Russian SSBNs not Patrolling

Hans Kristensen has a good post on the inactivity of Russian SSBNs:

The number of deterrence patrols conducted by Russia’s 11 nuclear-powered ballistic missiles submarines (SSBNs) decreased to only three in 2007 from five in 2006, according to our latest Nuclear Notebook published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In comparison, U.S. SSBNs conducted 54 patrols in 2007, more than three times as many as all the other nuclear weapon states combined.

The low Russian patrol number continues the sharp decline from the Cold War; no patrols at all were conducted in 2002 . The new practice indicates that Russia no longer maintains a continuous SSBN patrol posture like that of the United States, Britain, and France, but instead has shifted to a new posture where it occasionally deploys an SSBN for training purposes.

Kristensen notes that the SSBN schedule stands at odds with the tempo of the rest of the Russian Navy, which has increased substantially over the past year and a half or so. The short explanation, I suppose, is that SSBN operations don’t really convey all that much prestige; they sail into the Arctic and hide, but don’t impress anyone other than a few whales. Taking this a step farther, I think that it confirms impressions that the Russian Navy operates today primarily as a public relations organization.

I would also guess that the survivability of those Russian SSBNs in a hot war is pretty low; the Russian Navy is no longer capable of providing layered “fortresses” for its boomers as it did in the Cold War, and the old Deltas can’t be much of a match for modern US attack boats. Fortunately, no one seems to care.