back to article Russian-monitoring Shetlands radar station was nearly sold off

The Royal Air Force has moved one of its air defence radars onto the northern tip of the Shetland Islands as Cold War-era fears about Russian military movements start warming up again. The AN/TPS 77 radar – which now resides on top of the island of Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands, themselves the most northerly …

  1. AMBxx Silver badge

    Been there!

    I drove up to the Saxa Vord base a few years ago (after it had closed). Had the air of a Bond villain's lair. Nice souvenirt of one of the warning signs, but never plucked up the courage to go through the holes in the fence for a good look round.

    1. TheVogon

      Re: Been there!

      "but chunks of it are still a holiday lodge"

      Presumably no need to use a microwave to warm your food....

  2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Whoever controls the GIUK gap can either bottle up Russia's Atlantic fleet in a relatively safe place (sorry, Norway) or let it rampage across the world's seas.

    Somebody still lives in the delusional glory days of the 18-19th century. That somebody is also forgetting how "successful" that was in bottling the Dutch, the Free Trade Alliance, the Swedish (in their hayday), etc.

    The only way you can bottle a fleet armed with supersonic (and shortly hypersonic) nuclear tipped cruise missiles in international waters outside the 200 mile economic zone of control is diplomacy. Failing to realize that and trying that for real equates to WW3.

    I am leaving out of the equation the fact that one of the Russian Peter the Great class nuclear battlecruisers alone can probably sink everything UK can scrape as "fleet" at the moment. All it takes is for it to open fire in earnest (even without resorting to tactical nukes which it has as well). This is without adding its escorts into the equation. The only chance UK stands is if instead of "sorry Norway" it is "thanks Norway and the rest of NATO please". Norway actually makes PROPER anti-ship missiles which stand a chance to penetrate Russian AA defences and has "frigates" (really should be destroyers) armed with them. Compare that to the UK fleet which does not even carry anti-ship missiles any more (not that the ancient Block 1 Harpoon it used to carry would have been of any use against modern AA).

    And even then, it the event of "bottling" it would be "only" WW3.

    Just to be clear - the fact that the radar site is in place is good on a gazillion of fronts including tracking the Russian Northern Fleet. Coordinating search and rescue operations, tracking and intercepting "peaceful merchant ships" by some er... psychotic countries. Bottling the Russian Northern Fleet however... Someone needs to be put on the suicide watch and/or run through a medical exam to be discharged for psychotic delusions.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      You forgot to mention submarines and aeroplanes... The RN hasn't assigned a serious anti-ship role to its frigates since at least the 70s. They do ASW, and the destroyers do air defence. The attack submarines have that job, along with aircraft.

      1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        You forgot to mention submarines and aeroplanes...

        No I have not.

        1. The latter do not presently EXIST. How many operational F35Bs does UK have to load on Queen Lizzy? Nil. Even if it had any , none of its stand-off missiles will penetrate the AA umbrella of a modern fleet (even if they get close enough to fire them). Given a choice of a stealthy, manoeuvring in final approach sea skimming (sub-2m above wave ridge) missile of the type Norway bolts on anything that floats and UK non-exist fleet aviation... I do not think there is a choice actually to start off with. The first one stands a chance. The second does not even exist and even if it existed its chances would be barely hovering above zero.

        2. The subs are a more interesting proposition, however the Northern Fleet is not the Argies. Its ASW is on par with NATO. Even if we assume that there will be no Bears patrolling the immediate vicinity leaving solely the ship's ASW capabilities, the chances of doing a General Belgrano and torpedoing Peter The Great while it is in international waters are rather slim.

        The Admiralty is living in the past. It is still reliving the sinking of the Duke Of York + the Repulse and the glory of torpedoing a second hand WW2 light cruiser US sold to a 3rd world country with WW2 ASW in international waters. Neither one applies to the budget available and the threats at hand. Going back to "sorry Norway" - their patrol boats alone have more anti-ship bite than the entire UK fleet. They are similar to the Chinese missile boats just with MORE missiles per boat and MORE stealthy.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          > The Admiralty is living in the past.

