So, what would happen?
My two cents if you please:
Currently the Russian federation does not have the means to support a protracted war neither does it have the available weaponry to confront directly the USA let alone NATO.
Do not be fooled though the Russians could indeed put up a very nasty fight if you want some numbers the Russian navy remains the 2nd largest fleet in the world behind the USA (in terms of tonnage) it also has 270 ish active warships in the fleet.
Now bare in mind that the USA has two major cost lines to defend that being the Atlantic (including gulf of Mexico) and the Pacific, the Russians have five! which is why we see The Northern fleet, Pacific fleet, Baltic and Black sea fleets and finally the Caspian sea flotilla (which could be used to reinforce the Black sea fleet).
The Russians have around these numbers of submarines in the fleets:
Northern: 14 SSN’s (Victor Akula Sierra and Yasen)
3 SSGN’s (Oscar II with 2 that are in overhaul)
6 SSK (mainly kilo but also 1 lada)
8 SSBN (Typhoon Delta and Borey)
Pacific: 6 SSN’s (all akula and sierra)
5 SSGN (Oscar II)
7 SSK (all kilos)
5 SSBN (Delta III and Borey)
Baltic: 3 SSK (Kilo and lada)
Black sea : 6 SSK (All kilo)
(May have changed since 2016)
The current build programme of SSN’s isn’t vast and nothing on the scale of the soviet union currently 12 Yasen class are planned which isn’t a lot when you consider that this is if you spread evenly 6 per major fleet.
Now consider that the USN is hoping to commission 48 Virginia class submarines although a smaller number than the current 688’s the Virginias will outnumber the main Russian fleet 4 to 1 with ease on this score.
The current fleet of the Russian navy is made up of late 1980 early 1990 submarines such as the modified Victor III the Akulas and also the massive Oscar’s, this means the fleet is now well and truly overdue replacement, however the Russian budget doesn’t allow for the purchase of Massive items just yet.
There are 5 forces in the Russia military 1) Strategic nuclear 2) Army 3) navy 4) air force 5) Border guards, Currently the lion’s share of the defence budget goes to the Strategic nuclear forces with the Air Force coming seconds then the Navy followed by Army and Border Guards, and all are requiring modern updated equipment.
The current defence budget of the Russian Federation is 5.0% GDP (risen 0.8% from 2014 when it was 4.2% GDP) meaning the total being $72.3bn USD (P3 trillion ruble) in 2016 (figures from world bank and IMF) this means the Russian federation ranks 4th in terms of expenditure behind the USA 1st China 2nd and Saudi Arabia 3rd.
If you go ahead and look at the purchase parity of the Russian economy all the major Creditors have in their Q3 2016 published reports indicate that the Russian Federation has become stable and is returning to Positive growth, with agencies also revising their credit rating which stands as follows:
Fitch: BBB
Moody’s: BAA (Revised Q3 2016)
Standard and poor’s: BB+ (revised Q3 2016)
However CPI inflation is still at 5.2% which is fairly high compared to us in the west but the Russians since their 90’s issues have come along way and the current economic sanctions against them does not help one bit.
However according to the World Economic Forum Russia has spent the last 2 years in recession but has now returned to growth, with the economy expected to deliver by Q2 2017 0.8% Growth which is on track to happen.
This could mean the re investment into some of the armed forces and indeed we have seen this with the current M14 Armata programme the new Corvettes and also the go ahead for the new Lieder class destroyer programme with the first long lead items finally placed, beluva seems to have also had an injection of cash and the new borey class submarines are also moving ahead along with the Yasen, however we may see that the yasen project extended I would say maybe a total of 16 submarines built, we also saw the announcement that a totally new project the Kalin class conventional submarine to be designed by the SKB Rubin bureau and we also saw the collaboration with the Italians with the S1000 project placed on indefinite hold.
As for the VA-111 Skhval well that is still being built and made it uses an inertial guidance system however the torpedo itself travels too fast to be wire guided so it is in practice a snap shot weapon that is fire and forget and has no guidance from the submarine, it also has limited range 6-10miles, the advantage it does have is that it is very fast.
Investment in weapons has been quite positive the new P800 Oniks and the Klub have seen major investments as has some of the latter designed standard torpedoes, the Skhval has also seen upgrades and is likely to see more in the future.
However in a war with platform on platform the qualitive edge has to go to the Americans, the systems and SONAR etc are very well built and are about 5 years ahead of the Russian systems if not slightly more.
The Americans also have a very good all round torpedo the MK48 ADCAP the Russians still seem to rely on different torpedoes for different jobs and so fill the submarine with 4 or 5 types of torpedo which in my view hinders efficiency and doesn’t follow the ethos of the late Sergey Gorshkov’s view “Better is the enemy of good enough”.
The Russians right now cannot compete platform for platform in a war type scenario at sea mid ocean the Russian’s would loose however in a tightened environment close to shore where its long range aviation and also land based aircraft could get involved then we could see some huge losses on the American side probably unmanageable losses too.
The Russians know they cannot fight in the open sea and thus have built up an effective even today sea denial force something in which the Americans and NATO should take heed of, while they cannot compare technologically or on a platform level they could still inflict huge damage to a fleet something the west would find difficult to stomach and recover from.
But in a platform v platform Virginia V Yasen I would honestly say the Virginia would have it, as the Virginia is likely be able to detect the Yasen before she herself would be detected, the Skhval is good only for one shot and I doubt that it would be used to scare the submarine if it was a shot made from behind or from the side, the MK48 ADCAP is a great torpedo and there is not much the Russians have that would match its capability and abilities.
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