Wasn't sure if, or where to post this one. It's pretty interesting. Note: I could not copy the graphical details, which are very interesting and important to the article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/worl ... ticleShare
"OFF THE COAST OF NORWAY — There could hardly have been a more terrifying place to fight a fire than in the belly of the Losharik, a mysterious deep-diving Russian submarine.
Something, it appears, had gone terribly wrong in the battery compartment as the sub made its way through Russian waters 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the First of July.
A fire on any submarine may be a mariner’s worst nightmare, but a fire on the Losharik was a threat of another order altogether. The vessel is able to dive far deeper than almost any other sub, but the feats of engineering that allow it do so may have helped seal the fate of the 14 sailors killed in the disaster.
The only thing more mysterious than what exactly went wrong that day is what the sub was doing in a thousand feet of water just 60 nautical miles east of Norway in the first place.
The extraordinary incident may offer yet another a clue to Russia’s military ambitions in the deep sea, and how they figure into a plan to leverage Arctic naval power to achieve its strategic goals around the globe — including the ability to choke off vital international communication channels at will.
Moscow has been unforthcoming about the Losharik disaster, and insists that the sub was merely a research vessel. The Norwegian military, whose observation posts, navy and surveillance aircraft track Russia’s Northern Fleet for NATO, refuses to say what it may have seen. The only civilian witnesses to the rescue that followed the fire may have been a ragtag band of Russians fishing illegally in the area.
But it was clearly a mission of the highest sensitivity, and the roster of the dead included some of the most decorated and experienced officers of the Russian submarine corps.
To understand why these men may have found themselves on a submarine that can dive to perhaps 20,000 feet — more than 10 times deeper than manned American subs are believed to operate — consider what crisscrosses the floor of the North Atlantic: endless miles of fiber-optic cables that carry a large fraction of the world’s internet traffic, including trillions of dollars in financial transactions. There are also cables linking the sonar listening devices that litter the ocean floor.
Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and his commanders have increasingly stressed the importance of controlling the flow of information to keep the upper hand in a conflict, said Katarzyna Zysk, head of the Center for Security Policy at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies in Oslo.
No matter where in the world a conflict might be brewing, cutting those undersea cables, Professor Zysk said, might force an adversary to think twice before risking an escalation of the dispute.
“The Russian understanding is that the level of unacceptable damage is much lower in Europe and the West than during the Cold War,” she said. “So you might not have to do too much.”
Not just any submarine can do that — at least, not across nearly the entire expanse of the sea bottom.
But the Losharik is not just any submarine. Its inner hull is thought to consist of a series of titanium spheres holding the control room, the bunks, the nuclear reactor and other equipment. Its name, it appears, was taken from an old Russian cartoon character, a horse assembled from small spheres.
The spheres are cramped, and they are joined by even smaller passageways.
A common procedure when there is a fire on a sub is to close the hatches to slow its spread. If that was done on the Losharik, the crew members may have found themselves trapped in small, dim, smoke-filled chambers.
And if they were in the chamber containing the battery compartment where the trouble appears to have started, they may have been battling flames raging in spaces as narrow as a couple of feet, said Peter Lobner, a former electrical officer on a United States submarine.
“That’s the creepiest place you ever want to be on a submarine,” Mr. Lobner said.
‘A Very Russian Story’
The Russian fishermen were out in a small boat, moving eastward, probably in restricted waters, when a submarine burst from the water in front of them, one later told a local newspaper in Murmansk, The SeverPost.
“We were heading towards Kildin,” a nearby island, the fisherman told a SeverPost reporter in a phone call, “and then, about half past nine in the evening, a submarine surfaces. Suddenly and completely surfaces. I have never seen anything like it in my life. On the deck, people were running around making a fuss.”
The submarine they saw was not the Losharik but a much larger vessel: its mothership. The Losharik is designed to fasten to its underside, so it can be carried along for servicing, transport over long distances or — as may have happened on July 1 off Norway — rescue.
Why Russia did not secure the area is unknown, but if the fisherman’s account is accurate, it appears they were the only outside witnesses to the secret rescue operation. They were fishing in a restricted area — but they decided to talk about what they saw anyway.
“This is a very Russian story,” said Jeffrey Mankoff, a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The submarine sped away, but there was no immediate alert from Russia to the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority about a possible nuclear incident in the Barents Sea, said Astrid Liland, head of the nuclear preparedness section.
TASS, the official Russian news agency, reported the accident the following day without mentioning that the submarine was nuclear powered. The SeverPost story appeared the next morning.
Russia and Norway, Ms. Liland said, have an agreement to notify each other in the case of incidents involving nuclear installations. “Unfortunately,” she said, “Russia interprets that agreement not to include military installations such as submarines.”
As convoluted as it is in so many ways, the tale of the Losharik, and the growing power of Russia’s Northern Fleet, begins with at least one very simple explanation, said Professor Zysk, the Norwegian analyst.
“There’s a special place in Putin’s heart for the navy,” she said. “That’s one of the key symbols of a great power.”
The Northern Fleet is at the top of Mr. Putin’s military budget, which included top-drawer items like the most advanced surface vessels and cruise missiles. In 2014, the Northern Fleet put the Arctic brigades under its command; soldiers equipped with the latest gear for cold climate warfare. New generations of ballistic-missile and attack submarines are also being deployed.
With all that naval power, the quickest way for Russia to surprise the United States would be to steam from the Arctic to the North Atlantic, said Heather A. Conley, senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It’s really becoming a much more dynamic area,” Ms. Conley said. “It does feel like we’re updating ‘The Hunt for Red October.’”
There is also an eye toward economic benefit, Ms. Conley said: Russia has made no secret of its desire to control a northern shipping lane through the Arctic as ice recedes because of climate change and to expand its oil and gas production.
Over the last five years, 14 airfields have been opened or rebuilt along the Northern Sea Route; three fully autonomous bases have opened on Arctic archipelagoes. Billions of dollars have been spent on fields for gas production on the Yamal Peninsula, where total volumes are estimated at almost 17 trillion cubic meters. The natural gas from the Yamal will ultimately feed the pipeline now being built through the Baltic Sea to supply Western Europe.
Still, with the extreme difficulty of recovering oil and gas north of the Yamal, and the unknowns of tourism and foreign shipping, the economics may not add up for another half-century — if then, said Andreas Osthagen, a senior research fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, near Oslo, and author of “Coast Guards and Ocean Politics in the Arctic.”
Beyond Russia’s need to protect the nuclear deterrent itself, the key to understanding Russian’s keen interest in the Arctic, Professor Zysk said, is to bear in mind what Moscow does not want to do: become directly involved in any extended conflict with NATO. Russia knows it does not have the resources to win that kind of conflict, Professor Zysk said.
For that reason, no matter where a conflict begins, she said, “Russia would do anything to maintain the strategic initiative.” She said, “The information superiority comes here.”
Russian generals, for example, speak openly of sowing chaos in the government financial system of an adversary, Professor Zysk said, and disrupting seabed cables “would certainly fit into the objective.”
