Sea Control - Sea Control 248 - Russia's Baltic Fleet with Jonas Kjellén and Anders Larsson

Episode Date: May 9, 2021

Links1. "The Russian Baltic Fleet, Organisation and role within the Armed Forces in 2020,"by Jonas Kjellén, FOI, February 2021.2. Russian Electronic Warfare the role of Electronic Warfare within the Armed Forces, by Jonas Kjellén, FOI, September 2018.

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In this episode, we have a pair of Swedes joining us, analyst and author Jonas Schellin from the Swedish Defense Research Agency and Anders Larsson from Swedish Defense University. They're going to be discussing Jonas's report on the Russian Baltic fleet. This episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. Please check out everything going on over at the main website, simsec.org. We've released our next call for submissions for Project Trident. So if you're interested in contributing to the discussion on law of naval warfare, submissions are due May 17th. For more information, check out our website, simsec.org. I can also only give the strongest recommendation to the ongoing series that our Editor-in-Chief,

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Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, we're diving into a report on the Russian Baltic Fleet with its author, Jonas Schellin and Anders Larsson, a Swedish naval officer. So, Jonas and Anders, thanks for joining us. As a reminder, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. Jonas, would you mind starting us off here and telling the listeners a little bit about your background? Yes. So, thank you for having us. I'm a researcher at the Swedish Defense Research Agency. And I have been studying different aspects of the Russian Armed Forces for about 10 years now.

And my ambition is to be sort of a generalist in studying the Russian Armed Forces. But lately I've been sort of focusing into the Russian Navy, which has become my main field of expertise. But I've also done other studies such as Deeply Relevant to Russian Electronic Warfare Capabilities, which was a report published in 2018. Thanks. And for the listeners, we'll go pull that report and include that as a link in the show notes as well, because I'm sure that is a subject that would be of interest to our audience as well. So thank you again for joining us. And Anders, how about you? Can you tell the listeners a little bit about your background? Yeah, thanks again, baby, to be here. Yeah, my name is Anders Larsson. I'm a commander in the Navy and I'm currently working at the Swedish National Defense College. I'm a military teacher, specialized in maritime operations and war gaming. And sometimes I do some background intelligence.

I'm not really teaching intelligence. I'm working with the background, for example, the Russian Baltic Fleet. My career in the Navy started out as a clearance diver. So clearance diving, underwater demolition. and so and I've been commanding officer twice squadron commander I've done a few tours two tours in Afghanistan piracy hunting in the Indian Ocean and my last seven years before I came here I was head of Swedish naval intelligence and counterintelligence but now I'm at the school thank you very much thank you thanks again for joining us today so Jonas I'm going to come to

you for the first question. I'm going to quote here, the sheer size and complexity of the Russian Navy often makes in-depth empirical studies of the entire organization unfeasible. Jonas, what are the specific complexity issues that you're mentioning? Well, the Russian Navy, at least from my Swedish perspective, is a large organization. And instead of trying to cover the whole naval organization, it could be more rewarding to sort of... My point is that the The Baltic Fleet is a particularly good research object in this sense, because in terms of numbers of ships, the Baltic Fleet is the smallest of the four major naval formations in Russia, not counting the Caspian Sea Flotilla.

And as part of this overall naval organization, all four fleets sort of share a similar organization with a similar set of basic capabilities, which includes assets and means to secure naval bases and its adjoining waters, search and rescue capabilities, hydrographic survey assets, naval infantry, naval aviation, and so forth. So by studying this smaller fleet, let's get a sense of the composition of how a Russian Navy formation works. But that's not all. All four Russian fleets also include capabilities that you would normally find in the Russian

ground forces or in the airspace forces and this includes strategic air defense units, fighter aircrafts, ground forces including tank units and heavy artillery. So really when studying this relatively small organization of the Baltic Fleet you get sort of a cross-section of the forces as a whole. So I think it's more rewarding to sort of focus on the Baltic Fleet and to get a glimpse of the whole organization thanks and anders why is the baltic fleet referred to as the former fleet oh yeah sometimes it's kind of natural when you get the the explanation i would say you know the decline of of the of the ussr and the warsaw pact the baltic fleet is not peaking it was fairly big and when that happened you know they lost all their allies

Most of them, the territory, they went down from seven to two major ports and basically two thirds of the fleet was, if not scrapped, you know, not really operational. So the former fleet is actually the fleet that it once has been. I would say that's the best explanation. Thanks. And then what is the significance of the Baltic Fleet's relationship with St. Petersburg? Yeah, the relationship is historically because St. Petersburg is, you know, the capital where the Tsar lived. And when they started the Russian fleet at May the 18th, I think 1703, correct me if I'm wrong, you know, they were actually made to protect St. Petersburg. So they have a very strong historical relationship and to some extent they still have. And also St. Petersburg is also and still is and it's growing bigger and bigger.

