon 24 years later.
"Over the next decade, Russia will make great strides forward to deploy a Navy capable of defending the country with an impressive power, limited only by the boundless extension of its borders. Even the areas of global interest remain distant from the main Russian principals. Despite this, the Russian fleet of the 21 century will be one of the most modern on the planet and managed by a new generation of professional soldiers ".
L'Office of Naval Intelligence he stopped publishing his annual report in the 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. From that moment, the US became convinced that Moscow would never be able to revive the entire naval asset. A concept in some ways consistent with the economic disaster that sanctioned the end of the Cold War, but that was upset by the arrival of Putin who started the reconstruction of the entire fleet. The lightning invasion of the Crimean peninsula, in the early months of the 2014, has probably confirmed the return of the Russian Navy. That incident prompted the Pentagon to invest analysts and resources in drafting the report on the Kremlin's new capabilities.
"Since the 2000, thanks to a stable government, the economy of the country has stabilized. There has been a focused and financed effort to revitalize the Russian Navy. Many of the programs suspended due to lack of funds have been resumed. Others new conception have been financed and some of them have already put underwater and surface platforms in the sea ".
"In the 2000 the Russians had a handful of ships capable of fighting. The Kremlin, today, has at sea 186 platforms (between warships and submarines) operating from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, from the Caspian to the Mediterranean to the Arctic ”.
Comparing the last report with the one published in the 90 years, the Pentagon finds itself with a Navy totally different from the ruined one described after the Fall of the Soviet Union.
"The Russian Navy is the third most powerful force in the world after China, in second place, and to the United States, still able to deploy 280 war platforms and over 100 support vessels."
Separate chapter in the dossier of the secret services of the Navy is the reached missile capacity of the Russians, demonstrated with the double launch of the systems Kalibr from the Caspian Sea and from the Mediterranean to Syria.
"Only the United States, before those launches, had demonstrated the capacity cruise from the sea".
Cruise missiles represent a country's fundamental ability to adopt certain strategies in particular contexts.
"The Kalibr also provides significant offensive capabilities to small-sized platforms such as corvettes and the ability to attack land-based targets with conventional warheads. The proliferation of this capacity within the new Russian system is profoundly changing the strategy of discouraging, threatening or destroying the enemy ".
Irony of fate. The last US NAVY Intelligence report concluded with a small step: "The Soviet Union is developing new and powerful intelligent munitions called Kalibr. If it entered service, that system would give enormous strategic capabilities to the Kremlin, now only reached by our Navy ". The 18 last November the "Rostov-on-Don" submarine (photo), launched the entire rescue of cruise missiles "Kalibr 3M54" loaded against enemy targets near the Syrian city of Raqqa. The "Rostov-on-don" has actually entered the history of the Russian Navy for being the first submarine to launch cruise missiles against real enemy targets.
(photo: MoD Russian Federation)
