Asym. Use Of Maritime Forces

While considerable attention has been paid to how unwanted Russian actions in the maritime domain can be deterred, less has been paid to the maritime contribution to deterrence more broadly defined. The authors argue that this is a gap in the literature that needs to be filled, since the maritime domain remains an area of overwhelming Allied advantage. The function of this paper is to contribute to discussions of how actions at sea can translate into strategic effects on land in the context of the European theatre.

NATO’s application of maritime power can better translate into strategic effects with three subtle changes: firstly, through the creation of an environment that forces Russia to expend resources on capabilities needed to deny the open ocean to NATO navies; secondly, the employment of maritime forces can serve as a war termination tool by increasing the costs of a protracted conflict in tandem with ground forces, which deny short-term gains; and finally, because many of the platforms which Russia employs for sub-strategic nuclear use are either maritime or, like strategic bombers, can be impacted from the sea with conventional capabilities, a maritime threat to the bulk of Russia’s sub-strategic launch capability can considerably alter perceptions of a favourable strategic balance.

This paper outlines a strategy for how Allied maritime power could be employed to create costly capability requirements for Russia, in order to offset the country’s competitive edge in other domains. The paper’s key findings are:

• Russia views the maritime domain as critical to the strategic balance – in other words, the capacity to both strike an adversary’s homeland and deflect strikes on Russia itself. Its view of the role of its navy is one that de-emphasises purely naval functions such as seizing sea control.

• The capabilities that Russia needs to perform both functions are among those which it will find most difficult to generate.

• By investing in maritime capabilities such as long-range precision strike and operating at a higher tempo on Russia’s extended periphery, the members of NATO can impose opportunity costs on Russia’s military. Investments in deflecting Allied maritime power will prove unavoidable for Russia, and will divert critical resources from its recapitalisation of other joint capabilities.

NATO should, however, recognise its own shortfalls, including the subset of challenges related to military capacity. Firstly, capabilities needed to compete effectively with the Russian Federation in the medium term will be required in a 10-year timeframe, which is shorter than procurement times for most major programmes. The second likely concern is a lack of platforms to hold strike assets, and this also needs to be mitigated. In addition, different approaches to anti-submarine warfare could expand the threat envelope for opponents and mitigate the Alliance’s own potential shortfalls in this area.

Crucially, the question in each instance will be whether the capabilities developed will impose more costs than those required to develop them in the first place. It is conceivable that even marginal investments in the areas described will impose disproportionately costly adaptations on Russia.

The sources informing this paper included desk research on Allied and Russian capabilities, as well as an examination of Russian military literature to identify areas where Russian authors perceive their nation to be vulnerable in the maritime domain.

Introduction

The question of how Allied maritime power should be employed against a continental rival spurred considerable debate during the Cold War. Some saw the maritime preponderance of the Alliance as an asymmetrical advantage which might be used to offset Soviet advantages on the ground. Others, by contrast, emphasised the centrality of deterrence through denial against the Red Army, which remained the sword arm of Soviet power (as Russian ground forces remain to this day), and contended that the primary function of maritime power should be to contain Russian threats to sea lines of communication at chokepoints such as the Greenland–Iceland–UK (GIUK) Gap.

Today, the Russian challenge bears certain similarities with, though is not identical to, that posed by the USSR. Russia remains primarily a land power with a more limited capacity for power projection at sea. This having been said, the Russian navy, officially known as the Military Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoi Flot, or VMF), does play an important role in Russia’s overarching approach to competition and conflict. In competition, the VMF is expected to support limited power projection, as it did in Syria through the provision of logistical lift and long-range precision strikes. As competition escalates, the VMF plays three core roles:

• Limiting the threat to the Russian homeland and in particular its defence industry, command and control (C2) nodes and nuclear-capable platforms. The VMF is expected to achieve this both through an active effort to disrupt threats from the maritime direction at reach and with a layered defence close to Russian shores.

• Conducting long-range conventional strikes against the territory of hostile states.

• Maintaining a portion of Russia’s tactical and strategic nuclear throw-weight

In effect, the Russian state views the sea as critical to shaping the strategic balance within which general purpose forces are used. Rather than naval combat per se, the purpose of Russian sea power is to ensure that the Russian state can compete and engage in conflict safely and effectively. To be sure, this is by no means the only function of Russian sea power, but it is central and has been demonstrated in the use of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine. In Ukraine, the key contributions of the Black Sea Fleet – long-range Kalibr strikes and an ongoing blockade – are not central to Russia’s goal of destroying the Ukrainian army (though strikes can contribute to missions such as interdiction). What the fleet has contributed, however, is a level of economic damage that will shape both Ukraine’s capacity to confront Russia in the long term and its post-war stability. With its deployment in the Mediterranean before the war, the fleet was likely intended to act in a deterrent role vis-à-vis NATO by serving both as a tripwire and a symbol. In effect, its role has been not to secure sea control, but to provide strategic shaping for land forces.

In the context of both the new Strategic Concept and the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area framework, how should Allied maritime power best reinforce the goals set out for NATO, which focus on reinforcing the Alliance’s capacity for territorial defence within Europe and the more broadly defined growing competition with Russia? The assertion of this paper is that the focus can, in principle, be on committing Russia to an unsustainable posture in the maritime domain that detracts from its more lethal land aspirations. The Alliance has avenues through which, by exacerbating pervasive Russian fears regarding threats in the maritime domain, it can both reinforce general deterrence and force the VMF to adapt in ways that impose opportunity costs on it in other areas.

A core function of Allied maritime power, though by no means an exclusive one, can be its use as a means of shaping Russian perceptions of the strategic balance, as opposed to the military balance. (The latter might be understood as the ability to impact targets of critical national significance at depth, as distinct from fielded forces.) Specifically, by shaping Russian leaders’ perceptions of the relative risks involved in escalation, as well as the conditions under which war termination would occur, maritime power can complement an overarching strategic focus on both competition and deterrence by denial. Rather than contributing directly to denial, the function of maritime power would be indirect – by forcing Russia to commit to its own defences in the maritime domain, it would divert critical Russian resources to tasks that the Alliance deems less threatening. Furthermore, in a crisis or a conflict, this would complement deterrence by denial. Denial has the primary role of preventing an opponent from achieving an outcome rapidly and, while important, in a conflict this merely sets the conditions for war termination to be achieved by other means. Failing this, an opponent that is initially frustrated can double down on its objectives, particularly if it perceives there to be avenues by which it can win through exhaustion. A case in point would be Russia’s ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where, upon being frustrated in its initial approach, Russia shifted to a strategy of attrition.

