U.S. Vice Admiral: East Coast Not Safe From Russians

A senior U.S. Navy officer says the Marines no longer consider the East Coast of the United States an “uncontested” area or an automatic “safe haven” for its ships and submarines.

This is because of steadily increasing Russian submarine activity in the Atlantic Ocean as well as the deployment of more advanced and quieter types of vessels that can better evade detection.

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Andrew “Woody” Lewis made these comments at a gathering at the U.S. Naval Institute and Center for Strategic and International Studies Think Tank hosted on 4 February 2020.

Lewis is the commander of the Navy’s 2nd fleet reactivated in 2018 specifically to address the surge in Russia’s submarine operations in the Atlantic.

This fleet reached full operational capability in December 2019.

“Our new reality is when our sailors toss the lines over and set sail, they can expect to be operating in a contested space once they leave Norfolk,” Lewis said.

“Our ships can no longer expect to operate in a safe haven on the East Coast or merely cross the Atlantic unhindered to operate in another location.”

“We have seen an ever-increasing number of Russian submarines deployed in the Atlantic, and these submarines are more capable than ever, deploying for longer periods of time, with more lethal weapons systems,” he continued. “Our sailors have the mindset that they are no longer uncontested and to expect to operate alongside our competitors each and every underway.”

A few years back a Russian sub trawled the East Coast undetected for about two weeks and the incident would have gone unreported had it not been for some anglers offshore who picked up its presence.

Lewis did not offer any specific details on the total number of Russian submarines the U.S. military believes are on patrol in the Atlantic at any given time compared to previous years.

There has been an uptick in Russian Strategic Patrols according to a 2009 report by The Federation of American Scientists from U.S. Naval Intelligence.

The information shows Russian missile submarine conducted ten patrols in 2008, compared with three in 2007 and five in 2006. In 2002, there were no patrols.

Another report, this time from the website hisutton.com claims Russian submarine activity has returned to cold war levels.

In October 2019, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK reported that the country’s top military intelligence agency, the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS), was monitoring the largest single Russian submarine exercise since the end of the Cold war.

It involved at least 10 submarines, eight of which were nuclear-powered types, including two nuclear-powered attack submarines from the Project 945A Kondor class, also known as the Sierra II class.

NRK’s report also said that they believed that the goal of the exercise was to demonstrate the Russian Navy’s continued ability to deploy a large number of submarines far into the Atlantic while remaining largely undetected.

This, in turn, showed the ability of that force, which might have included ballistic missile and guided-missile submarines, the latter of which may be able to carry Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles in the future, to hold targets on the East Coast of the United States at risk.

Though last year’s exercise was a particularly large demonstration of Russia’s submarine capabilities, it does appear to be indicative of the kind of increasing challenges the Navy is seeing in the Atlantic, as a whole. Despite limited defense budgets, the Kremlin continues to invest heavily in the development and fielding of newer and more advanced submarines that are better able to elude U.S., as well as NATO, forces.

One of the War Zone’s sources said that a large number of Navy submarines, ships, and maritime patrol aircraft spent weeks in the fall of 2019 attempting without success, to locate the Project 885 Yasen class guided missile submarine Severodvinsk after it reportedly deployed into the North Atlantic.

The U.S. Navy also announced in 2018 that it planned to eventually create a submarine “aggressor” unit that could help train ship and submarine crews, as well as those on maritime patrol aircraft, to respond to the growing submarine threat in the Atlantic, as well as that of Chinese submarines in the Pacific.

It could also help in the development of new tactics, techniques, and procedures for both submarine and anti-submarine warfare.

“We talk about how we fight,” Vice Admiral Lewis said. “We have to tie that to how we train, because we’re never going to be better than how we train.”

From his description of the situation in the North Atlantic, it sounds like Navy ships, submarines, and aircraft have increasing opportunities now to put that training to the test in what used to be routine transits just a decade ago.