The educational, they have the Naval Academy, they have the naval staff. So the Baltic Fleet has very, very strong relationships with St. Petersburg historically and even today. but as a naval base Baltisk is much more important from a war fighting standpoint Thanks, and Jonas did you have anything to add either on why the Baltic fleet is referred to as the former fleet

or the significance of the relationship with St. Petersburg Anders put it very well the thing with the former fleet it's actually sort of a word play because former fleet, the word former is very close

in russian is very close to the word baltic so it's a word play and it's the same with the northern fleet where northern is exchanged for strong the strong fleet so so it's totally unofficial but it still says something about how history has shaped its current role thanks and then andres back to you uh you hinted a little bit at this already but what what impact did the of the soviet union have on the baltic fleet as we said before they lost all their allies around the the baltic the baltic coast and they lost their the infrastructure so that would say i would say that's the the biggest change and also east germany and poland you know they had their own their own armed forces they can work with so the whole russian

or the USSR military machine declined, but the Baltic fleet suffered more than, for example, the army and the air force, because now they're down to one ice-free harbor, which is on the peninsula. You could reach it by Polish artillery. And if you want to go to St. Petersburg, you have to run into the Gulf of Finland.

So strategically, it was a very, very big difference for them. And also for those who doesn't really have the map in front of them, the very, very important is the Straits of Öresund between Sweden and Denmark, because the operational area for the Baltic fleet is not only the Baltic. It's also, theoretically, and if you look at their doctrine, it's also the North Atlantic to go up and do things together with the Northern Fleet and also the Mediterranean. And now they lost the initiative to control the Straits of Aresund between Sweden and Denmark. So we could talk a lot about this, but there's a huge implication, especially for the Navy, I would say. What would you say, Jonas? Yeah, absolutely. And the role of, how do you say, the Baltic fleet and the city of St. Petersburg have sort of evolved in symbiosis.

And the big, geopolitically, the situation in the southern east Baltic Sea region is totally different now from the 80s. But in a way, it's important to underscore that even if the situation is changed, Russia doesn't have the same kind of infrastructure and doesn't have the possibility to have such a huge fleet that it had in the 80s. It's not a less dangerous situation. It's just another type of dynamic because Russia feels very insecure in this vulnerable position. So, while in the 80s it controlled more or less, together with the Warsaw Pact, countries all the way from St. Petersburg to south of Denmark. So, it's important to understand it's the dynamics that have changed, not the degree of if it's dangerous or not, so to say. Thanks. Jonas, what are the three roles you've identified for the Baltic fleet?

Well, I tried to sort of lay down two to three roles. And the first is something that was already discussed and that Anders expanded very well on. And that's the geographical proximity to St. Petersburg and how this has affected the Baltic Sea throughout its 300 years of existence. And you can see until this day that you have certain roles, certain tasks that are sort of shaped because of this, because of the fact, as Anders said, that we have Maritime Naval Center of St. Petersburg, which includes schools, research organizations and so forth. But one example of this is that the two main training vessels are operated by the Baltic Fleet. Another example is that the Baltic Fleet is very involved in the shipbuilding industry, especially when it comes to providing crews to ships undergoing sea trials. And this is not only for ships that are built for the Russian Navy.