          This issue has nothing to do with strategic defence or anything similar. It's all to do with broadening the trope-du-jour of demanding more MOD-spend from the Treasury. We've had widely trailed speeches, dutifully reported on the front page by the BBC, about some military type seeing reds under the bed, and other drips of info creating a new threat against which to spend money. The strategy is not defence, it's pork.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            "This issue has nothing to do with strategic defence or anything similar. It's all to do with broadening the trope-du-jour of demanding more MOD-spend from the Treasury."

            It's not just about routing more tax-payer's money in to the hands of the arms industry shareholders; it's also about distracting people from the domestic problems of political incompetence and uncertainty by misrepresenting reality to try to give the illusion of an even more potentially serious threat.

            The deception is given away in statements like "We will always protect our skies from Russian aggression. This radar is a vital part of the UK's defences as we react to intensifying global threats and reinforce our ability to tackle them. Russia's actions are not limited to Europe's eastern borders – the threat to British livelihoods is severe and real." which do not bear informed inspection.

            Flying signals-intelligence and reconnaissance aircraft around a country's borders, outside its airspace, does not count as aggression, whether its the Russians flying their recon aircraft around our borders or the West flying its recon aircraft around the Russian, Chinese and NorK borders.

            Also, just referring to these sig-int & recon flights as 'military', without clarifying their purpose, is also intentionally deceptive because they know that the general public will interpret 'military' aircraft to mean bombers. And the funniest aspect of that is that bombers are pretty much obsolete as a concept in symmetrical conflicts because they're too vulnerable; they only have value in highly asymmetric conflicts where the opposing side has no means to shoot them down.

            1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

              And the funniest aspect of that is that bombers are pretty much obsolete as a concept in symmetrical conflicts because they're too vulnerable; they only have value in highly asymmetric conflicts where the opposing side has no means to shoot them down.

              Indeed. They are lost even in highly asymmetric conflicts. Way too many manpads floating around and some of them now have the capability of hitting targets up to 8km altitude nowdays.

              as 'military', without clarifying their purpose

              The purpose of the sabre rattling rhetoric (and the paranoia around it) is that if a modern naval patrol aircraft with a modern ASW sensor suite passes directly over a submarine, especially a large one it has a significant chance (above 50%>) to pick it up and light it up. From there on it is known and can be tracked defeating its purpose as a nuclear deterrent. Russia and USA take this into account by a combination of sheer number of submarines and keeping subs on-station outside primary patrol zones like the high arctic.

              UK, however, has barely between 1 and 2 nuclear deterrent submarines on station at any time. Compromising the location of the one that is presently on station is pretty much in the "here went our nuclear deterrent" territory. That is the real reason for all the investment into tracking and escorting the Bear patrol flights.

              It is also a reason to which nobody in the UK military will admit as it questions the whole wisdom of the Trident programme compared to the alternatives of having a fixed installation with appropriate missile defence or not putting all of the eggs into one basket target.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "The RN hasn't assigned a serious anti-ship role to its frigates since at least the 70s. ..... The attack submarines have that job,"

        All six of them. With one in refit and one in port, the remaining four are going to be very thinly spread. I can't see them being able to achieve anything.

        "along with aircraft."

        What aircraft? The F35B doesn't work and isn't here (and the carrier is simply a floating target in the era of hypersonic missiles), and the RAF have no maritime reconnaissance capability at all, and no inventory of anti-ship missiles, nor aircraft equipped to launch them.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "the RAF have no maritime reconnaissance capability at all, and no inventory of anti-ship missiles, nor aircraft equipped to launch them."

          Iceland isn't that far away (it's within the operational range of a Tornado GR4), and we do have a bunch of Storm Shadow missiles. They might not be the stealthiest missiles in the world, but I'm sure they worry Russian Navy captains.

          There's also the Eurofighter, which was actually designed for this sort of thing (turns out preparing for the last war occasionally comes good).

          On top of this, while the UK might not have much of a military left, at least what we do have consistently works. The Russians might have one more functional aircraft carrier than us, but I don't think any of the Royal Navy currently have to pal around with a dedicated tug just in case their engines fail yet again.

