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Another Failed Hunt for Red October
In 1981, the very year I was born, a whisky-class Soviet submarine ran aground in restricted waters near a Swedish naval base on the Baltic Coast. This event was dubbed “Whisky on the Rocks”, and was one of many known Soviet intrusions on Swedish territory during the Cold War. It was later made public through reports published after the fall of the Soviet Union – 50-odd Soviet operations had taken place in our waters after the end of World War II. Once the submarine was found, the Soviets apologized for what they called “an honest mistake.” While the explanation was accepted as an official matter, we everyday Swedes went back to warily watching our powerful neighbor flex its muscles in apparent provocation.
As the wall came down along with the Soviet Union, Swedish authorities exhaled and saw an opportunity to drastically cut military spending: scrapping compulsory military service, halting ongoing defense programs, and slashing billions off the defense budget, all while claiming that the threat had been removed and the money would be better spent elsewhere. Military personnel went public, blowing the whistle on what they saw as an historic mistake, but politicians took no heed. Or most of them, I should say. In 2007, continued cuts lead to the resignation of Defense Minister Mikael Odenberg of the Conservative Party, who said “I have to be able to look myself in the mirror and defend these cuts to our military personnel. I cannot, and therefore I must resign”.
Roughly 10 days ago I was, along with the rest of Sweden, thrown back 30 years in time. A foreign submarine was spotted in Swedish waters and, within days, the Swedish Navy was said to have had three more sightings. Along with those incidents, various media outlets reported that radio transmissions in Russian had been detected a day before the first sighting and that a distress call from a Russian submarine had been intercepted by Swedish counterintelligence. With that, the search for what was referred to as “foreign underwater activity” was on in full-scale.
At first, I made several jokes on social media about the whole operation. The reports were just too comical: The King had been informed (I dare anyone not to make a meme out of that one) that there were frogmen running lose in the archipelago; the reporters stood on rubber dinghys talking about “mysterious foam.” But then, a few days in, I watched the live broadcast of the military briefing on the operation, and everything suddenly felt way too real.
The military was calling the sightings “extremely reliable” and saying that there was more to be done in order to find these submarines — but saying that they lacked necessary equipment, and were doing all they could with what they had. I — probably like most of my fellow countrymen — was asking myself: What do we do when we find them? With what do we defend ourselves if they attack? For 30 years we have cut more and more out of an already small pie and we are basically left with a white flag and a ’90s answering machine saying “We give up” in four different languages. Russia is in our backyard, in our waters, and what have they come for? Why are they here?
A few days ago, the search for the underwater vessel was called off after an unsuccessful weeklong operation. The military released a statement saying that it was “probable” that Russian submarines had invaded our waters, and that this was unacceptable, but that the search for the submarines in question was now being halted. Again, we were all having ’80s flashbacks; yet another Russian intrusion, yet another failed hunt for Red October.
Sweden is famously (or rather infamously) neutral. The world around us is not, however, and failure to accept that simple fact has left us with a bewildered rock and stick army forced to “do the best they can with what they have.” In a world where Russia has violated Swedish and Finnish airspace, invaded Crimea, and walked all over Estonian sovereignty — all in just a little over a year — that just isn’t good enough. But while deconstructing an army takes little more than a vote, rebuilding it takes generations.
The Kremlin, of course, denied having anything to do with this incident and released a statement saying it was probably the Dutch. As if they aren’t really trying to lie convincingly; as if they know that Sweden is theirs for the taking, a rubber ducky sitting in the fjord.
Published in General
More seriously, the long dead Cold War appears to be crawling zombie like from the grave. And it would seem North Korea is going to be heating things up as well. Sorry, Sweden, you’re on your own with Russia.
The only way to successfully maintain neutrality is to appear so inedible as to be indigestible. Switzerland and Sweden did that for many years.
Earlier on Ricochet, someone posted the story of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Prime Minister of Switzerland watching a marksmanship demonstration by Swiss infantry. All of them hit the bull’s eye. The Kaiser was reputed to have asked “How many troops do you have who can shoot like that?” When the Prime Minister replied 100,000, Wilhelm ask “What if I invade with 200,000 men?” “Our men would each have to shoot twice,” was the answer.
The Swiss maintained that tradition through the end of the Cold War, with reservists keeping their weapons and ammunition at home (including, I am told, tank drivers, whose tank would be housed in a government-funded garage).
Sweden did much the same thing. Saab jets could operate off highways, with overpasses designed for use as hangers, and an army designed for dispersal into the countryside.
Yugoslavia, before their breakup, organized a vast guerrilla insurgency in case of invasion — by either NATO or the Soviets.
To do successfully use any of these strategies requires dedicated and universal commitment to it. The Dutch in the 16th through early 18th centuries had that commitment and held off both Spain and France, then world powers. By the 20th century they had lost that level of commitment, and easily fell to invaders.