It's also for export. So it's very shaped by these relationships. That's the first one. The second one is something that we've also been into, and that's the changed geopolitical realities of the Southeast Baltic Sea. Protecting the territorial integrity of Kalinja is a much more emphasized task these days than ever. And this is something that becomes very obvious when we take a closer look at the organization. because the land-based component of the Baltic Fleet is huge. Currently, a full motorized rifle division is being set up in the Baltic Fleet Army Corps,

and it operates three aviation regiments, two air defense regiments. And this is not only to protect the naval base in Baltic or in the Kaliningrad region itself. It's sort of an important part in the overall defense of the Western Russia. and ultimately the capital region. So this territorial integrity part is much more important today. A third role is, of course, to conduct different types of naval operations, predominantly in the Russian coast layers of the Baltic Sea,

but also in the whole area of responsibility, which Anders told us about, which reaches beyond the Danish straits. but also to conduct regular out-of-air operations and as Anders told us they have contributed to the Russian permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea they have supported Russia's military operations in Syria

and operating in the Indian Ocean by Baltic Sea vessels has become much more useful so it's really a very balanced fleet for both Baltic Sea operations but also outer bay operations. I have to add though, what you said Jonas is more than correct from a military standpoint but I also think, which is very interesting for the Swedish Naval Intelligence of course

that the Baltic Fleet also has a very special role as a fleet because all the new weapon systems all the new ships, domestic or for export is being tested outside Kaliningrad. So the Baltic fleet, you know, even if they don't get all the goodies, everything is funneled through them and all the missile tests and everything, because it's from a SIGINT perspective, you all know it kind of goes away, it reaches a long way,

But they don't do any qualified tests in the Gulf of Finland. And also being supportive to those industrial and weaponry evolution of the Russian fleet is also a very decisive and important role for the Baltic Fleet. Absolutely. Jonas, can you explain what happened and why in the Baltic Fleet leadership purge? I think that was in 2016. Yeah, this is a special or a dramatic event that sort of unfolded in mid-2016, when more or less the whole Baltic Fleet leadership was removed more or less overnight. Altogether, some 35 senior officers, including the Baltic Fleet commander and his chief of staff, were sacked. And the official version of this is that it happened due to neglect in several aspects.

For example, the Baltic Fleet units were assessed to have generally low combat readiness and the leadership had failed to sort of address misconducts among officers. It's not expanded on what type of misconduct this is, but it's just generally. Perhaps the most severe accusation is that the leadership was actively withholding information to the higher level of command. So this resulted in this very dramatic event. Studying this from the outside, it's hard to say really what has come out of this. Of course, they got the new commander-in-chief, and the weekly journal of the Baltic Fleet seems to have more articles concerning how seriously the new Baltic Fleet leadership look upon corruption and misconduct and stuff like that. But interviews with the military prosecutor officer is more frequent and so on. But there's also an alternative story that at least one well-known Russian media outlet has reported on.

And that could have been some sort of political dimension to this as well, suggesting that it's sort of the result of a struggle between two naval factions within the Russian Navy. But again, it's very hard to say what is actually true here, but it had a very big impact on the Baltic Fleet, that's for sure. I think this is very, very interesting because I had the great pleasure of visiting Viktor Kravchuk, the former admiral of the Baltic Fleet, and I think it was 2011. so the Swedish commander in chief of the navy and me and two other guys were there for an official visit for three days so I've spent the best part of three dates with Viktor Kravchuk and his chief of staff and deputy but that was before we froze the relationships with the Russian and And as Jonas said, it's very hard to tell what's true.

I mean, either they sent false reports about the operational readiness. Another thing is that they say that the new commander in chief, Vladimir Korolev, wanted to kind of clean out the old naval officers that were kind of being put in position by the former commando, Victor Kirko. Yeah. And that's probably part of the truth. And also, and now referring to my personal experience, I'm not going to go into details here on the pod, but he was constantly surrounded by, let me put it, non-military guys. And there we go into the Amber Mafia case, that they were involved in criminal or illegal mining of amber. So there's kind of three clues to it. And I think all three clues has some extent of truth to it. Because we went to dinner every night and there were some seriously strange people at the dinners. I mean, you would expect, you know, a chief of the Navy, chief of staff, the chief of the naval base, but there were some other guys too. Interesting enough.

Thank you. Jonas, how is the Baltic Fleet organized administratively? Is this an operational command, an administrative command, or some combination of the two? it's it's last it's some kind of combination of the two and it's it's a very interesting question but it's really difficult to provide a clear answer but my assessment is that the the Baltic Fleet headquarters is much very much both operational as well as administrative command to my understanding that the naval command has traditionally had more or less full discretion and planning and executing naval operations. But in 2010, this changed as the fleets were now operationally subordinated to the joint strategic commands newly set up in the Western Military District

in the case of the Baltic Fleet. But I think this was merely a sort of a decentralization of command from the naval command to the regional command and should not have affected the discretion of the Baltic Fleet commanders so much. At the same time, this also meant that the Baltic Fleet commander had to take orders from a general rather than an admiral, and that could have some symbolic effects as well. But it's still an operational strategic formation within the Russian armed forces, so it doesn't have a changed operational status. When it comes to the administrative responsibility of the Baltic Fleet, the situation has definitely changed.

