The Coast Guard says that a Russian Navy spy ship, the Viktor Leonov, is operating in an “unsafe manner” in international waters off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts. But what’s the Viktor Leonov up to, and is it a threat?
To the latter question, the simple answer is no, this isn’t a threat. Although the Viktor Leonov is occasionally running without lights or radio communication with nearby vessels, the Coast Guard is warning civilian ships to steer clear of it. That should mitigate the risk of any collision.
The former question is harder to answer. Being a spy ship, the Viktor Leonov’s crew are trying to do their job without letting the United States know exactly how and against which targets they are doing it. And while the U.S. military probably has a good idea of what the Russians are up to, it’s not so easy for us to figure that out. So, here we must make some educated guesses.
Considering its location, one possibility is that the Viktor Leonov is monitoring the six U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarines based at the Kings Bay naval base in Georgia. The Russian spy ship’s position would give it at least feasible potential to monitor these nuclear missile submarines as they depart Kings Bay for their deterrent patrol sectors in the Atlantic and Arctic. And the Viktor Leonov would love to gain an acoustic signature analysis of the submarines, enabling the Russian navy to better detect and track them at sea. Remember, victory or defeat in prospective nuclear war rests on the ability to destroy the enemy’s nuclear launch platforms before they can get their payloads away. This is why U.S. Navy attack submarines perpetually track Chinese and Russian ballistic missile submarines and why the Viktor Leonov would want to figure out where, how, and with what signature U.S. ballistic submarines are operating.
Alternatively, the Viktor Leonov might be trying to intercept communications from a Navy space warfare and intelligence center located just outside of Charleston. The Russians are keenly engaged in space-related war fighting activities, so accessing any of these communications would be invaluable to them.
Or what if, as Bill Gertz observes, the Viktor Leonov is conducting surveillance of U.S. naval bases and the coastline to figure out how best to employ its Kanyon nuclear attack drone system? While the Kanyon’s primary launch platforms are submarines, Russia appears to have configured Kanyon for launch from surface vessels. Whether the Viktor Leonov is one of those vessels is not clear, but the Kanyon can also be lowered to the seafloor and launched from that position at an undetermined future point.
Yes, it’s not immediately clear what the Russians are up to here. But the Viktor Leonov is a frequent visitor to our shores and will return again in the future. We can handle it. Moreover, it’s not as if the U.S. military is idle in monitoring the Russians. The U.S. Navy is exceptionally bold in those efforts. It just tends to engage in them out of sight, below the waves.
