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Russian navy's regeneration plans Comments by Email

A recent deal under which Russia will buy four Mistral naval ships from France is an important
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demonstration that Moscow is getting serious about building a modern navy. The first two landing
helicopter docks (LHDs) will be constructed in France and, in a significant boost to the Russian Strategic Comments
shipbuilding industry, the other two will be built under licence in Russia. Agreed on 25 January, the deal Homepage
will mark the first time that a Western country has transferred any major weapons platform to Russia since Editor:
the end of the Second World War. However, it remains unclear whether it will kick-start a new phase of Alexander Nicoll
modernisation, and whether the large-scale reform envisaged in Russia’s State Programme of Armaments Assistant Editor:
2011–2020 can be realised. Jessica Delaney
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Boost to Russian industry
Recent Strategic
The agreement has wide-ranging implications for industry, for foreign aspirations to participate in the Comments
Russian market, for military capabilities and for Russia’s longer-term modernisation plans.
The OSCE's uncertain
future
It will have a considerable impact on Russia's currently stagnant shipbuilding industry. The purchase of the
Mistral in effect represents an admission that the industry lacks the technical expertise and capacity to Stuxnet: targeting
build such complex ships. In February, Chief of the General Staff General Nikolay Makarov admitted that it Iran's nuclear
would have taken Russian yards at least a decade to build a similar ship. However, they will play a programme
significant role in the Mistral deal. The first two ships will be built at the St Nazaire shipyard of STX Europe, China's J-20: future
a subsidiary of a Korean shipbuilder which has acquired several European commercial shipyards. It will rival for air dominance?
execute the contract jointly with DCNS, the majority state-owned French naval shipbuilder. But a significant WikiLeaks: the price of
portion of the components will be manufactured in Russia: 20% for the first and 40% for the second. The sharing data
remaining two ships will be built at a specially constructed shipyard on St Petersburg's Kotlin Island by
North Korea's uranium
state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation, with 80% of the manufacturing being of Russian origin. programme heightens
Though the cost is not known, estimates suggest a price of approximately €400 million to €600m ($550m– concern
$820m) per boat. According to RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency, the first two ships will cost Russia a
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total of €1.37 billion ($1.9bn).
Map: Russia's
This is the first time that Russia's armed forces have permitted serious foreign involvement in an otherwise military districts and
closed tendering system under which orders were previously guaranteed to be given to domestic fleet HQs
contractors. In light of the Mistral deal, foreign participation seems likely in future modernisation efforts.
The signature on 9 February of an agreement that will see Germany's Rheinmetall Defence build and
equip a troop-training centre in Russia was further evidence of Moscow's increased openness to foreign
competition in defence procurement. The Ministry of Defence has also confirmed that it will go ahead with
a joint enterprise with Italy's Iveco to manufacture Lynx armoured vehicles in Russia.

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The injection of expertise and technology from France will aid a shipbuilding industry that has been held
back by yards that are unable to fulfil domestic and international orders. Only four new surface combatants IISS Voices - End in
were launched between 2000 and 2010, all frigates and corvettes. Meanwhile, the Admiral Gorshkov sight for KC-X aircraft
contract, which involves the refitting and conversion of a Kiev-class aircraft carrier from a short take-off and saga?
vertical landing deck to a short take-off but arrested-recovery version for India, has suffered many
problems. A $1.5bn deal was originally signed in 2004 and delivery was scheduled for 2008. However, the
project was delayed as the scale of the conversion became apparent, and a new $2.3bn deal was signed
in 2010 for delivery to India in December 2012.

