Surface Forces : The Only Missile Icebreaker Gets Plinked
April 15, 2026: A $222 million dollar Russian missile-armed icebreaker, the only one in existence, was damaged by a bomb dropped by a Ukrainian civilian transport. Earlier Ukrainian drones flew 1,000 kilometers to attack a Russian patrol ship near St Petersburg. The drones returned to Ukraine for reuse. The attack delayed the completion of Russia’s second icebreaker by years. At the same time Russia is having problems building new icebreaker ships because of Ukraine War economic sanctions. Despite the sanctions, Russia wants to build as many as 17 nuclear powered icebreakers. Achieving that goal depends on getting out from under the sanctions. That means negotiating an end to the Ukraine War. With nuclear-powered icebreakers, Russia can keep the Northern Sea Route/NSR that stretches across northern Russia from Archangel and Murmansk to Vladivostok open longer and better protected.
Russia, the country with the longest Arctic Ocean shoreline, has long been the largest producer and user of icebreaking ships. Currently there are nearly 200 icebreakers in service worldwide. This degree of activity not only encourages replacement of older icebreakers nearing retirement age but is also increasing the worldwide icebreaker fleet. Russia operates 40 icebreakers, the largest number of any nation.
While Russia is the largest builder and user of icebreakers, they owe much to Finland. Since World War II Finland has led the world in developing more efficient icebreaker designs. One icebreaker innovation Finland did not develop was the armed combat icebreaker. Russia has already built one armed icebreaker, the 9,000-ton Papanin.
The Papanin joined the Northern Fleet, near the Arctic Circle, in late 2025. Construction of the Papanin began in 2017. Armament consists of a 76mm gun, four 12.7mm machine-guns and two 30mm multi barrel Close In Weapons/CIWS for defense against missiles or small surface vessels. There is also space onboard for Uran anti-ship and Kalibr land attack missiles. Four more Papanins are under construction.
The Papanins have a top speed of 33 kilometers an hour and a max range of 19,000 kilometers at a speed of 19 kilometers an hour. These ships are designed to break through ice up to 1.7 meters thick. Maximum endurance on internal fuel and crew supplies is 70 days. The ship crew is 60 with accommodations for another 50 specialists and observers. A helicopter is carried with a hanger to shelter the helicopter from harsh Arctic weather. There are also two small Raptor class patrol boats that can carry 23 people or just the crew of three and over a ton of supplies or equipment. Some small drones can also be carried. There is room for adding sonar and anti-submarine torpedoes. Papanin is similar to current unarmed Norwegian and Canadian icebreakers.
Papanin is armed to protect traffic on the 5,600 kilometers long Russian NSR that links East Asia with Northern Europe. This Arctic sea lane passes along the exclusively Russian northern coast. Russia wants to maintain control of this corridor even though large parts of it are in international seas, outside Russian coastal waters. Russia also has several land bases along this route. These bases are controlled by the Russian Northern Fleet which has assigned over 10,000 troops, more than a hundred aircraft and several dozen warships and submarines to protect the NSR.
As of 2025 the NSR could accommodate nearly 600 merchant ships a year and that capacity is steadily increasing. Because of the ice and Arctic storms, this route can be treacherous. Safety is achieved if the Russians can maintain enough land bases and ports along the route to monitor weather and sea conditions and provide ports if commercial ships must seek temporary refuge. The Northern Sea Route cuts the time required by a third for ships carrying cargo between East Asia and Northern Europe. China and Russia are two major users of this route and Russia wants to increase the safety and security of this route to encourage heavier use. Russia does not charge a fee to use the Northern Sea Route even though Russia has spent billions of dollars to build and maintain this route.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 16, 2026 - 02:38 pm: Edit