The approach outlined above is comparable to the Allied maritime strategies adopted in the late 1980s, in terms of their strategic logic of identifying and playing on existing Russian fears, and their emphasis on maritime power as a tool of war termination. However, a different set of tools can be employed operationally to obviate some of the challenges inherent in replicating this strategy today, among them the difficulty of operating forward in defended bastions, particularly with current submarine numbers, and the escalatory risks of doing so. At the operational level, Allied maritime power will be most effective if it is capable of delivering effects at reach and if it can complicate some of the challenges that Russia faces with respect to engaging dynamic targets. This is distinct from the maritime strategy of the 1980s, which envisioned operating as closely as possible to defended Russian bastions.

In effect, a core function of Allied maritime power ought not to be deterrence by denial but the diversion of Russian capability and the cultivation of a favourable strategic balance. Though this can serve the overarching goal of general deterrence, it is distinct from deterrence understood as the use of specific threats or instruments to dissuade specific actions. The authors argue that this framing can usefully act as a baseline through which the employment of Allied capabilities in theatres such as the High North can be contextualised, as well as a means of better understanding the interrelationships between the individual regions which collectively form the maritime periphery of European NATO.

Throughout this paper, the authors utilise a combination of methods to validate their argument, which includes an analysis of Russian military journals to ascertain where Russian officers perceive themselves to be facing capability gaps, as well as research into the capabilities that Russia and the Alliance currently field.

The Enduring Russian Threat

Although Russia will, in all likelihood, pose a limited conventional threat to the Alliance for up to a decade, due both to its losses and to its ongoing commitments in Ukraine, this could change once the country has reconstituted its land forces.

In 2023, it was reported that the Russian state would allocate 40% of its federal budget to defence, and the Russian regime intended to increase the size of its army by 400,000 recruits. While it remains to be seen whether the Russian state is capable of sustaining an increased rate of military expenditure over the medium to long term, it should be noted that there is limited historical evidence for the argument that it cannot do so. States facing considerable economic pressures have nonetheless maintained levels of spending that, proportionately speaking, match Russia’s: Iran, for example, maintained a defence budget which represented 4–5% of its GDP over the course of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Indeed, even during the 1990s, Russia itself typically spent at least 3% of its GDP on defence for most of the decade. It is therefore plausible that Russia will maintain its current levels of military expenditure, representing around 5% of its GDP, in the face of economic circumstances which, though negative and characterised by sluggish forecasted growth, are not nearly as bad as those of the 1990s, with the country’s GDP falling by 45% between 1989 and 1998. For Europe, this creates the challenge of deterring a competitor which, though it remains plagued by qualitative inefficiencies, can generate and replace forces at a scale which European nations will presently struggle to match – a challenge which will become more acute as the US has to allocate an ever-growing proportion of its resources to competition with a peer competitor in the Indo-Pacific.

The emergence of a larger, if less sophisticated, Russian threat on the ground could coincide with a greater emphasis on the use of nuclear brinkmanship as a tool of statecraft. While there has been no explicit shift in Russian nuclear policy, statements both by figures within the regime, such as Nikolai Patrushev, and by academics, such as Sergei Karaganov, suggest that this is at least being debated. Certainly, there is precedent for this – Russia’s 2000 nuclear doctrine for example, conceived of a large set of scenarios to which nuclear weapons could be relevant. Moreover, as the US grapples with extended nuclear deterrence against two nuclear peers by 2030, the nuclear balance underpinning existing Western deterrence will have shifted.

It is thus not inconceivable (though admittedly not certain) that in a decade, Russia will pose a renewed conventional threat backed by an arsenal that is sufficiently large and diversified to be able to provide it with flexible nuclear options that the Alliance lacks. Alternatively, Russia might opt for a strategic posture not unlike that which nations such as North Korea and Pakistan opted for in the face of conventional overmatch: combining aggressive sub-threshold competition with the use of nuclear weapons as a backstop against escalation to a conventional war that Russia cannot win. Russia might base a future force posture around sub-kiloton nuclear weapons which are less likely to trigger a strategic nuclear exchange if used. In this eventuality, Russia could combine brinkmanship within Europe and destabilisation on NATO’s southern flank to pressure the continent.

The reconstitution of NATO’s own forces to meet the requirements of both deterrence and competition within this context will be shaped by relative uncertainty about the contours of Russia’s own trajectory. This paper, supported by the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, seeks to answer a subordinate strategic question – what should the role be of the Alliance’s navies in strategic competition with Russia? The answer to this question will shape the contours of how both the Royal Navy and navies within NATO will evolve in the face of what could well be a long-term Russian threat.

The authors propose that, irrespective of its trajectory, Russia is likely to rely on its assets in the maritime domain for two things:

• Shaping the strategic balance, defined in Russian thinking as the relative throw-weight in both conventional and nuclear terms that two nations or alliances can deliver against each other’s homelands. In Russian parlance strategic forces are treated as distinct from general purpose (military) forces, though some capabilities, like ballistic missiles, can play both roles.

• Holding adversary maritime platforms capable of carrying long-range strike capabilities at reach.

In some ways, this mirrors Cold War thinking about the maritime domain as being integrally intertwined with the nuclear balance. In the post-Cold War era, however, Russian leaders (including President Putin) have evinced a belief that many tasks which were previously only achievable with nuclear weapons can now be achieved with conventional precision-strike assets. Since long-range theatre-level strike assets (and kinetic defences against them) are easiest to move on large vessels, they remain a largely (though not exclusively) maritime capability in both Russia and the West.

A considerable body of literature exists to suggest that perceptions of the strategic balance influence coercive dynamics across the spectrum of competition. Moreover, to the extent that many of Russia’s most viable pathways to generating a credible future force structure rest on a favourable strategic balance, a threat to this would at a minimum require adaptation by Russia. Since many of the plausible adaptations for which Russia could opt are inherently capital intensive, this will impose resource trade-offs on Russian planners.

In view of this, the authors contend that one of the primary vectors through which naval forces can deliver competitive overmatch regarding Russia is by fielding long-range land attack capabilities against which Russia will have to field additional defences. If this is combined with multiple launch vectors, the cost and expense of defence will undercut Russia’s potential future force designs and compel it to implement a series of force design choices that are counterproductive.

In many ways, what this paper is proposing is that the navies of NATO play a role in a modern variant of flexible response. Part of the solution to the Alliance’s deterrence requirements will be recapitalising the ground forces that represent a key pillar of deterrence on the Alliance’s eastern flank. The defence plans of nations such as Poland, which include the purchase of both the Korean K239 Chunmoo multiple-launch rocket system and the US-made M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, stand out as a case in point. However, it is worth noting that the success of such plans will be contingent on the maintenance of stores of munitions and spares, as well as the ability of Alliance members to crew equipment. Maintaining the political capital to deliver equipment to forces on a sustained basis is a challenge within democracies, even in the face of acute threats.

