Pacifico said:
Maroon Dawn said:
Supposedly the operation is a show of force against Russia who has increased their naval presence there and the US is part of this operation as well.
What exactly do you think the Russian navy is planning to do? Do you think Russia is in a position to conduct an offensive military operation against anyone right now?
It's not so much about offense as it is defense of routes in the Arctic
One of the biggest consequences of Sweden and Finland joining NATO is that the Baltic is now a NATO lake.
Access to St Petersburg is now only through a NATO controlled straight and their naval base at Kaliningrad is now totally surrounded by NATO assets
In particular it means they've shifted their submarine activity to their far north naval bases on the Kola Peninsula such as Severomorsk and Polyarny
In order for the subs and the rest of their fleet (including the so called "shadow tankers" they've been using to bypass the oil embargo) to access the Atlantic, they have to go through the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-UK) Gap which narrows their options for avoiding NATO detection assets. They've been coming increasingly close to UK territorial waters over the past year seeing them as the easier path than increasing US presence in the Arctic now that we have essentially full military control of Greenland.
They're also conducting exercises to essentially tell NATO "we know where all the major data cables and oil pipelines are and we'll hit these if we feel too threatened"
So this exercise is in response to all this to tell Russia to back off from UK waters and that NATO is strong on both sides of the Gap here