          Also, while Russia might have supersonic anti-ship missiles, and they might work when fired, they will have a lot of trouble sinking Scotland.

          tl/dr sod the Navy, the RAF will do it all ;)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            we do have a bunch of Storm Shadow missiles.

            A primitive fire and forget affair nowhere near current state of the art, and as it is not remotely steered it would have no use against ships or any other moving targets.

            There's also the Eurofighter, which was actually designed for this sort of thing

            QRA and air defence yes. But only in the context of MAD and detente. The objective was to stop Russian bombers hitting the Strike Command airfield, to give the strike bombers time to get off with tactical nukes. In the day of supersonic and faster cruise missiles, none of that works. The Typhoon is an impressive beast, but functionally designed around a single Cold War scenario.

            but I don't think any of the Royal Navy currently have to pal around with a dedicated tug just in case their engines fail yet again.

            https://www.forces.net/news/all-six-royal-navy-destroyers-now-port-after-hms-diamond-returns

          2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

            and we do have a bunch of Storm Shadow missiles.

            30m above sea level, no stealth to speak of so visible from 50+ miles away and no terminal dash evasive manoeuvring.

            but I'm sure they worry Russian Navy captains.

            Or they are worried senseless you know. They do not even need to power up the VLS with modern AA missiles for these, the AK630s will deal with them. It is well within the design spec.

            It is not surprising that the Storm Shadow are not even considered for F35 and various alternatives including the Turkish SOM are considered instead. It is for all practical purposes an archaeological exhibit in this day and age. Any self-respecting AA will take it out.

          3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            "On top of this, while the UK might not have much of a military left, at least what we do have consistently works. "

            And as few commenters seem to remember, the UK is part of NATO for a reason. No one NATO member other than the USA has any hope of taking on Russia (or previously the USSR) alone. That's the point of NATO, no one country needs a full on fighting force for every eventuality. They all come together.

          4. Muscleguy

            Except the most northerly Typhoon and Tornado base in the UK is Lossimouth, a base prone to shutdown due to fog and low cloud. They closed RAF Leuchars on the tip of Fife and moved the squadrons there, despite Leuchars having much, much clearer skies. Here in Dundee and over in Fife we are in a rain/cloud shadow. Clouds coming from the West linger over the bowl of Perth dropping their load then get caught between the Sidlaws and the Grampians and get funnelled ENE.

            The number of times we see huge walls of jet black cloud to the north of us while in bright sunlight (the rainbows can be fantastic). My mother was amazed when visiting when seeing that I confidently asserted that it wouldn't bother us.

        2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          All six of them. With one in refit and one in port, the remaining four are going to be very thinly spread

          One in refit, one in port, one on station in the South Atlantic, one on its way there to relieve it or on its way back after being relieved.

          That if my math is right means TWO. Not "remaining four". Spread they shall be indeed. On a toast.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Somebody still lives in the delusional glory days of the 18-19th century.

      And with the mighty Putin standing at the bows, bare chested, and brandishing a sabre, who will dare stand against the awesome Russian Navy? Tsush! It's a foregone conclusion! :-)

      1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        Re: Somebody still lives in the delusional glory days of the 18-19th century.

        And with the mighty Putin standing at the bows, bare chested, and brandishing a sabre,

        Could be worse. Imagine they elect a Trump or Farage of their own. Let's say Zhirinovski.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Somebody still lives in the delusional glory days of the 18-19th century.

          "And with the mighty Putin standing at the bows, bare chested, and brandishing a sabre,"

          How long before he commissions a statue to rival the 98 metre tall one of Peter the Great?

  3. wyatt
    Unhappy

    Fixed installations of any kind are almost impossible to defend. I can't see this lasting long if things go tits up. Even mobile installations are very vulnerable, I hope who ever works there has a remote bunker to control the equipment from.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Military fixed radar installations have a gazillion of civilian uses. I used to play as a kid around a radar installation (my mother worked most of her career as a radar operator) and I have seen plenty of cases where military hands over to civilian and back because it is needed and people's life are at stake.

      Tracking the Russian fleet is probably the least important use case - all of its assets have at least one satellite trained on them 24/7. There is also a number of much better positioned radar stations from which UK as a NATO member gets data in real time. Norway alone has several.