Maritime forces can play three important roles in this context. First, in peacetime, their employment can impose a requirement on Russia to expend resources on capabilities needed to deny the open ocean to NATO navies. This is viewed as a pressing requirement for the VMF and Russian aerospace forces, but one for which they have limited resources. Secondly, the employment of maritime forces can serve as a war termination tool by increasing the risks attendant on a protracted conflict in tandem with ground forces, which deny short-term gains. Finally, because many of the platforms which Russia employs for both strategic and sub-strategic nuclear use are either maritime or, like strategic bombers, can be impacted from the sea with conventional capabilities, a maritime threat to the bulk of Russia’s sub-strategic launch capability could considerably alter perceptions of a favourable strategic balance.

Notably, this does not represent the full spectrum of functions which maritime power can play – the roles of navies can encompass a range of tasks, such as containing rival navies and providing armies with strategic mobility. This paper is more narrowly focused on those areas where maritime power can be applied asymmetrically as an offset to an opponent’s potential advantages in other areas, and as a tool for generating competitive advantages.

The main hypothesis of this paper is that in order to impose an asymmetry of cost on Russia, as well as to reinforce deterrence, Allied maritime power should not be framed in terms of deterrence by denial. Rather, its role should be viewed in terms of the strategic functions of pre-war shaping and war termination in the event that deterrence fails. Central to this will be two things: the ability to strike inland at reach; and the capacity to exacerbate Russia’s challenges with respect to generating ISR, and operating and contesting in the maritime domain beyond its coastal defensive zones. Underpinning the proposed approach to the employment of Allied maritime power is a focus on adversary concerns, rather than an effort to match capabilities. This is drawn from the tradition of competitive strategies innovated by figures such as Andrew Marshall at the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment in the 1970s. This paper discusses how Allied planning for the use of maritime power in the context of European deterrence can be placed within the context of a competitive strategies framework. This is distinct from threat-based planning insofar as it takes as its starting point the assumption that adversary investments can be shaped rather than merely countered. Secondly, given its long-term focus, a perspective based on competitive strategies emphasises exploiting asymmetry, exacerbating bottlenecks in an opponent’s capabilities rather than overmatching specific military threats directly.

The paper is composed of four chapters, each of which will build towards a broad set of proposed lines of action for NATO navies. Chapter I focuses on Russia’s views of the primary threats that it faces from the maritime domain, and the opportunities that might emerge from a closer integration of these fears into Allied and national planning. Chapter II focuses on naval dynamics on NATO’s northern flank as a case study. Chapters III and IV examine the emerging opportunities for Allied planning in this area and the practical impediments – in both capability and policy terms – to the adoption of a “competitive strategies” approach to the application of Allied maritime power in competition with Russia, as well as the ways in which these might be overcome.

The authors reviewed a combination of sources, including Russian military literature and academic analysis of the maritime balance between NATO and Russia, as part of their research for this paper. In addition, one of the authors has direct experience of operating in two different navies within the Alliance.

I. Russian Threats and Allied Opportunities

While Russia views itself as possessing some opportunities within the maritime domain, Russian strategists tend to frame it as a threat vector. This is relatively understandable given the country’s traditional weaknesses in this domain. Broadly speaking, Russian literature evinces several potential concerns within the maritime domain:

• The use of the maritime domain as a launch vector for adversary long-range precision fires against the Russian homeland.

• Efforts by rivals to challenge Russia’s ability to exploit its resource base within the maritime domain, particularly in the High North and Arctic.

• Threats to Russia’s second-strike strategic nuclear capability.

The first concern can be nested within a broader set of Russian concerns regarding the risk of a precision-strike campaign against the Russian homeland conducted on multiple axes. The fear that Russia could effectively be paralysed by Western long-range precision strike capabilities emerged partially as the result of a specific reading of the conflicts of the 1990s. A key lesson of the first Gulf War and the Balkan Wars derived by figures such as the then Soviet deputy chief of general staff of the armed forces, General Makhmut Gareev, and the deputy commander of the Soviet Navy, Admiral Ivan Kapitanets, was the notion that precision strike made it possible to paralyse a state’s capacity to mount an effective military response by simultaneously targeting the depth of an opponent’s territory. Though not an exclusively naval function, it has been assumed by several Russian strategists that naval platforms will represent a crucial launch vector for the long-range precision strike threat. This is a reasonable assumption, as the size of missiles such as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) makes launching them from platforms other than naval more complex (though not impossible).

Certain maritime platforms also have a second advantage which is of particular concern to Russian military writers: their capacity to launch strikes at close range, which would leave Russia with limited early warning. This specific threat is of course particular to certain types of launch platforms such as SSN and SSGN submarines, which can, in principle, remain undetected and strike from positions close to Russian shores at short notice. The present Russian concern regarding air and missile threats mirrors those voiced during the Soviet era, when genuine concerns about being subjected to a nuclear first strike were compounded by inter-organisational dynamics. A combination of factors contributed to this, among them the strategic culture, which created pervasive fears of surprise attack, and organisational dynamics within the USSR that saw organisations such as the Soviet Air Defence Forces competing for resources, which they could do more effectively when they could make the case that an external threat justified their needs.

Contemporary Russian thinking about an aerospace assault is somewhat broader and assumes simultaneous strikes against C2 nodes, critical infrastructure airfields and nuclear assets. Russian theorists presume that the launch of missiles moving at different speeds, such as UAV decoys and cruise missiles, can be sequenced to provide a coordinated time on top or convergent effect. This is certainly technically achievable – Russia has coordinated the use of Shahed-136 loitering munitions and Kalibr cruise missiles in this way, and Iran combined cruise missiles and UAVs in its 2019 strikes on Abqaiq and Khurais.

Unsurprisingly, then, priorities such as air defence have featured heavily in recent Russian procurement. For example, under the state armament programme for 2020, the Russian Federation was expected to procure 56 S-400 division sets, which, at a cost of $200 million per battery, would be comparable to a carrier programme. Moreover, Russia has placed an ever-greater emphasis on building and fielding the precision strike capabilities needed to conduct offensive counter-air missions against targets such as airbases. This has been combined with efforts to recapitalise Russia’s capacity for airborne situational awareness in areas such as the High North. In addition to deploying assets such as the MiG-31BM to the region, Russia maintains at least three S-300 and S-400 regiments under its Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command, along with the Murmansk-BN electronic warfare complex and a growing radar network in areas such as Kotelny (see Figure 1).

▲ Figure 1: Russia’s Radar Coverage in the High North. Source: Sidharth Kaushal et al., The Balance of Power Between Russia and NATO in the Arctic and High North, RUSI Whitehall Paper 100 (Milton Park: Taylor & Francis, 2022), p. 74.

The second major Russian concern which emerges primarily from the maritime domain is the fear that Russia’s SSBN bastions can be penetrated. This was an especially pressing consideration for the Soviet Union during the late Cold War, and drove considerable investments in securing the USSR’s bastions in the High North. Today, factors such as the melting of polar ice caps that will allow greater access to the area will exacerbate this concern, as the growth in merchant traffic is likely to mask any increased military presence, making it more difficult for Russia to produce its recognised maritime picture and deter would-be ingressors into its historical bastions. This issue has been noted by, among others, Admiral Nikolai Yemenov, commander-in-chief of the VMF.

