Three U.S. Navy destroyers and one Royal Navy frigate are operating in the Barents Sea just off Russia’s northern coast.
This, NBC News mistakenly said, is “the first time U.S. warships have entered the area since the 1980s.” Stars and Stripes’s report gets it right, but its headline wrongly claimed, “U.S. Navy in Barents Sea for first time since 1980s, as Russian activities mount in the Arctic.”
See if you can deduct the critical word in the Navy’s announcement: “U.S. Navy surface ships have not operated in the Barents since the mid-1980’s.”
“Surface.” Because, while its surface warfare comrades may have not been in the Barents Sea since the Cold War, the Navy’s submarine crews most certainly have been there. And very regularly, at that.
Operating under Commander, Submarine Force Atlantic, these unseen crews have good reason to be under the Barents Sea’s frigid and roiling waters. After all, that sea is home to Russia’s Northern Fleet.
Headquartered out of Severomorsk, just north of Murmansk, the Northern Fleet is the linchpin of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategic forces. It is from here that the Northern Fleet deploys its attack and ballistic missile submarines into the Atlantic Ocean to hunt NATO ballistic missile submarines and hold NATO homelands at nuclear risk.
Guarding against that day they hope will never come, U.S. hunter-killer submarine crews wait just outside the Northern Fleet’s various ports. Their mission is to track Russia’s ballistic missile submarines from the moment they leave port to the moment they return home. Speaking to that undersea requirement, the Navy said that at least some of the surface flotilla’s crew participated in the U.K.’s excellent “Perisher” submarine command course last month.
Still, as in the Pacific, it is the undersea domain that matters most in the Barents. And success means U.S. submariners getting extraordinary close to places such as Sayda Bay and then trailing their quarry silently for months at a time. Theirs is a solemn task. If war comes, the order will be given to sink the Russian submarines before they can launch their nuclear weapons against America or our allies. Simultaneously, U.S. ballistic missile submarines must evade the Russian hunter-killer crews seeking to trail them.
Fortunately, as much as they respect their adversary, the U.S. Navy’s submarine force is the envy of the world in professional skill and technical capability.
Yet this surface deployment is as much about sending Russia a message as it is about developing Barents Sea operating proficiency. In the context of recent Russian escalations against U.S. forces in the Mediterranean Sea, this flotilla sends a visible eyeball-to-eyeball rebuke. It reminds the Northern Fleet that its threats to NATO’s Atlantic lines of communication do not go unmet. At least, that is, not unmet by the U.S. and the British, even if insufficiently met by the Germans, Italians, and Spanish (the French get a distinctly average rating here).
On that note, a normally reliable ally, the Norwegians, have sadly bent to Russian threats here. The Barents Observer reporterd that the Norwegian Navy did not enter the Barents alongside the U.S. and the British due to fears of inviting Russian anger. That’s exactly the wrong message to send to the Russians if you want to avoid their aggression.
Ultimately, then, this deployment and its long unseen partner deployments below the Barents is a prime example of why America remains NATO’s keystone. For all French President Emmanuel Macron’s rhetoric (and often unhelpful action), it is American power and resolve that underpins the democratic international order.
