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Dr Phil Weir Profile picture
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Mar 6 • 15 tweets • 7 min read
1) Okay, since there seems to be something of an interest Russian military logistics at the moment, to the usual lack of public demand, a little #thread🧵 on why Russia's naval logistics, particularly in the Mediterranean, have always been a critical time limit on the #UkraineWar
2) An absolutely critical part of Russia's military buildup to its current #UkraineWar was & remains a series of very visible signals, from the High North to the Pacific, to @NATO & others, to not interfere.
3) The most visible of these tended to be at sea most notably with the massive reinforcement of the Mediterranean with two Slava Class cruisers - the Pacific Fleet's flagship Varyag & the Northern Fleet's flagship Marshal Ustinov. It is also by far the most logistically exposed.
4) The reason for this is that while the rest of the Northern, Baltic, Pacific & Black Sea fleets have all been operating relatively close to their home ports at Severomorsk, Baltiisk,Vladivostok & Sevastopol, units in the Mediterranean are operating off the Syrian port of Tartus
5) Tartus, hitherto combined with arrangements like the 2015 agreement to use ports in Cyprus, is vital to Russia being able to sustain a presence in the Mediterranean, but the facilities are in no way equivalent to one of the aforementioned big home ports bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
6) So what does this mean for the current Russian fleet in the Mediterranean? Well, modern, complex warships cannot stay indefinitely at sea. Crews & machinery will need a respite, so here's a quick (complete-back-of-a-fag-packet) assessment.
7) We know that back in 2016, the Russian Navy deployed another large fleet to the Eastern Mediterranean based around two heavy units. In this case the aircraft carrier Kuznetsov & battlecruiser Peter the Great.
8) This force arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean at the start of November 2016 & departed again in early January 2017 after participating in Russian operations in Syria. bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
9) Carrier operations are particularly logistically tough & Kuznetsov was in notably poor mechanical shape - the Syria operation being her last before a massive refit that is still ongoing - so the chances that operation could have been extended are remote
10) Now, partly (one suspects) to reduce the logistical burden that would otherwise have ensued trying to track @USSHARRYSTRUMAN & @French_CSG, the Russian Fleet withdrew onto Tartus to create a defensive bastion to ensure the safety of this vital base
11) This will buy time, but probably not all that much & one has to bear in mind that the first of the cruisers to arrive - the Pacific Fleet flagship Varyag - transited the Suez Canal on 2nd February, having sailed from Vladivostok on 29th December
12) Indeed, in mid-February (obviously before war broke out), the Russian media was publicly advertising that Varyag & her escorts would be heading for home in March
13) Now, of course, the Russian fleet appears to have lost the additional port capacity provided by Cyprus, whilst the Bosphorus route, which is also critical to the resupply of Tartus, is, at best, uncertain for them.
14) Ways *might* be found to mitigate some of these issues, perhaps by urgently extending the agreement with Egypt to include naval basing, & sending supplies on the long routes through Suez & the Straits of Gibraltar, though lack of cash will hinder this. reuters.com/article/us-rus…
15) However, even before this started, my best guess was that the naval force in the Mediterranean would have difficulty being sustained much beyond the end of March. With mitigations & good reserves they might still make it, but it's getting a lot harder.

