Soviet Union & Northern Water by Clive Archer

Author:Clive Archer [Archer, Clive]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415004893
Google: 20khAQAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 3677120
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1988-01-15T13:59:07+00:00

The size of the Soviet Northern Fleet, being geographically isolated from other Soviet naval forces, is fairly easy to tabulate. The only major reinforcement to its strength presented here (see Table 7.1) comes from non-naval aircraft based on the Kola Peninsula. Nonetheless, these figures should be considered as illustrative rather than as exact. Air power, for example, by its nature is highly flexible and its bases can readily be changed 7 Likewise, ships and submarines of either the Baltic Fleet or the Black Sea Fleet could operate with the Northern Fleet, though to any significant extent this is unlikely since their access to the Atlantic is restricted by choke points and they themselves have demanding tasks within the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean Seas.8

Estimating the size of NATO naval resources available for northern operations is substantially more difficult. NATO’s chief naval commander, the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT), has two main responsibilities. He must ensure the security of the reinforcement shipping from America to Europe, along the SLOC; and he must provide support to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe in both the Southern and Northern Flanks of NATO, either of which could theoretically divert resources away from SLOC protection. Protecting the SLOC, however, is S ACL ANT s first priority mission, and as such it will keep a large proportion of his resources both out of the Mediterranean and south of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap.9 The NATO forces in Table 7.1 represent a gross force pool available to SACLANT for operations in the Atlantic or on the flanks. It is drawn from the naval forces of the NATO members on the Atlantic coast and neither assumes any diversion of units to the flanks (such as extra Carrier Battle Groups to the US 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean), nor any strengthening of forces in the Atlantic (such as reorientating the primarily Mediterranean-based French fleet or transferring 6th Fleet carriers to the Atlantic US 2nd Fleet).10 The level of uncertainty in these gross figures should be borne in mind in the following discussion.

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