Because prior to the military reform a decade ago, the Kaliningrad region had a special military administrative status that was unique in Russia. This was removed, and the Baltic Fleet, or the Kaliningrad region, was administratively subordinated to the Western Military District. But then again, the fleets, including the Baltic Fleet, It has retained important tasks that are normally handled by the military districts. And this includes, for example, that the new backbone of the new Russian military logistics system is not based entirely on the military districts, but also on the four fleets.

So the fleets have retained control over the logistic parts of the administration. And this makes sense because most of the Russian fleets are sort of located in these isolated areas, such as Crimea, Kalinia, Kola Peninsula and Kamchatka. So you have to have everything under one single command. So even if this has happened, that it's subordinated to the joint strategic command in St. Petersburg, it still retains several administrative responsibilities. Thanks. And then how has the Baltic Fleet ship inventory evolved in the last 10 years? Well, it's evolved a lot, especially in the beginning. It was sort of the first naval formation that really got new, larger warships. Because in the years 2007 to 2013, four new corvettes and one frigate was commissioned to the Baltic Fleet. so the

bottom field was actually a sort of early starter since the last five years deliveries has really picked up because especially when it comes to smaller vessels such as small missile ships

and touch and rescue boats harbour tugs hydrography survey boats but generally the newly delivered vessels are mostly smaller ones so even if the

number is picking up when it comes to displacement it's still many of the larger ships when it comes to auxiliary ships are still 30-40 years old when it comes to future deliveries

we don't know very much but we have some knowledge that small missile ships an additional three small missile ships will be delivered in the coming years and also new submarines, Kilo and St. Petersburg class will be likely delivered in the coming years. But still again, they still rely heavily on auxiliary ships

that are 30, 40, maybe even 50 years old. So it will continue to take decades until the low levels of procurement in the 90s are sort of reversed doesn't affect the bulk of heat negatively anymore yeah and also you you talk about the size which is important you you go into to to frigates and corvettes but also a development for the last 10 years has also been kind of more multi-role and standardized ship and you see the development of the ships classes if you if you start with the sterigushi and then going to the developments. I mean, there seems like

they're thinking more multi-role, but big enough to handle sea. I mean, you see the development of the Boyan-M class, which is actually a missile platform, and now the Karakut, the new development there, which is actually more efficient Boyan-M, but with better sea worthiness. And I also think a big difference now if you look at the development of the fleet is lack of submarines which for me is very very interesting and also the lack of MCM capability for place to conduct mine warfare

I think those two things kind of lacking but we can talk about that later. Absolutely Jonas what was the methodology that you use for counting the hulls? There is an abundance of both official and and inofficial information going around the internet regarding the Baltic Fleet organization and ship inventory. And so there's plenty of information out there, but the primary challenge is all the information from current information. And I started by trying to get a grip of the organization and then trying to uncover what ships and boats

that was part of a particular unit. And when it comes to sort of larger warships and larger ships, generally it's it's they usually attain so much interest so it's quite quickly to confirm whether it should be included into this recreation of a bulky inventory or not but it's more difficult to achieve this when it comes to smaller vessels that are part of the auxiliary feed for example due to lack of information but by studying large amounts of press releases and on exercises and articles published on the Baltic Fleet Weekly Journal, it's sort of nonetheless possible to start to reconstruct this ship. And the fact that the Baltic Fleet operates in a very populated

region, and it seems that ship spotting seems to be a very popular hobby in Russia, it's very helpful to using that sort of internet resources such as ship spotting homepages to get the possibility to sort of assess whether the individual ship is acting or not. Thanks Anders. I think now we can get to the question that you just sort of mentioned about submarines and MCM or lack thereof. What does the combat fleet consist of? Okay, basically this is more of over Jonas questions but basically I mean they're fairly modern except for the the sovereign many class destroyers now fairly modern with the with the frigates multi-role sterigushi which are from baltisk but i also have some older the tarantul