Good luck Sweden. Better still, stop depending upon luck.
Is it really worth hundreds of billions of dollars to more accurately track a submarine that you have already found?
Granted this is a very oversimplified question, but I think the underlying point stands: there will always be some justification for more military spending, and a country like Sweden will always be in some type of latent danger due to its proximity to such an unstable, giant neighbor.
But spending should still be commensurate to the estimated threat, and even with the events in Ukraine this year, I don’t see how one Russian submarine in Swedish waters represents a commensurate threat to the Cold War era.
As with so many other issues, this is not a binary question, it is one of degrees.
Of course, Switzerland has also drastically reduced its defenses against foreign invasion since the end of the Cold War. No doubt they would not hesitate to ramp them up if they perceived a new threat, but the point remains that there is an argument for disarmament and accepting certain low-probability risks.
That might work. On the other hand . . .
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
(The Gods of the Copybook Headings -Rudyard Kipling)
I’m not calling for any country to completely disarm, nor did I mean to suggest that Switzerland had completely given up its philosophy of robust self-defense.
There were serious threats to the security of Sweden and Switzerland in the past, and there will certainly be serious threats at some point in the future as well. But do those facts justify maintaining the same defense posture during periods when the threats appear to be much lower? Should a country have a permanent worst-case attitude, even when all facts on the ground seem to point otherwise?
Certainly not. Yet this increase in tensions with Russia was clearly coming and it is rather disconcerting to see how poorly the leadership of Sweden is able to cope.
When Reinfeldt threw down that gauntlet he must have known there would be a Russian response, at the very least he should have known, known and taken appropriate action to insure his nation could meet such threats.
Ask the 20th-century Dutch how well that worked. Once ramped down, when do you ramp things up? Don’t want to do it too early or you may appear panicky. So nations put it off, like the proverbial frog in the pot where the temperature is increased slowly. Next thing you know, boiled frog. (Or conquered nation.)
The only alternatives for a small country other than perpetual preparedness is joining an alliance or risking capture.
Seawriter
Well said.
Sweden seems not have learned that weakness is the most provocative stance when dealing with Russia. Obama and Hillary learned it too late, to Ukraine’s detriment and NATO/Europe’s dismay.
Mendel: “I don’t see how one Russian submarine in Swedish waters represents a commensurate threat to the Cold War era.”
Why on earth would you assume only one Russian submarine has done this in Swedish waters since the Cold War? Because only one was detected? You think Sweden’s detection rate is 100%? You might want to re-read the article.
Only if said country wants to deter that worst case from coming to be.
Those Russian subs were known only after their invasion of Swedish waters. Likewise, the presence of a Russian sub in the Gulf of Mexico months ago was only discovered after it had long been there.
If a nation is to build and shrink its military forces in response to apparent threat levels, then it must be able to estimate those threat levels accurately.
I think Mendel has got it pretty much correct.
Several things to be considered here in addition:
1) Sweden’s military is actually very robust, probably one of the best trained in the world. Given the territory they would be fighting in, it’s perfectly adequate for their self-defense purposes. It’s really far fetched to think of a Russian “invasion” threat to Sweden.
2) The Russian threat is hugely overblown. What is Russia going to threaten Sweden with? People forget in these discussion of how much Western countries have “cut” their defense budgets (cuts in many cases being the same sort of “cuts” that liberals complain about in their favorite programs; i.e. not actual cuts, but reduction in growth)…that Russia’s military has been cut 10 times over since the end of the Cold War. What’s the logic behind maintaining huge armies, when you already outnumber, and have a huge technological advantage, over your potential adversary?
3) Submarine incursions are a common phenomenon in that part of the world. It’s pretty hard not to do it, given the geography of the shores there. I’m sure, Swedish submarines sneak into Russian waters too.
4) Russia’s moves are purely intended for internal consumption. For increasing Putins’ popularity at home. There’s no real threat here, because Russia has nothing to threaten anyone with militarily…other than it’s nuclear arsenal. Sweden isn’t some tin-pot country like Georgia or Ukraine.
This is all a storm in a tea cup.
A good point, although WWII also revealed that such alliances are sometimes worth little more than the paper they’re written on. Not to mention that being prepared for war also wasn’t much of a deterrent in several cases.
The basic problem is that democracies rarely tolerate sustained defense spending in the absence of a palpable threat. We can cite historical precedent until the cows come home, but experience also demonstrates that if a populace doesn’t feel threatened, it votes down military spending. If that is a fatal error, than democracy is probably doomed.
There’s an old joke from Soviet times:
A Commissar in charge of the Five Year Plans calls up his secretary and asks her: How many months does it take for a woman to make a baby?
The secretary replies: 9 months.
The Commissar replies: So 4 women should make a baby in 2 months!