Submarines: China Matches US Ocean Surveillance
April 15, 2026: China is using 64 well-equipped oceanographic research vessels, the majority of which were built within the past 15 years. This modern fleet is larger than the U.S. Academic Research Fleet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research fleet, and the U.S. Navy’s fleet of oceanographic survey vessels combined. China’s fleet includes polar-capable ships, fisheries research vessels, and ships designed for autonomous unmanned vehicle, remotely operated vehicle, or manned submersible deployments. A technological showpiece is the Zhu Hai Yun, which operates as a mothership for more than 50 unmanned vehicles, including aerial drones, autonomous surface vehicles, and underwater gliders. Its unmanned vessels can operate simultaneously, providing persistent surveillance of an area extending 160 kilometers across, 4 km above the surface, and 1.5 km below the surface while the mothership remains underway.
China has developed five XLUUV\Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater vehicles measuring 15 to 20 meters long. These vehicles can sense physical data, map the seafloor, and carry torpedoes or mines. The XXLUUVs are large enough to carry towed-array sonars and voyage across the Pacific.
For persistent surveillance throughout the water column, China’s Haiyan and Haiyi gliders can operate for months, traveling thousands of miles and periodically transmitting their locations and observations of temperature, salinity, and depth via satellite. The US has long used its equivalents of these, some of which China has obtained because so many have washed up on stray Pacific beaches after accidents. A military variant of the Haiyan glider is equipped with vector acoustic sensors that can determine a line of bearing to a sound source, as well as magnetometers for submarine detection.
On the seafloor along the First Island Chain, China’s cabled seafloor observatory, the National Seafloor Scientific Observation Network, serves the dual purposes of environmental research and acoustic monitoring of marine traffic. The East China Sea segment is focused on the shallow continental shelf, while the South China Sea segment reaches depths of 3,000 meters. The network consists of acoustic arrays, seismometers, physical and chemical sensors, and navigation beacons that provide docking and acoustic navigation for underwater drones. Because the acoustic arrays and gliders can be a tripwire for submarine detection, the network is viewed as an underwater Great Wall of China.
To improve ocean and acoustic forecasting, global and regional ocean models assimilate data from ships, satellites, unmanned vehicles, and moored sensors for more accurate model initialization. In 2025, China achieved a major breakthrough in ocean modeling with the LICOM K++ model, which provides 1-km horizontal resolution for three-dimensional, global ocean simulations. This is significantly better than the US models which simulate global conditions with only 4-km to 9-km resolution. LICOM K++ can simulate fine-scale processes such as oceanic internal waves and microscale eddies—processes that must be mathematically approximated by operational U.S. global models.
With sustained funding and a blurred line between civilian research and military applications, China has closed the gap in a domain in which the United States has long held a significant advantage: stealthy naval operations. By the end of its current Five-Year Plan, China may achieve parity with U.S. naval capabilities in the western Pacific.
Thirteen years ago, China began installing underwater passive sonar systems in its coastal. This enabled China to monitor submarines operating off its coasts and, presumably, in the South China Sea. South Korea did the same when it announced that it was installing underwater submarine sensors off its coasts and this was apparently completed in 2013. The South Korean effort was in response to North Korea using a small submarine to torpedo a South Korea patrol ship in 2010. China simply wants to keep foreign warships as far away as possible, even if it means trying to force them out of international waters.
Technical details were not revealed by China or South Korea, but this sort of thing is similar to the system of passive they just listen to sonars the United States deployed on the sea bottom in key areas during the Cold War. SOSUS\SOund SUrveillance System consisted of several different networks. On the continental shelf areas bordering the North Atlantic was the CAESAR network. In the North Pacific there was COLOSSUS plus a few sensors in the Indian Ocean and a few other places that no one would talk about. The underwater passive sonars listened to everything and sent their data via cable to land stations. From there it was sent back to a central processing facility, often via satellite link. SOSUS was accurate enough to locate a submarine within a circle no wider than 100 kilometers. That's a large area, but depending on the quality of the contact, the circle might be reduced up to ten kilometers. The major drawback of the system was that it did not cover deep water areas more than 500 kilometers from the edge of the continental shelf. This is not a problem for the South Korean or Chinese systems, as both only cover coastal waters or shallow offshore areas like the South China Sea.
SOSUS systems are very expensive to maintain. SOSUS managed to survive the end of the Cold War by making its sensors available for civilian research and by using cheaper and more powerful electronic and communications technology. While many parts of the SOSUS have been shut down, additional portable SOSUS gear has been put in service, to be deployed as needed.
South Korea had the advantage of being able to get help from the United States about SOSUS and how to collect and process the sound signatures of submarines operating in the area. The U.S. was also able to help South Korea obtain more sensitive passive sonar systems that can identify submarine location more accurately. The U.S. has been doing research in this area and knows that such cooperation would result in American access to the South Korean SOSUS. South Korea also has the design and manufacturing capability for this sort of device. The first South Korea SOSUS system was placed off the west coast, near the North Korean border. North Korean submarines, travelling underwater, using battery power and near the coast, are very hard to detect. The South Korean SOSUS will help even the odds. China’s Internet based espionage efforts have probably already stolen a lot of American SOSUS secrets and that helped a lot.