      There are however others uses for tracking. To put it bluntly, we live in a time when hijacking a large container or merchant vessel and carting a couple of multiple rocket launchers onto its deck is clearly no longer in the realm of "terrorist state" capabilities. It is in fact, within the capabilities of half of the fringe groups out there. Ships need to be tracked and not relied on transponders. We learned that lesson with aircraft on 9/11. It is better to not need to learn that lesson the hard way with ships.

      In all cases the risk to a radar installation itself is zero so it is useful to have it and fixed installations are usually significantly more capable than mobile ones.

    2. Tomato42

      when things go this bad it will be either past start of WW III or official start of WW III, loosing one radar station will be the least of our worries then

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Any attempt to use the radar detection to actually "bottle" the Russian fleet would seem to be a proverbial case of a stable door and a horse.

    If things had reached that stage of active hostility then a fixed radar installation would have been taken out either by a commando style raid or a cruise missile.

    1. ArrZarr Silver badge
      Holmes

      Getting a cruise missile lobbed at a strategically important radar station implies that you need to shut the door on the chokepoint. May as well not bother and send the missile at something else. Commando raid disabling the radar would be a better bet speaking militarily but would still send a strong signal unless the team were able to make it out undetected & make it look like an accident.

      Better solution is to hack it so that your ships aren't picked up.

      1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        Better solution is to hack it so that your ships aren't picked up.

        You will need to hack:

        1. Feed from Norwegian radar stations - 3+ of them

        2. Feed from Iceland's radars - 4+ of them

        3. Feed from other UK installations

        4. Feed from 30+ observation satellites

        5. Feed from magnetic and acoustic seabed sensors - there is LOTs of those in the North Atlantic placed by both sides.

        6. Feed from ...

        There is only a handful of places in the world which have a more dense sensor coverage than the North Atlantic. That radar for military purposes is surplus to requirements (as in fact is about half of them in this region - it is over-saturated). There are better positioned radars elsewhere.

        So any fleet asset there is for all to see and no hacking, cruise missiles or commando ops can stop that. This, by the way includes submarines. It is a well known fact that a significant fraction of both NATO and USSR submarines in the North Atlantic have failed to conceal themselves and their approximate and sometimes exact whereabouts are known to the adversary. Both sides take this into account in their "doomsday scenarios".

        The radar is definitely valuable for classic civil defence purposes though - search and rescue, semi-automated ship tracking and verification that transponders and coordinates actually match, etc. Military - not so much.

  5. Scott Broukell

    Decoy

    What's needed now is a specialist trained squad to run around random bits of UK wilderness describing convincing polygonal shapes, all done whilst wearing iOT connected fitness monitors and have the results posted on t'webs. With the option of deploying the occasional inflatable ray-domes etc.

  6. Egghead & Boffin

    Y9ou forgot one sue of the soviet submarine fleet in the event of WW3. Sink the US transports bringing personnel and supplies across to man the pre-deployed equipment they stored in Europe. It's the Atlantic Convoy scenario all over again.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's the Atlantic Convoy scenario all over again.

      No it isn't. Convoys would be too slow (even more so in organising than the actual travel element), and far too vulnerable. There's no high capacity fast liners any more, and a few commandeered cruise liners would take a week - most of it outside land based air cover, in very deep water. There's some supplies would have to come by ship, but NATO couldn't afford to risk its scant and ill equipped navies escorting supplies of burgers.

      In the event of things kicking off in Europe, any US support (apart from standing deployments) would have to come in by air, and that has been the case for the past fifty plus years. That's why USAF have over 200 C17s, and 45 C5s, and why the runways at several UK bases were much longer than would be needed for fighters and bombers. Post Cold War they'd probably need to use civilian airports as so many of the military airfields have closed.

  7. John Styles

    School

    In the 90s we stayed in a B&B near there (and did have a drive up to what you could see IIRC). The proprietor was an ex-stonemason who had become allergic to chemicals he needed, and his wife was a teacher at the school http://ahistoryofrafsaxavord.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/haroldswick-school.html (now closed).

    When we flew up there from Birmingham the flights were more expensive than ones to New York.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nice, well know where the Russian's are

    Perhaps we can gather a crowd to throw stones at them or something...