This is the same logic here. First of all, besides the actual fact that the overall… strength…of the USN, military etc is actually several times greater than what it was in the Cold War, mainly due to technological advances…the second important consideration is that your example has nothing to do with “cuts” in actual numbers of units etc.
Submarine detection is always the hardest thing in the world to do, and is in most cases, unsuccessful. Submarine detection is mostly only useful if you’re trying to defend a particular “target”, not trying to monitor vast empty spaces of ocean (or little traveled islands and fjords as in the case of Sweden).
So of course 99% of submarine incursions are always undetected. They always were. It’s technological issue, not a “numbers” issue.
You don’t think USN submarines violate Russian waters on a regular bases? There’s probably a USN sub inside Russian waters right now, and no one will ever know.
A few points:
– first, how do we know when the subs were first detected, and by whom? Not all such information is made public.
– to add to that, what makes you think we are not able to accurately assess the threat of Russian submarines in our waters? I would assume the US would keep its detection of such subs as secret as possible to avoid tipping our capabilities to others.
– finally, no matter what our defense posture, there has to be some tolerance of incursions into our sphere. As AIG said, the Soviets constantly had subs on our seaboard during the Cold War, and we probably have one in their waters right now. Similar with airplanes and sovereign airspace. If one submarine popping up in someone’s realm of influence is considered intolerable, then there is not enough money in the world to secure ourselves.
The process of surveillance, detection, tracking and countering potentially hostile submarines was worked up to the level of an art form by the US Navy during the cold war. It was horribly expensive, depended upon a wide variety of military forces deployed literally all over the globe, and relied upon massive intelligence investments/operations. But given that Soviet submarines could deliver nuclear weapons the price was justifiable. At any rate, it was justified as such during the cold war.
The Swedes did not then and will not now make the necessary investments to counter an undersea threat from Russia. The Russians know this. Consequently, the Soviets used Swedish waters as a training ground. The Russians evidently still do.
The Soviets undoubtedly had plans to capture/neutralize Nordic geography (especially North Cape) in the event of war in Europe. Sweden lies upon their attack vector. Too bad for them.
Russia still views the world through a Cold War lens. It’s unlikely their war plans have changed much. Hence they still prowl and train in Swedish waters. Stockholm only gets upset when it becomes public. The media excitement will die down and nothing will change.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Yep. This is similar to the “ebola logic” that has gripped much of the US these days, where the fact that a couple of people are infected with an infectious disease while treating said infectious disease, is portrayed as a full blown “crises” and said cases are used as “evidence” of all sorts of things (from failure to outright lying).
It ignores the realities of the situation. No matter what you do, you can’t have a 100% containment outcome. Failure to achieve 100% positive outcome is only evidence of the technological and human barriers, and evidence of a cost-benefit analysis.
4 women don’t make a baby in 2 months. Biology is still biology, and physics is still physics. Expecting to prevent a Russian sub from operating in the “Gulf of Mexico”, or preventing a Russian sub from sneaking next to one of the ten thousands barren island rocks in Sweden, is something that is made impossible by physics, not government budgets.
The two are apples and oranges.
The US relied on the ability to actually track Soviet subs as they left their ports, and followed them wherever they went. It didn’t rely on “broad” surveillance of empty ocean space. Submarine detection there is not possible, unless you’re actively looking, and then it is still a long and slow process.
And of course, you can’t always be actively searching for subs in endless expanses of ocean.
Sweden has a different problem, that being the above and below water landscape of their coastline. Not the best place to search for subs, but the best place for small diesel subs to operate. Totally different challenges than those faced by the USN.
There’s no shortage of threats and we spend more on “defense” than the next 20 countries combined, many of whom are allies. I don’t know about “democracy” but this Republic is only doomed if it chooses to commit suicide. Thankfully, thus far it has not made such a choice.
Actually, it was an “all of the above” approach. It was not limited to one or another methodologies as you suggest here. (See Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew)
The Swedes–to be successful–would require a similar “all of the above” approach, albeit their geographic scope of operations is infinitesimal by comparison with our Cold War challenge. But since Sweden is a country with a population roughly that of New York City, their resources are more constrained too.
Actually, physics works against submarine operations. Once detected, subs have very limited ‘speed of advance’ (SOA) and (therefore) maneuvering options. The faster they go, the nosier they are and that makes them extremely vulnerable to aggressive prosecution by Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) assets. With slow SOA, it’s only a matter of time until you lock-on to them, assuming sufficient ASW assets.
Again, finding and tracking subs is a holistic endeavor—operations and intelligence must work hand-in-glove. But we’ve been doing it effectively since about 1943. Ask the Kriegsmarine if you don’t believe me. Decryption of Enigma messages and integrated ASW actions meant the destruction of something like 75% of U-boats by war’s end. Essentially, we went on to extend and perfect this capability throughout the Cold War.