FYEO

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, April 16, 2026 - 09:28 pm: Edit

The thing that strikes me most about the war in Ukraine - aside from the sheer tenacity of the Ukrainian defense - is the difference in their missile/drone efforts. Russia has been deploying masses of drones - and until their supplies ran low, masses of missiles - in a "general strike" fashion, with indiscriminate targeting that appears aimed at making as many Ukrainians miserable as possible. Ukraine meanwhile has used theirs in carefully planned strikes against key military and industrial targets: munition dumps, air bases, arms factories, transportation bottlenecks, and oil infrastructure.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 16, 2026 - 09:43 pm: Edit

and command posts, Jessica, don't forget the attacks on command posts.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 12:16 am: Edit

And they're also bombing drone factories and electronics factories.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 08:07 am: Edit

Ayup. Altogether, I think that Ukraine is getting more bang for their buck hryvnia via such targeting protocols. Whether Russia is taking their broad-brush approach out of a theory that they can force the Ukrainian populace to cave in, or because their systems aren't quite as suited for more careful targeting, is a question that remains to be answered.

In other news:

The ceasefire in Lebanon - de jure between Isreal and Lebanon, but de facto between Israel and Hezbollah, despite Hezbollah not officially being a party to the talks - appears to be more-or-less holding for now, though both sides are already blaming the other for violations.

The U.S. blockade against ships making call in Iranian ports is, in theory, supposed to allow for other shipping to transit the Strait of Hormuz. In practice, however, shipping through the Strait has effectively stopped entirely. The issue appears to be mines: Iran deployed an unknown number of mines in the standard shipping channels (which are generally close to the coast of Oman), leaving an unmined passed clear along the Iranian shoreline. With that passage now blockaded, and with no indication that the standard passage has been cleared of mines, ship owners are largely opting to sit tight for the time being. One of the kickers here is that Iran can re-mine a "cleared" passage to a certain extent without their now-sunk minelayers; they have something that looks to be a copy of the Chinese EM-56 self-propelled mine, and can deploy them from the shore to reach just about any point in the narrowest part of the Strait.

The U.S. House has voted to extend FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) for ten days. Long story short, some twenty Republican member, along with almost the entire Democratic caucus, oppose reauthorizing FISA in full without making changes that would provide additional protections for the rights of U.S. citizens. Pres. Trump does not want changes made, going so far as to post "I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!" on his social media platform, but that has not moved the needle for the score of libertarian-minded GOP members who are dug in against reauthorization without changes. Without the ten-day extension, FISA would have expired this coming Monday.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 09:47 am: Edit

Trump and Iran are both saying the Strait of Hormuz is open.

Until, of course, it's not.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 09:49 am: Edit

Typo: "making call in Iranian posts" should be "making call in Iranian ports". Too late for me to fix it now; c'est la guerre.