The ability of Russia to maintain situational awareness in the undersea domain represents another bottleneck in capacity and capability. Much of the responsibility for the task of maintaining sub-surface domain awareness falls to the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research (Glavnoye Upravlenie Glubokovodnikh Issledovanii, or GUGI). This organisation has historically depended on a highly specialised cadre of hydronauts for its operations, drawn from the ranks of the VMF via the 29th Separate Submarine brigade. It also relies on several special purpose submarines, such as the deep-diving submarine Losharik, which is launched from the Belgorod, a specially adapted stretched Oscar-class submarine. Under the leadership of Vice-Admiral Aleksei Burilichev, the GUGI took on several additional tasks, including the testing of the Poseidon nuclear torpedo. On the one hand, this represented a budgetary advantage, but it simultaneously represented a cost in terms of both submariners’ time and the use of its platforms. Currently, the organisation likely faces more tasks than its platforms and personnel can manage, with its duties including undersea surveillance, the management of Harmony (Russia’s analogue to the US Integrated Undersea Surveillance System), and more offensive functions such as espionage. This strain on availability of platforms was further compounded by a 2019 fire on the Losharik. Russia’s current emphasis on less survivable but also less costly platforms, such as the intelligence ship Yantar, and the search for autonomous solutions, may reflect these challenges. These approaches could bear fruit, but capabilities such as autonomous underwater vehicles are likely to demand investments in areas such as high-end microelectronics, which Russia can only procure at cost and at some sanctions risk to vendors.

Finally, there is the risk of a distant blockade of the Russian Federation’s maritime lines of communication, which will be exacerbated by the use of “grey” shipping that can be legally interdicted in peacetime for lack of adequate insurance or flag verification, among other things. Russia is in some ways especially vulnerable to blockade. Its trade-to-GDP ratio is currently higher than that of most Western nations, and the majority of this trade is carried by sea. Though land-based infrastructure and transhipment through neutral ports can mitigate this vulnerability to an extent, it can do so only inefficiently and, moreover, at a cost in both money and material. For example, a proposed North–South Corridor moving Russian goods to the Indian Ocean via Iran would both be a high-risk investment (which is why it must be state-backed) and involve goods passing through volatile regions and states such as Azerbaijan, with which both Russia and Iran have a fraught relationship. Some Russian authors have voiced concerns that the Russian state’s increasing reliance on grey shipping will create vulnerabilities to peacetime interdiction. In a conflict scenario, much of Russia’s energy exports, among other things, will depend on sea lines of communication.

Because of the need to meet requirements such as protecting bastions and sea lines of communication, as well as contributing to objectives such as offensive counter-air missions, the VMF has secured a sizeable proportion of Russia’s defence budget over the last decades: it received a 26% allocation under the last state armament plan, as compared to 14% for ground forces. Despite this fiscal allocation, the ability of Russia’s ageing maritime sector to meet the demands placed on it is in question. The recent budget announcement that more than a third of Russia’s total budget expenditure in 2024 will go to defence will not ease this, as the main emphasis of this increase is focused on the delivery of victory in Ukraine, meaning that predominantly the land environment and the Army will benefit.

The Trade-Offs Facing Russia

Some challenges are easier for Russia to mitigate than others. While Russia can achieve sea denial and a degree of sea control in its coastal seas, contesting freedom of action out to 1,000 km and beyond will be difficult and costly for a country that must also rebuild its forces on land. For example, Russia has struggled to build its Pion and Lotos satellite constellations and thus has limited situational awareness at reach.

The issue for Russia is twofold. First, as previously noted, platform development in the maritime domain is inherently capital intensive, and this is especially true for those platforms that are needed to contest more distant waters. While it is difficult to ascertain the costs of platforms such as the Ilyushin Il-38 aircraft or the Yasen-class submarine with a high degree of certainty (though public figures do exist for the Yasen), proxy indicators can be utilised. For example, during the Cold War the CIA used a methodology which focused on the relative costs of platforms, rather than on their absolute costs. Essentially, the relative production cost of two different systems was established using Western analogues. Though imperfect, the assumption underpinning this mode of comparison was that while the absolute costs of two different platforms might vary across states, the relative costs were more stable and dependant on physical characteristics such as tonnage and power density (for vessels) or factors such as weight and speed (for aircraft), and because factors such as labour costs that might impact absolute costs would not impact relative costs. Using this rubric, the costs of the platforms needed for Russia to contest areas beyond its immediate close seas are prohibitive. For example, a Yasen-class submarine should cost roughly as much as the armour organic to a force such as the First Guards Tank Army.

A second factor worth considering is how much a given system depends on foreign inputs, including machine tooling and microelectronics. In this case, there is likely to be a direct correlation between the reach of a platform or effector and its dependence on imports. Effectors such as long-range missiles depend on Western inputs to achieve precision at reach. Similarly, the larger the platform, the more it is likely to require in terms of resources such as machine tooling, much of which is imported. Estimating sophistication is a relatively imprecise art, though more is now known about the degree to which certain effectors (in particular missiles) rely on Western capabilities. One proxy, borrowed from civilian economics, is to use the average GDP of countries that produce a given product as a barometer of its sophistication and thus its reliance on high-tech imports if the country producing the product falls below the average. The percentage of industrial capacity in areas where Russia has external dependencies on which a given area of military spending draws is another measure which can be employed. By these metrics, capabilities such as SSNs, strategic bombers, long-range strike capabilities and air defence systems are all likely to be demanding in terms of external inputs.

Maintenance costs are another area of interest. During the Cold War it was presumed (correctly) that the poor quality of Soviet aircraft maintenance meant that the through-life costs of Soviet aircraft would exceed those of their Western counterparts in absolute terms, even if their capital costs did not. This is more likely to be true the more sophisticated the platform, thus impacting naval and air platforms in particular.

Finally, we might consider personnel. More sophisticated platforms tend to draw on skilled personnel, both for manufacture and subsequent manning. To the extent that skilled and educated personnel represent a capability bottleneck which will be exacerbated by emigration, platforms drawing on such individuals will compete with other elements of the force that require skilled personnel. This could include, for example, operators for air defences and C2 systems such as Akatsia-M. Of course, defence could outcompete other sectors for remaining skilled personnel, but only at the cost of creating distortions elsewhere. While Russia has embraced the integration of autonomous and uncrewed systems into all aspects of warfare throughout its operations in Ukraine, it retains a lack of trust towards machines and full autonomy. It continues to fund research into AI but, again, it is not a world leader in this field and therefore lags behind the West in these areas which could potentially solve some of the crewing issues faced by militaries around the globe.

