Russia’s quieter new-generation nuclear-powered submarines are pressuring NATO’s northern defenses as the alliance races to secure Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, a former NATO commander warned, citing President Vladimir Putin’s emerging "new super weapons and super capabilities" amassing in the region. The rising challenge, he said, also includes Russia’s heavily militarized Kola Peninsula, where Moscow has expanded military infrastructure, including airfields and ports, as it seeks to strengthen its position along the Northern Sea Route, as well as the waters leading to the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap, known as the GIUK Gap. NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum highlighted Sept. 2 that an expanding Russian submarine threat in the region was "serious." "Something is moving beneath the surface," NATO Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum posted on X.
ARCTIC POWER PLAY GIVES TOP US ADVERSARY NEW OPENING WITH RUSSIA AS US STAKES GROW "Russia is expanding and modernising its submarine force, with the Kola Peninsula remaining a key hub for the Northern Fleet. Among them: new-generation nuclear-powered SSGNs, bringing serious long-range strike and sea-denial capabilities into the High North," NATO Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum said. "They may be invisible beneath the waves.
We see them, we watch the developments closely and yes, we take these developments seriously," the Joint Force Command added. The combination of quieter nuclear submarines and Russia's growing military infrastructure across its Arctic coastline means NATO is confronting an increasingly difficult undersea surveillance challenge, retired Gen. Philip Breedlove told Fox News Digital.
"Submarines are one of the toughest threats that we have to deal with — they're very hard to find and track," he explained. "Submarines can get well within striking distance of any nation in the Atlantic. From the United States to our NATO allies, submarines can get close enough to the shore to fire submarine-launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, which are a major problem," the former supreme allied commander Europe for NATO and commander of U.S.
REPORT WARNS RUSSIA USING SHADOW FLEET TO PROBE NATO DRONE DEFENSES Today, countries such as Russia and China are developing similar fleets, posing a growing threat to any nation with a significant coastline, Breedlove said. "We've taken very capable measures in the past to understand what Russia is doing in those waters, and we will now be adapting to the possibility of a quieter submarine," he said. "Any increase in stealthiness or noise suppression by a Russian submarine is, of course, a problem for NATO." Russia's Yasen-M-class nuclear-powered submarines include advanced acoustic-quieting and sonar technology, according to Military Watch and Russian news agency, TASS.
Naval Institute, the 13,800-ton submarines can carry 1,000-mile-range cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles and hypersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, with Russian officials stating they remain "invisible." "Yasen-M-class nuclear-powered submarines are capable of accomplishing all of the Navy’s objectives in any part of the World Ocean while remaining invisible," Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Fleet Adm. Alexander Moiseyev said in a June 17 statement, according to TASS, after Russia's Sevmash shipyard started building the ninth Yasen-M submarine. NATO'S EASTERN FLANK RACES TO REARM AS TRUMP PRESSURE EXPOSES WESTERN EUROPE'S DEFENSE GAP "As is often the case when Putin is in trouble — and he's in trouble now in his war in Ukraine — one of the ways he diverts attention is to start announcing new super weapons and super capabilities that NATO and the West can't contend with," Breedlove warned.
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