By Jean Sexton Beddow (Jsexton) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 10:03 am: Edit

Jessica, aren't there posts where the ships dock? Maybe that is what your brain remembered? (grin)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 10:50 am: Edit

Jessica, I fixed it for you, for posterity, of course.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 11:05 am: Edit

Thank you, Steve.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 11:11 am: Edit

Those who trade freedom for security end up with neither.

As long as FISA is going after actual bad guys, I want it as is.

When it starts going after hoaxes and goofy conspiracy theories as a political weapon, I want more protection for US citizens.

I will be happy to be the one who reviews each case to see which it is. Someone give FISA my office number.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 11:54 am: Edit

There had been a complaint that FISA was used to unlawfully tap the communications of a Presidential campaign. The 'Gators have asked me to NOT go into details.

IMO, while it's a powerful tool, the potential for abuse is unquestionable.

I wish I knew what could prevent that abuse.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 12:50 pm: Edit

A 2023 white paper from the Brennan Center for Justice …

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 01:26 pm: Edit

The Brennan Center For Justice is notoriously left wing, has produced fake surveys used by Dems to prove false claims, and is not to be regarded as a legitimate source for anything including the time of day.

Like the Guardian, BBC, Southern Poverty Law Center, and others well known to this community, anyone citing them just lost the argument. Do not cite them again.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 03:36 pm: Edit

If you have a better site with a better list, I'm all for it. I think the CATO Institute (a libertarian outfit) has some material on the topic, but I hesitate to go there if they're on your strike list.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 07:06 pm: Edit

I don’t think we need a list to know there have been problems. ANY list is going to be cherry picked to prove a point and too controversial for this BBS.

Cato is not as bad as some sites but does have an agenda and their stuff is not written to inform but to push that agenda.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 08:47 pm: Edit

The US has NOT offered Iran cash for uranium.—Trump (Iran claimed they had been offered $20 billion in cash.)

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 09:25 pm: Edit

Iran gives up Uranium, the blockade will be opened, letting them sell their oil?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 09:48 pm: Edit

Unlikely.

Look at how President Trump resolved the Venezuela case.

Maduro is out, as is all of the known cronies.

Anyone want to bet that the same procedure will be followed in Iran?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 17, 2026 - 10:36 pm: Edit

I do not see us making a raid into Iran to capture the leader of the IRGC, mostly because that would not change anything, another one of those religious fanatics would pop up. It's a military chain of command. There is always an order of succession and everyone knows where they stand in it, just like the Monarchy order of succession.

In my last military job, I was the S3 operations officer for the brigade. The chain of succession was commander, XO, S3 (me), 1st Battalion Commander, 2nd BtnCO, 3rd BTNco, Assistant Brigade S3, other officers by rank and seniority, not including the chaplain and doctor (but the lawyer was in the chain).

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, April 18, 2026 - 12:13 am: Edit

Steve, it has been reported that IIRG leaders are being assassinated by Iranian citizens, three as of last report.

With Israel actively attacking both fixed and mobile check points manned by IIRG soldiers and the militia that for some reason choose to remain loyal to the Mulahs.

If this starts to accelerate, the United States will not need to send in a raiding party.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, April 18, 2026 - 04:28 am: Edit

Jeff, I know, I reported it. That wasn’t the question or the point.

Removing Maduro changed Venezuelan. Removing one or some IRGC commanders doesn’t change anything. There may be a tipping point out there, but we aren’t there yet, and ending the bombing isn’t going to help it happen.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, April 18, 2026 - 04:29 am: Edit

Ukraine is now. Using French Hammer glide bombs with a range of 40 miles to hit targets in the Russian rear.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, April 18, 2026 - 07:19 am: Edit

As of early this morning, Iran has once again declared the Strait of Hormuz under their control with limited transit permitted, and that this state of affairs will continue until the U.S. blockade of shipping to/from Iranian ports is lifted.

In related news: just two days after SecTreasury Bessent said the U.S. would not extend a sanctions exemption on the sale of some Russian oil, the Treasury Department did just that yesterday, issuing one through 16 May.