Overall, Russia has shown a great deal of sensitivity to the maritime domain as a threat vector, and its leadership has displayed a willingness to expend considerable resources on attempting to secure the nation’s maritime flanks. However, this represents an opportunity cost for the rest of the Russian military in several ways. First, maritime platforms are inherently capital intensive and require inputs in precisely those areas where Russia has considerable weaknesses. Moreover, maintaining capabilities such as air defences sufficient to close off Russia’s maritime approaches requires Russia to strip them from other tasks.

Even with this level of expenditure, significant challenges remain for Russia. One Russian analyst has suggested that the Russian armed forces had a third of the resources needed to secure the country’s maritime approaches, while considerable debates have taken place within Russia regarding the need for power projection platforms. Furthermore, gaps remain in Russia’s air and sea denial capabilities in areas such as the High North.

II. Case Study: Naval Dynamics on NATO’s Northern Flank

The Russian position in the High North is a useful case study. While Russia has invested considerable effort in reinforcing its military position in the region, it nonetheless faces certain critical gaps in capability that could prove to be enduring. If Russia were to invest in resolving these challenges, it would necessarily have to do so at the expense of other parts of its force structure.

Though not identical to its Soviet predecessor, the VMF’s conception of its role, including in this region, is similar. A primary wartime function of the Soviet fleet was the defence of SSBNs in their bastions, because the leadership of the USSR perceived the balance of nuclear power at the end of a conflict to be a critical determinant of bargaining power at the point of conflict termination. The assumptions underpinning this concept remain for Russia today. To this end, the Soviets organised their fleet for the defence of three zones: a coastal defence zone within 200 km of Russia’s shores; a near seas zone within 1,000 km; and a far seas zone up to 2,000 km from Russia. At a minimum, Russian forces should be able to dominate the coastal defence zone and achieve sea denial in the near seas and far seas zones. Russian strategists do not, however, perceive their role in purely reactive terms – one way in which Soviet SSNs were to contribute to shaping war termination dynamics was by actively hunting adversary SSBNs. Today, Russia views the balances which will determine the circumstances of war termination as including adversary conventional long-range precision strike capabilities, given the increased lethality of the latter against command nodes, logistical facilities and nuclear assets themselves. As such, at a minimum it will be a standing requirement for Russian naval forces in the High North and Arctic both to prevent platforms capable of holding long-range strike capabilities from entering into the Arctic, including denial of access to the oceans directly abutting it (from where long-range strike capabilities can be launched with limited warning), and to eliminate adversary platforms on the open oceans where possible. The ability of Russia’s forces to achieve this, however, may be constrained.

The first area in which Russia will face considerable capability gaps in the High North is anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Though Russia’s Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command maintains a sizeable force of both conventional and nuclear attack submarines, its capacity for defensive ASW is somewhat more constrained. Russia’s fleet of 44 Ilyushin Il-38N and Tupolev Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft, though not small by any standard, is split between the Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command and the Pacific Fleet. Moreover, it is considerably more limited than the maritime patrol aircraft force that Russian planners intended to have at their disposal – the VMF had aspired to field 30 Il-38Ns by 2020, in addition to its fleet of Tu-142s. Factors such as readiness must be taken into account, and there are certain trends which will compound the problems posed by the lack of airborne surveillance.

Secondly, the Russian surface fleet’s capacity to support ASW is also becoming increasingly constrained. The Udaloy II-class destroyer – the backbone of the Soviet Navy’s and then the VMF’s surface ASW capabilities – is likely reaching the point of obsolescence. While new surface platforms such as the Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate can provide a newer and more capable replacement, Russia’s production of the Gorshkov class has faced considerable delays, driven by both the limitations of Russia’s indigenous shipbuilding base and its loss of access to gas turbine engines (which it procured from Ukraine) after 2014. Compounding this are considerable overruns in the repair and refit of existing vessels such as the Kirov-class cruiser Admiral Nakhimov. Russia can continue to build vessels such as the Gorshkov-class frigates, but it will face capacity constraints. To cite one example, the Russian effort to develop combined diesel and gas engines to replace Ukrainian imports has delivered eventual success, but Russia is restricted to the production of two such engines a year, and even this rate of production may prove difficult to sustain. A major bottleneck will be capacity at Russian shipyards, which are currently running at capacity. Compounding this is the need for import substitution: the Kolomna D49 diesel engine which forms part of the M55R power unit includes several imported components that will be increasingly difficult for Russia to procure in the face of export controls. Given that the engines on naval vessels are subject to a wear rate when they are at sea, spare part restrictions can also impact the operational tempo of existing vessels. Sanctions evasion is of course possible, but this imposes additional fiscal costs on already expensive programmes. Finally, wider challenges faced by Russian civilian shipbuilding mean that civilian and military projects may, to an extent, compete for the same resources, particularly with respect to personnel.

Thirdly, the airbases upon which Russian assets rely – assets such as the Tu-22M3 bomber and the Il-38N, which are crucial to denying access to surface vessels and submarines respectively – are vulnerable to air attack, as was recently demonstrated in the Ukrainian attacks on the Engels airbase. The size of the fixed-wing aircraft being deployed from these bases makes the use of hardened air shelters or dispersion impractical. While some security can be provided using airbases deeper within Russia, this comes at a cost in terms of presence and endurance (and many of these airbases can be threatened from other vectors). Russia can mitigate these challenges, but only through the employment of a robust regional air defence network. It currently maintains such a network in the form of three S-300 and S-400 regiments under OSK Sever. In addition to this, the Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command maintains an electronic warfare centre at Severomorsk, which controls electronic warfare complexes such as the Murmansk-BN and the Krasukha-4.

There are several ways in which this picture can become considerably more complex for Russia. First, the changing climate in the High North might considerably expand the areas which the VMF must survey and thus deny to adversary assets. In particular, changes that make seasonal circumpolar navigation easier for subsurface assets will complicate the task of ASW in the High North and Arctic. Similar changes will also make ingress by submarines into the Arctic from the east possible to a degree that was not previously viable, both by Russian adversaries (NATO) and, potentially in the future, by China, which will complicate the water space further for Russia. Moreover, detecting submarines in the region will be complicated by factors such as the increase in temperature of the Arctic Ocean and changes in salinity that will affect sound channels, greater ambient oceanic noise due to increases in oceanic wildlife, open-ocean storms (where there used to be ice), and increases in the movement of sea ice as the ice cap breaks up.

A second risk to Russia’s conceived approach to oceanic defence is posed by the increasing range of strike assets. For example, the common hypersonic glide body intended for use by the US Army and Navy has a 4,000 km range, which would allow it to have an effect over much of western Russia from the Norwegian Sea. Moreover, strike platforms such as hypersonics and land attack cruise missiles, which exist at the high end of the cost continuum, are joined by considerably cheaper long-range strike assets. As an example, consider one-way attack UAVs, such as the Iranian-made Shahed-136, which have a theoretical range of 2,000 km. While limited in terms of sensors and payload, such munitions can be of use against soft targets such as administrative buildings, or targets which are inherently incendiary such as fuel or munitions stocks. At least one recent Russian study has noted that the munitions expenditure involved in engaging UAVs as well as the detection challenges they pose represent serious air defence challenges. The challenge of range for the VMF is that it forces the VMF to sortie out to engage platforms which can pose a threat from well beyond Russia’s bastions, and thus places a higher premium on Tier 1 platforms that can operate on open oceans.