But, like I said, it takes a massive investment in men, materiel and technology.
BTW – who said anything about “preventing” submarines from operating in the Gulf of Mexico or any other “international waters”? Anyone who cares to put a submarine in there is legally free to do so. It’s “territorial waters” that were talking about, generally considered to be within 12 nautical miles of a nation’s coastline.
I did not suggest any such thing. I simply pointed out that adjusting one’s defense powers to fit apparent threat levels requires reliably accurate estimates of such threats.
If the majority of submarine activity will always go undetected, and if a submarine fleet (whatever it is or isn’t doing at the time) is a significant factor of power when considering potential aggressors, then the defensive nation should be prepared to counter a strong fleet.
Whether or not numbers are significant in the detection of submarines, they are surely significant in conventional warfare. If Russia is possibly a threat to Swedish sovereignty in coming decades, then Swedes must be prepared to match more than just Russia’s submarines.
Also, conquest is not the only way in which Russia could be aggressive. It could sink merchant vessels, as the Germans did to American merchants for years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor forced a more direct confrontation.
I don’t think the details of anti-submarine warfare are necessarily relevant to this conversation.
The main point is this: Russia’s military resources are and will always be much greater than a small, isolated actor like Sweden’s. Given that balance, should Sweden really try to fend off every needling jab by Russia (such as by having a Navy strong enough to track Russian subs), or do they focus on a strong core of defensive measures while accepting that Russia might be able to humiliate them every so often?
If there was any reasonable concern that Russia had eyes for Sweden, it would obviously be wise for Sweden to pull out all stops. But in the absence of any such credible scenario, spending a huge chunk of GDP in order to save face is a debatable tactic.
I mentioned it as an indicator of Russia’s general challenge to Western nations right now. The presence of Russian subs in the Gulf of Mexico is not a direct threat to the United States, but that presence certainly sends a message… much like our military’s presence in international waters near China is intended to send a message.
Like the presence of spy drones, proximity of naval vessels does not necessarily indicate hostility. But the larger and more powerful that presence, the more interested that nation is in the region.
I know you are synopsizing AIG, but again . . . a low submarine detection rate isn’t a given. It’s a choice. We’re $18 Trillion in debt. We’ve decided to spend our money on other things. Likewise for Sweden.
BTW – if submarines were such a sure-thing in terms of military advantage, more nations would have powerful submarine fleets. They don’t because (a) they are expensive and VERY demanding to operate; (b) they are vulnerable to detection and countermeasures; and, (c) they have limited utility even when affordable and operated perfectly.
I wouldn’t be so certain that “resources” dictates outcome. Eventually, perhaps … if a war of attrition is the outcome. But one doesn’t always get the opportunity to arrive at “eventually.” I mean, do we not have the “resources” to defeat the Taliban? But have we? Seems to me we are the ones leaving before the job the is done, not the other way around.
Even more pertinent, I suspect similar comments were made about Finland vis-a-vis the Soviet Union prior to their Winter War in 1939-1940. I’m certain that today’s Russian Generals (and Admirals) have not forgotten this episode in Soviet military history.
The question of Russia’s appetite for conquest isn’t static. It grows or subsides depending on external and internal conditions. Surely you’d agree that the Baltic states have reason to be more fearful after what’s transpired in Crimea, no? How about Poland? What makes Sweden immune to developments elsewhere in Europe? If European history teaches anything it’s that there are few certainties.
Sweden has greater problems to worry about than Russian subs; most of them are demographic.
It can not defend itself against Russia. Russia also has little reason to invade. If it wants ironclad security it should shed its neutrality and form defensive alliances.
But the defense budget is historically about 20% of overall spending. It’s not the main cost driver in the budgets – ever.
Secondly, that Sweden was able to ramp down spending was largely due to the presence of the US Navy for decades during and after the Cold War.
Thirdly, our Cheesebag in Chief has helped to reduce the US Navy to about half its inventory of ships, and is now counting hospital ships, etc, as combat vessels to up the number of active navy ships. We had a 600-vessel fleet in the 1980s, we now have roughly 300.
Fourthly – our Navy is sounding a bit of an alarm regarding Russian and Chinese sub capabilities. Not a new alarm, but there’s reason for concern.
Lastly – if the president had actually been serious about “stimulus” spending, there would have been no better way to arm himself and the country for a “pivot” to Asia by re-building the fleet. At least after that money was spent, we’d have something to show for it, and actual jobs would have resulted. Instead, well, we are where we are.
We’re not 18 trillion in debt because of the Navy. We’re 18 trillion in debt because of entitlement spending and worse, we have unfunded entitlement liabilities that have zero to do with annual defense spending.
If you’re looking for something to hang the debt and deficits on, a much longer and more profitable list can be compiled than defense spending.