    The two quick reaction fighters are, I believe, the ONLY two quick reaction jets available, regardless of them being of an adequate type.

    The Russian fleet may be full of old and partially operational ships, but there are still a lot of them compared to ours which you can count in fingers. After all we can manage to send a whole minesweeper after their fleet.

    I'm not saying we shouldn't bother, but ultimately our military is now so small as to be almost immaterial, and the best we can hope for is someone being able to shout take cover if something kicked off.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nice, well know where the Russian's are

      our military is now so small as to be almost immaterial

      Being small doesn't matter if you can pack a punch. Unfortunately, in this instance, British forces are both small and can't pack any punch. There's no maritime patrol aircraft, no air to ship missiles, the RN have no surface launched anti-ship missiles, and their frigates and destroyers carry less weaponry than an Israeli gunboat of half the size or less.

      It is often said that the military prepare to fight the last war, but the evidence suggests that the only war MoD have prepared for is the farcical Cod War of 1972. You'd have thought the imbeciles of government would at least have the wisdom to avoiding being quite so bellicose about "Russian aggression" when the UK (a) can't defend itself, yet (b) has been a far more frequent participant in distant wars than Russia for the past two decades or so.

  9. 3man
    Meh

    AWACS

    Probably a lot cheaper to run a radar station than to pay for continuous AWACS coverage of that area. When you tot up things like tanker support it probably gets eye wateringly expensive.

    A ground based radar is well capable of spotting the odd Bear lumbering through international airspace at medium altitude and it will play well with the kind of people who get palpitations every time a Russian plane flies within 200 miles of dear old Blighty.

    As this is a ground based radar, by the time it spotted any Russian ships it would be too late anyway (as happened in 2013 when a Russian cruiser got to within 30 miles of RAF Lossiemouth).

    Actual military value? Saves wear and tear on AWACS... um...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: AWACS

      Actual military value? Saves wear and tear on AWACS... um...

      We only have six operational, and at least one is out of service for systems upgrades in a rolling programme that runs to 2025. At least one other will be in overhaul or repair at any given time, you'd be lucky to get better than 70% airborne availability other than as a short term panic, so that's at best four aircraft to cover the entire defence environment of the UK (and ignoring that there's often one in use around the Middle East).

  10. Lars Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Back to this

    Atomic Cafe is a collection of stuff I suppose all my age farts must have seen many times before. Makes me a bit nostalgic, probably the music, and who doesn't love a big bang.

    We never did any "duck and cover" in Finland during those years, how about Britain?. Anybody who knows about Russia then.

    Did the Americans, my age, ever recover.

    https://vimeo.com/25154726

    Also on Youtube.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "We never did any "duck and cover" in Finland during those years, how about Britain?."

    Not in my city in England.

    I don't remember any Junior School lessons about politics or even history. Secondary School "Social and Economic" history for "O" Level examinations stopped short of even WWI - and wars in general were a minor side issue about their effect on economics. Our junior Physics teacher had been a submariner - and was easily led into reminiscences if we became too bored. Nothing particularly about the war as such though.

    I don't remember being particularly concerned about a nuclear strike. For most post-war born kids WWII seemed very distant - only 12 years after the end. Kids lapped up the excitement of things like the TV documentary series "War At Sea".

    Even gaps in the rows of houses left from occasional single bomber raiders were regarded as not particularly remarkable. The local army reserves had their Drill Hall at the end of the street. It was an event to see their armoured convoy going out probably once a year - leaving tank track marks on the streets and main roads.

    In the 1960s air shows featured state-of-the-art jets like the EE Lightning - which we took as a technological marvel rather than an expression of defence necessity.

    BBC TV had a very scary children's drama serial about children in the Warsaw Ghetto. I remember it was many years later before I realised it was "Warsaw" in Poland - not nearby Walsall down the road.

    As a pre-teen in the 1950s I did have sleepless nights worrying about catching polio after the very scary Ministry of information film on TV.

    In the 1960s my father was in the Civil Defence Corps that was supposed to do something to help their local populations in the event of a nuclear strike. Basically the same as the old WWII Air Raid Wardens - but with no chance of being particularly effective if they were ever deployed.