A third risk facing Russia is that of the changing strategic geography of the northern flank spurred by NATO’s enlargement. First, this will spur a convergence between regions such as the Baltic and the High North. This challenge is inextricable from that of range. A sufficiently long-ranged strike munition such as the TLAM could impact many of the same regions from either the Norwegian Sea or the Baltic Sea, but the proximity to Russia of the latter region relative to the former means that strikes from within the Baltic Sea could occur with limited warning times, while missiles fired from further afield could arrive as a follow-on capability. This creates multiple avenues for convergent strikes from multiple vectors. Though Russia can more easily deny parts of the Baltic Sea with ground-based missiles in Kaliningrad, this is less true of the littorals of nations such as Sweden. Much of Russia’s capacity for denial depends on closing the straits of Denmark, which will prove difficult if NATO vessels are posturing in a crisis short of war, especially when a number of NATO members are on the other side of the straits. Secondly, the proximity of NATO’s northern flank to Russian strategic bastions means that strike capabilities which might have been classed as tactical can have a strategic effect. An ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missile in Finland, for example, has strategic ramifications, as does an aircraft which might have been viewed as a tactical capability. If contending purely with ground-based assets, this might actually incentivise Russia to pre-empt before platforms can be dispersed. A maritime dimension to deterrence can remove this incentive by introducing strike assets which cannot be as easily pre-empted.

Finally, there is the risk that the Alliance can enforce a distant blockade on the Russian Federation, which must still move energy from areas such as the Arctic through chokepoints in both the east (in the form of the Bering Strait) and the west (through the GIUK Gap). Overland alternatives do exist, but their capacity is likely to be considerably constrained. Moreover, most overland methods of circumventing a blockade, such as pipelines or routes to alternative terminals, are resource-intensive endeavours.

To be sure, Russia can mitigate each of these challenges. It is not yet clear that NATO has the capacity to present the Russian leadership with the challenges that its maritime doctrine is partially based around mitigating. However, it is the authors’ contention that the Alliance has avenues through which to adapt its maritime posture in a 10-year timeframe in order to present Russia with an asymmetrical offset to the advantages that it may enjoy on land in terms of both mass and proximity to likely theatres. Moreover, the development of these avenues can force Russia into disproportionately costly mitigations, which will impose opportunity costs elsewhere.

III. Emerging Opportunities for Allied Planning

The challenge that Russia faces in the maritime domain can be summarised as follows. In order to be strategically secure enough to pursue a full spectrum of competitive actions including escalation to local and regional conflict, Russia must deny the maritime domain out to 1,000 km. All of the platforms and enablers that might allow Russia to achieve this are, by their nature, inherently complex. The surveillance and reconnaissance needed to cue conventional missiles at reach have thus far not been developed by Russia, while aerial and maritime platforms operating at long distances do so at considerable risk. As such, to the extent that the Alliance can expand the area over which Russia must achieve sea denial in order to protect itself against long-range strikes, it can shape the contours of Russian force regeneration. It can achieve this primarily in two ways:

• By expanding its long-range land attack capability.

• By operating on new vectors that Russia has not historically had to defend.

First, the assets of Alliance members can be postured in ways that incentivise Russian responses at reach. For example, exercises at or just beyond the Russian near seas zone focused specifically on strike, comparable to exercises such as Formidable Shield (which focuses on Integrated Air and Missile Defence), would in all likelihood compel responses. We might, for example, consider the relationship between NATO’s Trident Juncture and the scale of Russia’s Ocean Shield exercises, which consistently track one another. This is an asymmetrical challenge for Russia, which is operating fewer and older hulls, but it would also compel Russian leaders to plan in terms of their existing fears regarding strikes from the northern vector.

Given that Russia views this challenge in multi-theatre terms, sequencing exercises by NATO and those conducted by member states such as the US in the Indo-Pacific could act as a forcing function to compel even larger-scale responses by Russia. This was the case during the Cold War, when the Soviet Navy felt compelled to stage multi-theatre exercises, such as Okean, to demonstrate its ability to operate across theatres. The cost of such activity in both human terms and platform wear can have an indirect effect on Russia’s ability to project power elsewhere, especially in a context where recent state armament plans have prioritised surface vessels with limited endurance, and given the age and reliability issues facing many larger platforms.

There are other ways for the Alliance to increase the strain on Russian forces that are constrained by both vessel age and human capital. For example, forward activity by Allied SSNs, particularly on transpolar routes, would create an imperative to maintain more persistent surveillance over a considerably wider area. Russian efforts to maintain situational awareness in these areas would be non-discretionary, both because of the importance of these zones for patrolling SSBNs and because Russia’s air defences over the central Arctic are relatively sparse, underscoring the risk of key air defence radar being suppressed by submarine-launched cruise missiles to open the way for other platforms.

Lastly, sea control at key chokepoints could be underscored through exercises which emphasise interdiction for other reasons. For example, exercises framed in terms of the need to interdict threats to critical infrastructure or to counter illicit activity would, if conducted at or near strategic chokepoints, have an implicit effect in terms of messaging. Unlike larger-scale exercises, which often take years to plan, such activity could be conducted on a more routine basis.

IV. Practical Impediments to a “Competitive Strategies” Approach and Ways to Overcome Them

There are several challenges inherent in an approach that is designed to compete in the way described above. Among them are potential risks to strategic stability and the positions of different NATO Alliance members with regard to a forward-leaning maritime posture.

The first risk, that strategic stability could be upended if Russia perceives a risk to its own critical capabilities, is one that political leaders across the Alliance would understandably wish to avoid. There are several ways in which this risk might manifest itself. First, a Russia that perceived risks to its C2 (including its nuclear C2), second strike or other critical capabilities might well have incentives to escalate early in a crisis. Secondly, the nature of certain elements of a competitive strategy, such as the forward posturing of subsurface assets, could lead to challenges such as the loss of communications and thus control; this issue arose during the Cold War when American SSNs such as the Gato conducted operations near the Soviet coastline, an activity that carried inherent escalatory risk.

The first challenge, while real, can also be stabilising in certain respects. If, as a precondition for military action, Russia had to posture forces in a way that insured it against a crippling first strike, this would, in principle, limit its avenues for limited military action. Any escalation would need to be accompanied by a set of actions which in turn would make it difficult for the Russian leadership to communicate limited intent, and would thus only be justifiable in extremis. Moreover, it should be noted that the very proximity of NATO’s borders to Russia and the possibility of long-range strike being surged in a crisis creates a pre-emptive logic for Russia irrespective of maritime strategy. Indeed, the relative viability of suppressing targets such as aircraft on the ground, given the concentration of Allied aircraft in generally unhardened airbases, would incentivise this. The relative difficulty of pre-emptively suppressing maritime platforms with conventional capabilities except when in port would remove some incentives for conventional pre-emption which might exist against ground-based platforms.