Enhanced amphibious capability

By Douglas Barrie,
The procurement of four LHDs provides a much-needed fillip to Russia's maritime projection of air power.
Senior Fellow for
The only other aircraft carrier of any sort in the navy is the Admiral Kuznetsov, a fixed- and rotary-wing Military Aerospace
carrier that has been repeatedly laid up for repairs and seen little operational activity in its 20 years of
service. Russia has not operated any pure helicopter carriers since the Moskva-class ships were The United States Air
Force is hoping to
decommissioned in the early 1990s, although the subsequent Kiev-class and the Admiral Kuznetsov-class
finally bring down the
both mixed fixed-wing aircraft with helicopters. curtain on a long-
running drama by the
The new LHDs will allow Russia to deploy up to 16 helicopters on each ship, probably including a end of this month, as it
marinised variant of the Kamov Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopter. A Ka-52 was landed on the deck of prepares to announce
France's Mistral during a visit to St Petersburg in December 2009, in what now looks to have been a who gets the contract
prescient training exercise. Other assets that may be deployed on the Russian LHDs include anti- to replace its ageing
KC-135 tanker aircraft.
submarine warfare or transport helicopters such as the Ka-27 and Ka-29 Helix.
The last competition, in
2008, was a case of
winner takes nothing.
As well as helicopters, the Mistral can transport and land 60 armoured vehicles with 450 troops – US manufacturer
significantly more than the Ropucha- and Alligator-class landing ships in Russia's current fleet. The Mistral Boeing came second
will be the only vessel in active service with the Russian navy with a well deck. Currently, all vehicles in the two-horse race
with a Northrop
aboard Russia's amphibious vessels are loaded and unloaded via stern or bow doors, meaning the ship
Grumman/EADS team
has to approach within metres of the shoreline and expose itself to enemy fire. A well deck, on the other and promptly appealed
hand, allows the disembarkation of troops and vehicles aboard smaller landing craft from over the horizon, the decision; this was
minimising the ship's vulnerability to missile strikes. It also allows for amphibious landings on more difficult upheld, leading to the
terrain, as the vessels that must approach the shoreline are much smaller. latest competitive
round. Read More
Deployments subject to international scrutiny __________________
Given this significant improvement in Russia's amphibious capability, the Mistral deal has raised concerns
Military Balance
among Russia's neighbours on the Black and Baltic Seas that the LHDs could be used in a conflict against
2011
them. During the 2008 war with Georgia, Russia's Black Sea Fleet was able to blockade Poti and launch
an amphibious landing in Abkhazia involving several hundred naval infantry soldiers.

Washington is similarly concerned about the deal. In a November 2009 State Department cable published
via the WikiLeaks website, United States Ambassador to Georgia John R. Bass noted a request from the
Georgian foreign minister 'that the US push back against this sale'. According to another leaked cable, US
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates 'raised US concerns over the sale of a Mistral class helicopter carrier
to Russia' in a meeting with his French counterpart in Paris in February 2010.

But in a likely bid to assuage international concerns and particularly those of its neighbours, Moscow has
indicated that it will deploy the first two Mistrals to the Northern and Pacific Fleets (although some
conjecture remains on their destination). For the Northern Fleet vessel, the assignment suggests a focus The Military Balance is
on projecting Russia's maritime air power in the Arctic, adding greater muscularity to its diplomatic effortsthe International
Institute for Strategic
in the disputed region, and swift access to the Atlantic should it be required. In the Pacific Fleet, the Mistral
would not only add an aerial element to any operations but would also greatly expand the fleet's Studies’ annual
amphibious capabilities in a region that includes an unstable Korean Peninsula, a rapidly improving assessment of the
military capabilities and
Chinese navy and an ongoing dispute with Japan over the Kuril Islands. The Mistral could also have a role
defence economics of
to play in regional humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief operations. 170 countries
worldwide. It is an
It remains open to Russia to deploy the third and fourth LHDs to the Black and Baltic Sea Fleets. Their essential resource for
presence would facilitate swift deployments to crisis-hit regions, and would continue the legacy of the two those involved in
Moskva-class helicopter carriers that were deployed to the Black Sea in the 1970s and 1980s. Such a security policymaking,
decision would indicate the shifting priorities of Russia's navy compared to previous decades: all the Kiev- analysis and research.
class carriers were deployed with the Northern and Pacific Fleets, reflecting the perception of the US and
The 2011 edition of
NATO as the primary threat. the Military Balance
will be launched on 8
However, given the dominance of Russia's armed forces over Georgia's, a Mistral seems an unnecessarily March 2011.
large and capable ship for any bilateral conflict. And under a strict legal interpretation of the Montreux
Convention of 1936, the LHDs, as aircraft carriers, would not be able to enter or leave the Black Sea Order The Military
Balance 2011
through the Bosporus Strait. The Baltic would provide quicker access to the Atlantic, but the difference
would be marginal over the Northern Fleet and access would be through a narrow sea bordering several Order the 2011 Chart
NATO countries. of Conflict

Modernisation drive
Whatever the likely future usage of the LHDs, their purchase raises the possibility that Russia's navy may
finally be emerging from a 20-year period of decline and stagnation.