attack corvettes as we call them the the thing i think's interesting is that if you look into the russian doctrine is that they say they themselves that they actually have two fleets they have one old fleet which is actually inherited from ussr which is the the bigger fleet which you see basically in the pacific but also in the northern fleet and they have the light fleet which is the modern free frigates and i would say that the combat fleet of the baltic fleet would be represented what the Russians themselves see upon as the if not a mosquito a lighter more multi-role fleet and I think when you discuss the combat ability and the how they fight one very important thing besides mine warfare and submarine is that

the russian baltic fleet will always fight the same as we do you have you you have air force land-based air force which the distances are so short so you don't have carrier groups you know you have land-based sigint fighters attack and to to evaluate the combat effectiveness you have to bring in air force because they can be they can be you know you lift the horn and you will have them in 10 minutes and if you're talking about the blue water navy without the carrier group you don't have any air force but i think to counting the hulls i much less experience than jonas so i think you should actually answer the question if i missed something i don't know how many actually well it comes my count ended at 227 hunts but then i i just i just had all the

ships that was had a displacement of 10 tons or more so there are probably more than 250 boats ships vessels within the bulk of it counting the smaller ones as well but out of this 227 I think 53 is considered warships, are ranked ships in this four-tire ranked system that they use, of which the first-ranked ships are the largest and the fourth are the smallest. them. And out of these 53 warships they have 12 which is ranked in the first or the second tier

and among them they only have one first-ranked ship and that's the Nastoichevi Savolimani-class destroyer, which has been unavailable the last six, seven years. So that

pretty much sort of narrows in how it looks right now. in terms of numbers. Anders, what did you make of the, it looks like a conscious decision to divest itself of submarine capability. And I don't know how much of a decision it is to divest the MCM capability

or if those ships have just become too old without a replacement. If we start with the submarines, you need specialized shipyards and you need specialized manpower to build submarines. The Russians are good at building submarines, but I don't think that the Baltic fleet has been prioritized regarding the submarines. And also, they make a lot of money of the export versions.

Now it's official, so I can say it. But I mean, I think it's very interesting to know that the first conventional diesel electric submarine that could shoot a cruise missiles or the caliber system was actually the export versions to the Vietnamese. So that's very interesting. And now they develop their own. So I think the lack of submarines is probably based on they don't prioritize the Baltic fleet for the submarines right now. And regarding mine warfare, they have the new class Alexandrite, which is a fairly modern mine hunter. And I think they have talking about 16 to 20 of them to be ordered. I think there's only two or one and a half delivered. One actually caught fire.

But all those qualified MCM assets are designated for the northern fleet to make sure that the ballistic submarines can go out. Thanks. Jonas, how has naval aviation evolved in the Baltic fleet? Well, when the military reform commenced 10 years ago, it was a very initial strong focus on modernizing the air force, the airspace forces. And in order to sort of eliminate double infrastructure, much of the naval aviation was transferred over to the Air Force. And this had the result that the modernization of the naval aviation generally slowed down. But the last five years, the modernization of the naval aviation has picked up again. And this is also true for the Baltic Fleet as well.

And when it comes to organization, the Baltic Fleet naval aviation has grown the last years. They have reactivated the regiments that were reduced in size 10 years ago. And they had a major modernization of the main air base in Stralovsk during the years 2012 to 2017 or 2018. So this also happened, the modernization process. But since then, it's really picked up pace. And they have a set of new anti-submarine warfare helicopters. They have new Su-30S and multipurpose aircrafts. And all the Su-27 fighters have been transferred from Western Russia

when they upgraded to newer Su-35S aircrafts. But they have had these delivers and also UAVs capabilities have been set up. So they have picked up speed, but initially it was not so perfect as 10 years ago. If you're not only talking about the equipment, I would say that if you look less than a 10-year perspective, they do fly more. like you said they have their their shipborne shipborne uavs they fly more and they also have more different kinds of helicopters stations on the ships western countries you know they usually have like a frigate they have one or two helicopters that's organic to the ship and they don't seem to do that that much because they usually fly out of land and stuff but

You see they're much more complicated exercises and they carry much more, especially helicopters, and they're all being improved. I'm just waiting for the KA-52K, the naval attack helicopter. That would be, I wouldn't say a game changer, but start using it in the Navy. Thank you. Jonas, I'm going to come back to you. Is there any sort of assessment regarding what role the fighters and fighter bombers attached to the Baltic fleet would play in a sort of real conflict? Because I'm torn between, you know, being concerned about them flying out over the sea. But I also think they would be very preoccupied with just defending what they have there in Kaliningrad or even St. Petersburg.

