Quote:
Originally Posted by speed150mph
This year has not been a great year for NATO navies.
We started the year in a mass panic as russian navy submarines were operating at an increased tempo. All across Northern Europe countries were reporting violations of territorial waters by russian submarines, with most of these submarines not being prosecuted by the combined searches of several navies. The general consensus of the media was that Russian submarines were free to transit where ever they pleased and NATO was struggling to counter. Not a great start.
I also want to point out the string of incidents in the past few months.
We had a whistle blower calling out the British Royal navy on the poor condition of the royal navies SSBN fleet.
We had reports of several US ship and sub commanders being released of duties for "loss of confidence in abilities to command"
Then we had the collision of HMS Ambush with a merchant ship near Gibraltar.
We had a US navy crew get captured by the Iranians after getting lost.
A month later, there was a collision between an American SSBN and her support ship.
And now we have the latest string of mechanical failures in the LCS ships. All of which are being blamed on crew error.
You combine this with what the Russians view as a fairly successful year with both their northern, caspian, and Black Sea fleets having successful exercises and some of them performing fairly well in combat operations in Syria; and their latest aggressiveness against NATO navies, it makes me wonder if the recent events might shape russian views on the competency of the NATO navies, and might lead to more bold actions by the russian federation and others?
Does the subsim community have any views on this point?
|
Perhaps if the west stopped encircling Russia they wouldn't be aggressive towards them, buy a map then look up all the locations of american and western bases you will find they encircle both Russia and China so in that sense who is the aggressor?
If you look at the state of play between the USA and Iran he reason america wont invade is because it would be pretty suicidal heavy casualties.
Russia supplies around 16% of oil and gas to Europe if Russia imposed its own sanctions on this then Europe would suffer for a while.
if you look at the actions of where the incidents are taking place such as the fly overs in Baltic and Black sea your basically antagonising them in thier own back yard put it simply why is america warships thousands of miles from their coast? when the Russian planes are just a few hundred.
Also NATO agreed back in 1992 it wouldn't expand and it did so what does that tell the duma? you think Russia has trust issues take a look into out own policies
why are there foreign NATO war planes in the Baltic states ? (now part of NATO which remember NATO promised it wouldn't expand) Russia has little interest in the states, whats more just as they probe the airspace we do it to them too so its tit for tat.
Its no longer a secret that NATO and western submarines lay off their coast line been known for years but why ? and why do you get so upset when they lay off ours? after all we are doing it to them.
the USA foreign policy in Syria was to get rid of Assad (which is against the UN mandate for not allowing regime change) the Russians are helping Assad (in the most uncouth way) but they are not technically breaking the main mandate of regime change by the way both UK and USA supported actively the change of governments in Libya Syria and Iraq so who actively ignores the UN?
There are many incidents each and every year but this is what you need to understand about the Russians
The navy especially because they don't venture that far beyond their own waters and when they do its to make a statement such as cruising through the panama heading down to Australia its just showing yes i can reach you if you threaten me.
The problem is a lot of people don't get the Russian people and their way of thinking and it really is simple almost neanderlithic in a way you threaten me i threaten you you hit me i hit you.
If you look at the navy is mostly some aggressive platforms (Kirov and slava cruisers) but mainly most are smaller frigates and corvettes and submarines.
we know the Russian navy wouldn't last a long time against NATO or American navy but look at our navies they are built for the strike role the Russian navy isn't
As they say "Keep poking the bear and one day it will bite"
That's the way the Russians see things