Brandon J. Weichert
NATO’s recent madcap effort to track down a Russian submarine in the North Sea shows that the threat to America’s aircraft carriers is far greater than the Pentagon lets on.
Last week, NATO forces engaged in a massive submarine hunt off the coast of Norway—apparently one of the largest such hunts since the end of the Cold War. The search involved elements of the United States Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Norwegian Air Force (RoNAF) hunting down what the Barents Observer estimated was likely one of three Russian Yasen-class nuclear-powered submarines that was operating dangerously close to the US Navy’s USS Gerald R. Ford nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
The Russian submarine was close enough that it could have probably launched some (or all) of its long-range precision weapons and overwhelmed the carrier’s defenses. Indeed, all three of Russia’s Yasen-class and Yasen-M-class submarines were conspicuously absent from their Nerpicha Russian Naval Base in the Litsa Fjord, just 37 miles away from Norway’s border with Russia.
To be clear: a Russian submarine likely got within torpedo range of the Gerald R. Ford.
This represented a significant escalation on the part of the Russian Navy against NATO at sea. And it sent a very strong message sent by Moscow to Washington (and Brussels) that the Kremlin’s submarine forces are undeterred by the presence of America’s most advanced aircraft carrier operating so near to Russia.
Just a few weeks after the Alaska Summit between President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in which Trump put on a fantastical display of American airpower, the Russians flexed their own military muscles at America.
Vladimir Putin Is Not Afraid of the US Military
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