4th Fleet Focus: Russians Coming to South America

Russia is deploying a small naval force to Venezuela for an exercise in November. Hardly surprising, Hugo Chavez is making a big deal out of it, but also hardly surprising, the US is shrugging shoulders saying "so what?"

The Defense Department seemed unaffected Monday by an announcement from Venezuela and Russia that Russian warships would sail to the Caribbean this winter for exercises with the Venezuelan fleet — the first-ever such move by the Russian navy.

Pentagon officials did not express particular concern over the announcement from Caracas. “We’re aware of the announcement made in Venezuela,” said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, “and we’ll see how it goes.”

The exercise is reportedly part of a deal earlier this summer that Russia when it was agreed Russia will sell submarines to Venezuela, but it is also likely this will be sold in Russia as a response to the US Navy delivering humanitarian supplies to Georgia. For all the hype otherwise, the DoD official is right and this is not something that will raise concerns.

While a lot of attention is being paid to the deployment of the nuclear powered battlecruiser Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) , we aren't much impressed. Like Robert said, if the ship blows up then we'll be interested. The other three ships include a destroyer, an oiler, and a... you guessed it, fleet tug.

As we have noted in the past, the Admiral Chabanenko (DDG 650), a Udaloy II destroyer, was laid down in 1989, but she (or he in the Russian Masculine vernacular) was under construction when the Soviet Union collapsed. Finally launched in 1995, the Admiral Chabanenko (DDG 650) was not commissioned until 1999 and was in fact the last surface ship laid down during the cold war to be built and commissioned. If there has been a workhorse of the Russian Navy over the last several years, the Admiral Chabanenko (DDG 650) would qualify, which makes perfect sense as the destroyer is the largest surface warship built by Russian in the last 2 decades.

One of the interesting questions asked during the press conference that announced the deployment was "how would the Americans like it if we responded to hurricanes with our warships?" Well, I have not met Admiral Stavridis personally, but what I do know of him leads me to believe he would welcome the Russians in such an effort.

One prediction, Spook86 has discussed many times that it is only a matter of time before long range Russian bombers make an east coast flight down to Cuba like they did during the cold war. If I was placing a bet, I'd bet we would see that scenario sometime between October and November, and it would be very embarrassing if the USAF wasn't ready for it.

This development should be seen for what it is, a response to the Russia's objections to humanitarian response and naval activity in the Black Sea. While Russia will be sure to hype it, and Hugo Chavez will be part of the over hype, it is very much a good thing because it is one of those small steps towards Russia saving face. Sometimes this type of non-escalation - media escalation stuff is necessary to bring about the normalization of relations.

At the end of the day, the concern for the US Navy isn't the Russian naval forces, it is the purchase of submarines by Venezuela. Should the submariners ever get well trained, that would indeed be a major threat for US naval forces.