The newest generation of Russian submarine forces are well trained and operate advanced boats. As I noted this week , these forces offer great value to China's People's Liberation Army. Training with and learning from the Russians, the PLA significantly improves its readiness to fight the U.S. Navy.
In turn, even as the U.S. military must far more heavily focus its key air and naval war-fighting capabilities on China, it must also bear close attention to Russia.
Yes, Russian ground forces might be facing attritional annihilation in Ukraine . Still, Russian submarine forces pose an increasingly potent threat. As the U.S. Naval Institute reports , the commander of U.S. military forces responsible for defending North America testified to that effect on Thursday. Gen. Glen VanHerck told Congress that Russia is probably one to two years away from being able to maintain persistent Yasen-class submarine deployments in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. It's a good bet that the only dependent factor here is whether or not Russia can construct the next two boats of the Yasen class on schedule by the end of 2024. Russia currently has four Yasen-class submarines in service.
The concerns posed by the Yasens are twofold.
First, these boats are unusually quiet and thus more able to evade U.S. and NATO detection efforts. As I reported during the June 2021 G-7 summit, there were indications that a Yasen submarine was even operating off the coast of the summit location. Regardless, the Yasen reflects highly successful Russian domestic innovation, possible intellectual property theft from U.S. submarine contractors, and the effective deployment of research funds without significant diversion for corruption. That bears note in light of the catastrophic corruption in the Russian ground forces.
Second, the Yasen is loaded for effective war. It can carry the Zircon hypersonic vehicle, which can be loaded with either conventional or nuclear warheads in both land and naval attack roles. The Zircon would highly complicate any U.S. missile defense effort. The Yasen also carries the Kalibr land and naval attack cruise missile. When the newest variant of this missile is introduced, it will provide Russia means of launching a long-range, heavy-yield nuclear strike.
Taken together, the Yasen's stealth and strike profile enable its employment in a prospective first-strike surprise attack role. Were a Yasen class able to sneak up to the U.S. East Coast, for example, it might be able to launch a nuclear attack against Washington with a very short warning time. Were the U.S. president and vice president in close proximity, a decapitation strike might succeed. In that scenario, U.S. second-strike options would be greatly degraded. The U.S. might even lose a Third World War.
There's another factor in play here. Namely, that the Yasen poses additional strain on already overstretched U.S. Navy submarine forces.
The means of deterring and defeating Yasen incursions rests heavily with the U.S. Navy's attack submarine force. The problem is that the U.S. does not have enough attack submarines and is not building enough new ones nearly fast enough . Considering that U.S. submarines would be crucial to contesting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, something that may well occur before this decade is out, this overstretch concern is significant. At a minimum, Vladimir Putin's Yasen-class submarines give him means of holding some U.S. submarine forces in the Atlantic during any U.S.-China war (although the United Kingdom and French navies could potentially surge forces to fill the U.S. gap).
Put another way, the Yasen offers yet another example as to why Biden's fiscal 2024 defense request is ultimately unserious . But this is a bipartisan issue. Consider the insane demands of members of Congress such as House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX), for example, who wants to force the Navy to waste money on made-for-the-PLA coral reefs rather than ships that can actually fight our enemies.
We have a problem.