Absolutely. It's as we said earlier, it's a very vulnerable location to have. But we have to have the QRA capabilities on place to grow up and investigate Western signal intelligence aircraft and so forth. So we have to have the capability, of course. But it's significant that they don't place the most valuable, high value, newest fighters in Kaliningrad. They place them in places like Besovets in western Russia because they don't want to risk that equipment in Kaliningrad. So, of course, the fighters are an essential part of the air defense of Kaliningrad and the western. But the really, I think the backbone is nevertheless the air defense system, the strategic air defense system, the S-400 that's located in the Kaliningrad, and the fighters are primarily for QA, at least in peacetime. Thanks. And then, Jonas, I'm going to start with you on this question, but I'm sure Anders has some thoughts about it. Were you able to reach any conclusions about readiness from your research?

well very generally one of the main priorities during this last 10 years of reform in russia readiness and availability of forces is one of the main goals of reforming the the russian armed forces until then a large portion of the baltic deep grounding coastal forces for example were catered units with equipment stored in several equipment storage bases around the in the region and this 10 years ago this was entirely dismantled and all units left were all active units fully manned fully equipped and this meant for example that the number of main battle tanks in the Baltic Greek inventory has dropped from 800 to 40. so strong was the emphasis on availability and readiness and I think this this is something they haven't

regretted this, it's very good to focus on availability and readiness, but we started to think a little bit more about how do we think about scalability of forces because the focus was so strong on availability. And also improved training, a larger share of combat soldiers and and more modern equipment has also been beneficial to the readiness in general. I think the readiness can be measured in different ways, but I would say the readiness of the fleet is, I wouldn't say it's excellent, but they put strong emphasizes on that. They have a lot of exercises, you know, just to test the readiness,

small scale, bigger scale. And sometimes we forget here in the Western world that things cost money even in russia and they have a better logistic system so they don't have that you know constant shortage of fuel constant shortage of food or you know the basic things so the the readiness is being tested very regularly in different scales not only like sapad you know huge exercises they do a lot of small scale exercises and one thing which is very interesting is that this is a lot of missiles flying in the in the in the air outside kaliningrad and the russians they test their systems because it's the major test bed for all export and

domestic versions but also you know to boost if not morale so at least confidence they shoot with with the old Tarantuls. They shoot the SSN-22s. They use their missile systems regularly. And I think that indicates two things. I mean, they're willing to pay for it and they're doing it. So it's probably not excellent, but I have to say to some extent, I'm impressed because there's so much live firing. Thanks. And then Anders, I'm going to come back to you uh what's the naval construction capability resident in the baltic shipyards the bulk or actually where you can construct things is it's all more or less centered around saint petersburg and their shipyards are not maybe not famous for being fast

delays in projects or but you could basically say that all the the staple beds or for the ships are full. And so I can't really quantify the capacity, but everything modern is booked and they're working on it. A few years ago, I read a very interesting article about that they had a submarine in Baltisk in a private shipyard, and that was in the press. And as an intelligence officer, it's very interesting because usually you're very concerned about maintenance for submarines this was probably some kind of low low qualified maintenance but the shipyards in St. Petersburg they're so full I mean they have to produce for export they have to produce their new projects but they also they have to upgrade their old ships I think the Baltic fleet is 23 years

old the average ship I think I don't remember you may correct me if I'm wrong so they have three things they need to fill so so the capacity is being used thanks jonas anything to add on uh baltic shipbuilding uh it's it's pretty much what anders said here it's they've built lots of stuff the last 10 years and it's not only for the for the russian mob it's the building icebreakers they're building export submarines, they're building lots of huge varieties. But the latest information in this is that the intention is to sort of trying to adjust the production more over to civil production in the coming 10 years.