    My father was a shift worker so missed at least one in three weekly training meetings. He was still awarded his "qualified" certificate.

    Apparently disbanded in 1968 - probably when someone decided it was a waste of money.

  12. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Dr. Strangelove suddenly seems relevant again

    We'll meet again,

    don't know where,

    don't know when

    ...

  13. G R Goslin

    The good old days

    I was a J/T Radar Fitter at the time of the ROTOR programme, in the late fifties. The unit I served with in North Germany, ran a type 80 radar. We were told that in the case of conflict, the site was only reckoned to have a life of 24 hours, so nothing was put underground. I was a bit surprised on Googling the site, to discover that the site is still a radar station, and that the Operations building is still as it was. Sadly, of the Type 80 and it's accompanying height finders, there's no trace. At the time we had another type 80 station, RAF Aird Uig in the Outer Hebrides. A friend of mine from radar training was posted there. Because of the high winds in the area, the 80 turning gear was powered by four 50HP motors, rather than the usual two.

  14. Paul Martin
    Headmaster

    Unst

    "...the island of Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands..."

    It's certainly the most northerly inhabited island now that the Muckle Flugga lighthouse is automatic. The most northerly is, IIRC, the tiny islet of Out Stack.

  15. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Megaphone

    BY GOLLY!

    That Putler chap is a right PITA.

    Gentlemen, we must sink the Bismarkoff! The Prime Minister demands it!

  16. Muscleguy

    The only problem

    Is that the MoD closed RAF Leuchars and moved the Typhoons and Tornadoes up to RAF Lossiemouth which is known to be at large risk of fogs and low cloud, unlike Leuchars.

    I'm reminded of the second time the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier battle group appeared off the Moray Firth and the MoD was reduced to asking local fishing skippers to keep an eye on the pesky Russkies because firstly the bad weather the Russkies claimed they were sheltering from (right in the middle of the oilfields) prevented aircraft from doing so and it took about 48hrs for a suitable class escort ship to steam all the way from Devonport. There being NO surface ships deployed to protect the oilfields, NONE. They could base it at Rosyth for eg, handy for such things but no, better to interdict drugs bound for the US in the Caribbean.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I seem to recall that when RAF Saxa Vord was shut down the govt at the time said that civilian radar assets would fill in the gap left by the station (without actually saying which assets).

    Well, that obviously worked out well, didn't it?

    *Damned if I can find the article now. I was sure it was on El Reg 'back in the day'!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Russian Aircraft Carrier?

    “A Russian surface fleet sailing through the GIUK gap needs air cover to stop NATO aircraft from bombing it and sinking it. Hence that surface fleet will almost certainly include an aircraft carrier.”

    That smoke belching thing? Looks like it might actually be less effective than the QE (assuming the QE ever works).

  19. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    A President tweets.

    And after PM May made such an effort to cozy up to President Putin. Sad..

  20. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Joke

    Another President tweets.

    <Russian accent >

    We wants it

    We needs it

    Britain must have hard Brexit and leave NATO.

    </Russian accent >

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Cold War era fears about Russian military

    "as Cold War-era fears about Russian military movements start warming up again"

    This isn't the Daily Fail, please don't introduce this kind of neocon scare-mongering onto this technology mag. In related news the Russian Federation is placing missile launching platforms on the Canadian side of the US border, purely in response to American aggression :)

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Russia's main threat to the West is posed by its fleet. Back in the days when cheery terms such as Mutually Assured Destruction were on the tip of everyone's tongue, the Russian fleet had two main jobs: get nuclear missile-carrying subs within launch range of America, and stop NATO's fleet from sailing north of Russia and getting its own nuclear missile boats within launch range."

    You are already about 80 years out of date with this comment. Modern submarine launched nuclear missiles have a 7,500km range, so they can reach most of the US if launched in the ocean near Norway.

    The only thing this radar station brings, is the ability to track Russian movements through more of the north. There are some interesting territorial claim issues that are going to emerge soon.

    However, a single radar station seems to be tiny investment in comparison to Russia's northern military readiness: http://www.beyondthehaze.com/new-russia-nuclear-base-north-pole/

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