Secondly, it is worth noting that the authors are not suggesting that in an escalating crisis, Western states should opt to engage in strikes against the Russian homeland on the scale that Russia fears. Rather, the proposition is that uncertainty regarding whether this might occur, if engendered in peacetime, can have a positive competitive effect. Perhaps most importantly, however, it is already the case that Russia appears intent on developing a range of capabilities, such as the Poseidon nuclear torpedo and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which are built to insure it against a crippling first strike. If this is indeed the case, then it is not obvious that instability is avoidable. Rather, what appears more likely to be shaped by Western policy is the degree to which Russia invests in such capabilities, rather than taking other avenues.

The second challenge – namely, Alliance cohesion – is considerable, especially in areas such as the High North, where some members of the Alliance are likely to be heavily invested in regional stability for entirely understandable reasons. It should be noted that this would not necessarily be the first instance in which debates over Allied posture have proved divisive; NATO’s shift to a flexible response posture and the later adoption of the Follow-on Forces Attack doctrine were also accompanied by controversy.

There are several avenues which might be pursued as mitigations. First, in the vein of NATO’s Harmel formula, deterrence can be combined with engagement, whereby reciprocal de-escalatory actions by Russia can be matched in kind. For example, the tempo of Allied SSN activity in the High North might be linked to Russian activity near Allied undersea cables. Linking activity with engagement can allay some Allied fears. Secondly, some of the capabilities described would impact the High North even if not postured in the region on a long-term basis. Maritime platforms hosting strike assets such as hypersonics, for example, can pose a theoretical threat from well beyond areas such as the Norwegian Sea. As such, they need not be persistently forward postured, and their intermittent presence need be viewed no differently from the occasional deployments of strategic bombers to the region. Since the mobility of air and maritime assets allows for relatively rapid posturing, the Russian leadership is likely to view the balance of precision strike capabilities as being determined by the number of missiles each side possesses, rather than those regionally postured. Thus, forward deployment in ways that pose a challenge to Alliance cohesion may in many instances be unnecessary. This would not be equally true of other activities, such as subsurface activity along the Northern Sea Route; however, such activity is likely to involve a limited subset of Allied navies in any instance.

A subset of challenges relates to military capacity. In many of the areas described, including long-range strike capabilities and subsurface assets, members of the Alliance will face their own considerable shortfalls in capacity. To use an example, the UK currently has a single launch vector for deep strikes inland from the maritime domain – namely the TLAM launched from the Astute-class submarine. This challenge will likely be compounded by the eventuality that a large proportion of the capabilities fielded by the US will be reallocated to the Indo-Pacific theatre to contend with an increasingly capable People’s Liberation Army Navy. The Alliance will also face shortfalls in other areas, such as submarines capable of operating under ice, and limitations to the human capital available across Allied navies.

It should be noted, however, that considering the present operating circumstances which Russia faces, it is likely that capabilities needed to compete effectively with the Russian Federation in the medium term will be needed in a 10-year timeframe and beyond. As such, Allied maritime capabilities can be viewed in the same vein as virtually any other category of capability, such as munitions – while present shortfalls in production capacity are real, there is a window in which they might be rectified.

A relatively quick way in which members of the Alliance could increase Russian uncertainty regarding the scale of the precision-strike threat is by experimenting with the use of air defence interceptors in a dual-capable role. This has already been the case with the SM-2 and SM-6 missiles, and while there are many technical reasons why interceptors may not be the best means of striking targets at reach, the fact that Russian planners already presume that they will play this role means that they will have to be factored into planning regarding the strike threat to soft-skinned targets.

The containerisation of subsonic munitions both by Russia and more recently by the US Marine Corps suggests that at least some strike assets could be emplaced on non-dedicated platforms in a crisis, or deployed ashore in an escalating crisis. This would also be the case for attritable one-way attack UAVs, which can be containerised in larger numbers. Though unlikely to pose a threat to hardened targets, such capabilities are regarded by Russia as posing a credible threat to targets such as airfields, on which strategic capabilities such as ASW aircraft and bombers are based.

Launch platforms for bespoke capabilities such as hypersonics are likely to pose more of a challenge, given the lengths of the strike cells needed. Presently, only the US Navy’s payload-module-equipped Virginia-class submarines could plausibly carry long-range hypersonic missiles, and any competitive approach in Europe will depend on the presence of at least some of these assets within European waters. This being said, there are relatively few targets that are either so heavily hardened or so fleeting that they demand the use of a hypersonic missile. In a 10-year timeframe, this could change, as European navies such as the Royal Navy seek to integrate hypersonics on future platforms such as the SSN(R). The fact that ground-based versions of naval hypersonics which fit within 40-foot container-sized launchers are also being developed holds out the option of deploying missiles ashore from amphibious shipping, rather than firing them from vessels. If concerns regarding emissions and heat can be mitigated, container-based hypersonics can also be integrated on non-bespoke platforms. As an example, we might consider how the Israeli Lora SRBM has been containerised and operated from a non-dedicated vessel.

Given that Russian defence planning is programmed on a 10-year basis, the choices that the Russian state makes for investments out to a 10-year time horizon are dependent on the force structures that it may expect to face. With respect to the missiles themselves, the primary barrier will be R&D costs, and there is some reason to believe that a model comparable to the F-35 – with manufacturing distributed, but intellectual property held by states that have moved ahead of the pack – should be the basis for work on hypersonics envisioned via the AUKUS (Australia, UK and US) defence partnership.

Forward SSN operations could prove much more challenging, given that most SSN fleets are unlikely to grow in the next decade, and the demand on the US Navy in the Indo-Pacific is likely to increase. Past the next decade, this challenge may be alleviated somewhat, but this is uncertain. Uncrewed solutions may offer an offset to limited hulls, and uncrewed capabilities have the potential to be used in similar roles, but with a different concept of employment to the standard SSNs of today. First, autonomous vessels can be used for forward surveillance, and have already been used in this capacity by states such as China. While this poses a risk of platforms being captured, it also allows for intelligence gathering without the escalatory risks that the use of crewed assets near hostile shores posed during the Cold War. Moreover, the task of tracking subsurface contacts, whether crewed or not, would be one that imposes burdens on Russian ASW assets.

Beyond this, uncrewed capabilities can be used for tasks such as forward minelaying, and as active sonar emitters in forward positions, which can enable passive detection by more valuable crewed platforms. This is important since one of the reasons that SSNs need other platforms to perform wide area searches is that they cannot afford to emit themselves. Rather than operating in an anti-SSBN role, NATO’s SSNs could act as a forward perimeter. This could impose dilemmas on Russia when viewed in conjunction with the imperative that long-range strike creates for Russian SSNs to sortie beyond their bastions: if strike creates imperatives for SSNs and SSGNs to be utilised in risk-acceptant ways, mines and uncrewed capabilities teamed with smaller numbers of crewed platforms will be able to ambush them in forward positions. The resultant dilemma is one that Russian planners will not easily contend with in a crisis. On the other hand, the complexities of communicating underwater make the direct control of uncrewed underwater vehicles as armed complements to crewed submarines difficult.

