They will practice missile, artillery and torpedo shooting and will have to locate and destroy a mock convoy, Igor Dygalo said.
Dygalo said the Northern Fleet's heavy aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, the heavy nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky, the anti-submarine warfare ship Admiral Chabanenko, the Ushakov destroyer, the Altai towboat and the Osipov tanker would participate in the drills.
The Baltic Fleet will send its patrol ships, Neustrashimy and Pylky, and the Olekma tanker.
Convoy attacks? Are the Russians serious? Just what is the point of this training? Back when the Northern Fleet was a potent strike force and Soviet-led communist armies were poised to invade West Germany, it made sense for the Soviet fleet to practice attacking convoys since American convoys rushing ammunition and weapons to NATO were crucial to winning the land war if Moscow had lunged west.
But what exactly is the point when the Russian army would have trouble knocking off Belorussia let alone reaching the Rhine? Or are the Russians seriously thinking that NATO will invade mother Russia so they need to choke off our reinforcements?
Sounds more like a bit of nostalgia on the part of Russian admirals for the glory days when their navy was a potent force that required a major Western effort to confront.
Russian ships put to sea infrequently enough that an exercise should try to replicate what they might have to face. This is just embarrasing.
Or is it possible this is tied to the Chinese-Russian exercises recently wrapped up in China that practiced invading Taiwan? Perhaps the convoys are supposed to be American ships reinforcing Taiwan in the face of a Chinese invasion. Perhaps the Russians are showing the Chinese how they'd do it with Russian weapons. Perhaps the Far Eastern fleet is too ill-maintained to put on the show. Or perhaps the Russians wanted ships far from Taiwan to carry out the demonstration to keep it from being obvious.
Ok, I'm not snickering now. Putin's Russia is seriously annoying me. Either they are nostalgic for the days when they were a threat to us or they are still essentially urging the Chinese to tangle with America. Come on Secretary Rice, you were a Soviet expert. Calm Moscow down and get them thinking straight.