But then again, capacity of building ships is more efficient today than 10 years ago. So even if they start building more civilian ships, I think they're going to be able to keep up a very good pace when it comes to renewing the fleet's inventory as well. And I don't think they will do the same mistake. There's still damage because of the low levels of new ships that was added during the 90s.

and it's more costly to not successfully replace all the ships. So, yeah. Thanks. Just a couple more questions. And Jonas, how would you describe the ground force that's assigned to the Baltic fleet? It's labeled a core, but I don't think that size is necessarily analogous to Western formations. You and I talked a little bit about this off-air, but can you explain that? Yeah, I think you're probably right. Even if Russia often shares a similar terminology with us,

but it's not unusual that the Russian notions differ from the Western ones. And in this case, it's a relatively small combined arms formation consisting of two motorized rifle units, one brigade, one regiment, one tank regiment. And as I said earlier, they are forming a division. but that's sort of the maneuver bulk of this formation and then they have fire support they have an air defense regiment and two artillery brigades including one surface-to-surface missile system-based disclaimer system brigade and and so it's it's as you say it's probably smaller than

a western or a u.s but still it's when it becomes a division within the army corps i think it's at least 10,000, 12,000, maybe more people in it. So it's, we have a very, very, very big part of the Baltic fleet is actually ground forces units. And in addition to this, we also have a naval infantry brigade and we also have naval engineers of regiment size and other types of smaller, small sized separate units. Thanks. And then sort of the final question that we have, can you describe the training cycle for the Russian surface ships?

How is it organized? How long does it last? And then how frequently do ships pass through? Well, this is something I haven't had the time to really delve deeply into, so I can confidently give you the frequency or time span. But basically, all ships have a regular, they have to pass certain tests in order to get, to keep their certifications, to be able to carry out all the tasks the ships are designed to do. And the first set of tests are carried out when the ship is still moored in the military harbor. And upon finishing these tests, the ship, and its crew, is allowed to go to sea in order to finish the second set of tests. But these tests can, however, also be postponed due to operational reasons, of course. I don't know the regularity, but I think more than a year they had to sort of do these certifications again. And it seems to be some sort of competition between crews in this certification process.

And it's a lot of prestige in finishing the certification process in a short amount of time. So it has that aspect as well. So generally, I think the quality of training for ship crews has mostly certainly improved the last decade. The massive technical decay that the Baltic Fleet ship inventory in the 90s supplied the Navy bases with a steady stream of decommissioned ships to train ships in putting out fires and limiting the extent of flooding and so forth. So the sort of flip side of the modernization effort is that they have fewer ships awaiting scrapping to train on. But then they also have invested heavily in training facilities to train ship crews in different aspects of ship survivability. And they have one of these training facilities in Baltisk, for example. So they have modernized the training cycle as well.

it's not too far from you know the nato standards if you want to be deployed for a mission or you have you know have different steps you have to pass as as a ceo and his crew in order to participate in different things and we was working with the russian frigate outside the coast of of somalia actually together with with the eu eu nav for and we met the captain and because they didn't have the internet so we had to you know do it by voice to make sure everything was clear and and one of the first things he told us that he was very proud that because he was the first ship that got qualified so by saying that i i make the conclusion that you need to get through certain amount of steps in order to be deployed but there must be some kind of

individuality so if you're a good ceo and a good crew you can kind of go ahead and qualify yourself to like a higher standard or a higher rating yeah the reason i asked that question i mean my previous job was uh in the organization that trained our uh surface ships and it sounded almost exactly like the training cycle that we use. So I thought it was pretty interesting and amusing. Unfortunately, we're out of time for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Jonas Kjelln, Shelley and Anders Larsson.

Jonas, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? My reports or my report on the party feed can be downloaded from our homepage. That is www.foi.se. and you can find my email address there as well if you want to come in contact with me. Currently, I'm working on two things.

First, an article on the Russian Northern Fleet for Norwegian-German called The Article Review on Law and Politics and also a report in English on the sort of Russian naval posture in the Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean since 2013. Right, we'll look forward to both of those

and I may want to talk to you again when both days come out. Anders, same question to you. Where can we find you and what's your next project? You can find me on the Swedish National Defense University on the homepage since I'm a teacher here.

And my next project, which starts Monday, is that I'm going to have I'm responsible for the General Staff College General Staff course for the naval part. So I'm going to be very busy with lieutenant commanders and majors from the amphibious corps for the next two weeks

so i'll be busy teaching distance teaching which is a challenge but it's been very very nice to be here very interesting thank you very much jared yeah absolutely and uh you know my my condolences to you those those lieutenant commanders are really a handful i kid of course um well thank you both again for joining us and to our listeners. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. A pot of rum and a pot of gin, oh Where have they put it in the alley? A pot of wine, both white and red, oh Put it on the shimbo now

So help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley Where have they put it in the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley Put it on the shimbo now