Crucially, however, the question in each instance will be whether the capabilities developed can impose more costs than those required to develop them in the first place. In this, the Alliance will have the advantage of knowing that Russia will have to develop mitigations premised on a worst-case scenario. As illustrated by Russian literature that consistently overemphasises the scale at which the Alliance can generate long-range strikes, and by both Russian and Soviet responses to prior changes in Alliance posture, it is conceivable that even marginal investments in the areas described will impose disproportionately costly adaptations on Russia.

Conclusion

NATO’s reactive application of maritime power does not currently translate into strategic effects, but with three subtle changes it could. Firstly, it could do so through the creation of an environment that forces Russia to expend resources on capabilities needed to deny the open ocean to NATO navies; secondly, the employment of maritime forces can serve as a war termination tool by increasing the costs of a protracted conflict in tandem with ground forces, which deny short-term gains; and finally, because many of the platforms which Russia uses for sub-strategic nuclear use are either maritime or, like strategic bombers, can be impacted from the sea with conventional capabilities, a maritime threat to the bulk of Russia’s sub-strategic launch capability can considerably alter perceptions of a favourable strategic balance.

Maritime power has historically been an asymmetrical advantage for the Alliance vis-à-vis Russia, and it can continue to play this role. Russia’s concepts for defending its maritime periphery commit it to a posture which can only be sustained by platforms that are capital intensive – precisely the type of capability that Russia is least well-situated to generate. By investing in capabilities in areas such as long-range strike, the Alliance can exacerbate the challenges which Russia faces. This, in turn, means that the way Allied maritime power is conceived should be a function of what can be delivered ashore from the sea (which is what Russian leaders primarily worry about), rather than seizing sea control per se.

Russia has several concerns about the use of maritime that could be exploited by NATO. Firstly, there is the threat to Russia’s second-strike capability. Russia views the use of the maritime domain as a launch vector for adversary long-range precision fires into the heart of the Russian homeland, including critical national infrastructure, airbases and strategic strike capabilities. It has therefore sought to improve surface-to-air missile coverage and situational awareness through increased radar sites across the High North in an effort to detect and deter potential aggression from this vector. Secondly, Russia’s traditional concerns regarding the safety of its second strike may be exacerbated by the impact of climate change. Thirdly, Russia fears the risk of a distant blockade of the Russian Federation’s maritime lines of communication, not only in the Baring Strait/GIUK Gap but also in the Baltic, the Black Sea and into the Pacific. Overland import/export routes are costly and rely on good relationships with neighbouring nations, something that cannot be guaranteed, and therefore lacks potential investors. This is further exacerbated by the use of grey shipping, which has ways of being legally interdicted in peacetime. Without steady access to engines and spares, Russia’s ability to maintain its fleets and maritime squadrons will be significantly called into question, leaving the maritime areas open to further exploitation.

These concerns can be exploited by NATO to create strategic advantages. The Alliance can use a threat to shift the strategic balance in its favour in several ways:

• By shaping Russian leaders’ pre-conflict assessments of their ability (or lack thereof) to control a conflict.

• By shifting the allocation of scarce resources towards costly mitigations such as air defences and platforms capable of contesting distant seas.

• By setting the conditions for war termination if deterrence fails and initial denial is achieved on the ground.

The fear of Allied maritime power has historically provoked counter-reactions by Russia. As a lack of response would imply a weakening in Russia’s stance internally, a response to any NATO action is typically thought necessary. These counter-reactions are financially costly and increase the strain on Russian forces, which are constrained by both vessel age and human capital. The cost of such activity in both human terms and platform wear can have an indirect effect on Russia’s ability to project power elsewhere. The forward posturing of Allied subsurface assets and circumpolar transits represent two avenues through which this kind of outcome might be achieved.

NATO should, however, recognise its own shortfalls, including the subset of challenges related to military capacity. In many of the areas described, including long-range strike capabilities and subsurface assets, members of the Alliance will face their own considerable shortfalls in capacity. There are certain ways in which the Alliance can rationalise its approach to producing precision strike capabilities. The first might be an emphasis on commonality of capabilities – something already visible in initiatives to increase the Alliance’s capacity in areas such as air defence. Allied efforts to co-produce existing effectors rather than develop multiple independent types could yield considerable efficiencies; the emphasis of AUKUS Pillar 2 on fielding hypersonics could serve as the first step for a wider Allied effort in this regard. The Alliance will also face shortfalls in other areas that will necessitate the preparation of their navies to operate on a warfighting basis against a well-defined threat. Capabilities needed to compete effectively with the Russian Federation in the medium term will need to be fielded in a 10-year timeframe and beyond.

The second likely concern – a lack of platforms to hold strike assets – could be mitigated in several ways, including through the containerisation of subsonic munitions.

Thirdly, different approaches to ASW could expand the threat envelope for opponents. Though hardly a panacea, uncrewed solutions such as uncrewed underwater vehicles can be used for tasks such as emplacing mines in forward positions within bastions, as well as for forward surveillance. A combination of the machine learning tools that make low-frequency active sonar (previously too riddled with false positives to be used as a tactical asset) a viable means of detection at reach could allow a combination of distant platforms used for detection to cue in more attritable ones in their final approach, without the requirement to risk SSNs forward.

In each instance, the key consideration will be whether capabilities developed can impose more costs than those required to develop them in the first place, which should be the key determinant of Allied policy in the maritime domain.

Sidharth Kaushal is the Research Fellow of Sea Power in RUSI. His research covers the impact of technology on maritime doctrine in the 21st century and the role of sea power in a state’s grand strategy. Sidharth holds a doctorate in International Relations from the London School of Economics, where his research examined the ways in which strategic culture shapes the contours of a nation’s grand strategy.

René Balletta is the inaugural First Sea Lord’s Visiting Fellow at RUSI. He is a career Warfare Officer and has spent the majority of his 32 years in the service at sea in a variety of surface platforms that include frigates, destroyers, amphibious assault ships, aircraft carriers and the Royal Yacht. He has been involved in maritime operations across the globe from the NATO-led naval blockade off the Former-Yugoslavia in 1993, through to anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa in 1996; from support operations to land forces in Afghanistan in 2003, through to sitting on the gunline off Libya in 2011. He holds an MA in International Relations from the Sorbonne and an MSc in Strategy, Leadership and Management from the French War College in Paris, and in 2020 he was elected as the Hudson Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. His research interests include national resilience, sanctions enforcement, maritime security, Franco-British relations and defence themes in the Indo-Pacific.