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More from @navalhistorian

Dr Phil Weir Profile picture
Mar 5
I must confess, I've been wondering for a while how sustainable Russia's significantly reinforced fleet in the Mediterranean was going to be (niche, I know🙄). The scrapping of the 2015 access agreement with Cyprus would certainly make it harder... knews.kathimerini.com.cy/en/news/cyprus…
This logistical limitation, along with the creation of a defensive bastion for the base itself, may well be one of the reasons behind the concentration of the fleet around the Syrian base at Tartus, rather than following @French_CSG & @USSHARRYSTRUMAN
Interestingly (& entirely coincidentally it must be emphasised!) @French_CSG ran an exercise last year practising operations against just such an overseas naval base at Djibouti
Read 4 tweets
Dr Phil Weir Profile picture
Dec 11, 2021
1) Okay, an interesting proposal that obviously one has to caveat with the obligatory point that the @RoyalNavy & @RoyalMarines particularly, have, in fact, been training annually in the Arctic for years.*
*Okay, one doesn't actually *have* to, but I'm going to do it anyway😂
2) However, it's not just the @RoyalNavy & @RoyalMarines who can & do operate there, indeed the @RoyalAirForce is already busy lifting & shifting @BritishArmy @ArmyAirCorps Apache gunships (among much else), to Norway for the annual Exercise Clockwork 2022.
3) While, earlier this year, the @RoyalAirForce were testing new tactical refuelling capabilities to enable rapid deployment of Typhoon strike fighters to Norway.
Read 12 tweets
Dr Phil Weir Profile picture
Aug 20, 2021
@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 Okay, if I may have a go at breaking down @RoryStewartUK's account in the piece there:
1) He is absolutely correct in his assertion that the rapid departure of US air power and technical support has had a catastrophic effect. I don't think anybody sensible is questioning that.
@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 2) Likewise I don't think anybody would particularly quibble with the fact that this was a comparatively small commitment with few (as @PatPorter76 correctly points out, injuries do still count) casualties, & under little domestic political pressure *at current levels* (& this...
@Phillip_Blond @RoryStewartUK @PatPorter76 bit is critical).
3) The point at which his account runs into a fatal problem is the following, & that is that the war is considerably wider than the West's current military commitment. He correctly asks "who exactly, who is President Biden asking to fight?" & then unfortunately
Read 16 tweets
Dr Phil Weir Profile picture
Mar 21, 2021
A point from the Integrated Review that seems to have attracted little attention, but *might* be one of the most interesting moves of all is the "strategic hubs", which will be key to being "persistently engaged worldwide through forward deployment" (p. 73)gov.uk/government/pub…
For any talk of agility/mobility/etc., these hubs & whatever they comprise will form the "foundations" - the geography of any overseas strategy. Some of these hubs appear, in some respects, obvious & are based on pre-existing facilities.
For example, although the bulk of British forces left Germany in February 2020, the remnants at @BritishArmyDEU would seem a solid place to start with what is likely to be a predominantly land-based, continued commitment to @NATO & the defence of continental Europe.
Read 15 tweets
Dr Phil Weir Profile picture
Mar 21, 2021
With the announcement in this @BBCNews piece by @bealejonathan, that the @RoyalNavy is to receive a new "Multi Role Ocean Surveillance ship", to be in service by 20204, it's perhaps time for a little speculative #thread🧵(apologies, as always in advance😉) bbc.co.uk/news/uk-564726…
1st up, this isn't the first we've heard of something like this. Elements of the @RoyalNavy's survey squadron are approaching replacement point, most particularly @HMSScottRN which is currently scheduled to go in 2022, but @HMS_Echo & @HMSEnterprise are similarly due around 2028
The form & purpose of this new vessel would appear to be different, however, with a new emphasis on undersea cables. This isn't actually the 1st we've heard of this either as @AdmTonyRadakin raised it at Christmas (4.06 H/T this & much else to @NavyLookout)
Read 15 tweets
Dr Phil Weir Profile picture
Feb 9, 2021
On this day 1941, the @RoyalNavy's Force H under V/Adm Sir James Somerville, aboard the battlecruiser HMS Renown, with the battleship HMS Malaya, aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal & cruiser HMS Sheffield, arrived off the Italian port of Genoa & opened fire #WW2
Just a week before, Force H had attempted to breach the enormous Santa Chiara dam on Sardinia’s Tirso River (two years before the famous attack by @RoyalAirForce's @OC617Sqn), using torpedoes dropped by @RoyalNavy Fairey Swordfish from 810 NAS aboard HMS Ark Royal.
Led by Lt/Cdr Mervyn ‘Johnnie’ Johnstone, this spectacular attack on one of Europe's biggest dams was unsuccessful, thwarted by a combination of foul weather, Italian AA fire & what was believed to be an unexpected sandbank that grounded the torpedoes before they hit the dam wall
Read 16 tweets

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