Naval modernisation is an issue that has been debated extensively, particularly since the ascension to
power of Vladimir Putin. Just over a year after his inauguration as President in 2000, Putin signed the
Maritime Doctrine of the Russian Federation until the Year 2020, which highlighted the navy's role in
securing territorial sovereignty and protecting Russia's resources. The doctrine outlined a regional rather
than a global role for the navy, but greater emphasis was placed on issues such as the Arctic, territorial
disputes and undersea resources, highlighting the roles the navy could play in Russia's foreign policy.

Subsequently, two state armaments programmes (Gosudarstvennaya Programma Vooruzheniya [GPV])

have been published, detailing the defence-procurement plans of the Russian armed forces. The most
recent, the GPV 2007–2015 adopted in November 2006, allocated R5 trillion ($188bn at November 2006
exchange rate) to defence procurement over the nine-year period, with the navy supposed to build 17
surface vessels and six submarines. Even though the navy is still largely composed of Cold War-era
vessels, the government’s aspirations remain undimmed. President Dmitry Medvedev stated in March
2010 that he wished to see an annual equipment-renewal rate across the armed forces of 9–11%,
compared with the current 2%, in order to modernise 70% of military equipment by 2020.
The next GPV, which will outline defence procurement until 2020, is nearing completion. General Makarov
claimed in February 2011 that R23trn ($784.5bn) would be allocated for purchases. This is a substantial
figure, but tallies with other estimates: in September 2010 Minister of Defence Anatoly Serdyukov claimed
that the GPV 2011–2020 would have a budget of R22trn ($751bn), with R19trn ($649bn) allocated to the
Ministry of Defence and R3trn ($102bn) to other ministries. Such figures make it clear that Moscow intends
to increase procurement expenditure significantly over the coming decade.

According to Mikhail Lukanin, a correspondent for Russian newspaper Trud, of the R19trn allocated to the
Ministry of Defence, R5trn ($171bn) would go to the navy. This would be used to purchase more than 30
submarines and 42 surface combatants, representing a substantial turnover in Russia's fleet – it currently
maintains 67 submarines and 103 combat vessels of corvette size or larger. The new vessels would
include eight ballistic-missile submarines, 22 attack submarines, 12 frigates, 20 corvettes and ten landing
ships.

Lukanin's list omits any mention of a fixed-wing aircraft carrier, or the refurbishment or purchase of any
cruisers or destroyers. This may be because great uncertainty exists over such programmes, particularly a
future aircraft carrier: a statement by Medvedev in October 2008 claimed that Russian-built carriers would
be commissioned from 2013, but the GPV 2007–15 failed to mention the possibility. No carrier, cruiser or
destroyer is currently being built (though a destroyer is reportedly at the design stage), suggesting that
greater attention will be paid to smaller combatants that would prove more useful in smaller conflicts,
regional contingencies and constabulary roles such as counter-piracy. This further entrenches the shift in
Russia's naval focus, from the possibility of conflict with the US and NATO to perceived threats in East
Asia and the country's near-abroad.

Prospects for renewal

But even under favourable economic circumstances, the procurement plans to be laid out in the GPV
2011–2020 remain ambitious. The programme is expected to call for the commissioning of between eight
and ten combat vessels per year, a very tall order for a navy the size of Russia's – especially taking into
account the outdated machine tools and legacy refurbishment projects constraining its shipbuilding
capacity, as well as corruption and politicking. Problems besetting programmes such as the Bulava
submarine-launched ballistic missile also indicate challenges ahead for the navy's rebirth.

Nevertheless, by avoiding grandiose projects and facilitating overseas purchases, the GPV 2011–2020
could mark the beginning of a process of modest renewal for the navy. With various hulls already in the
water but not yet commissioned, including Borey-class ballistic-missile submarines, Yasen-class nuclear-
attack submarines, Stereguschiy- and Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates, there is likely to be a steady flow of
new vessels for the Russian navy in coming years.

Volume 17, Comment 8 – February 2011

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The International Institute For Strategic Studies