In the coming years, the Russian Ministry of Defense will focus on the development of military infrastructure in the Arctic zone and on the Kuril Islands. This has been repeatedly stated by the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu. In particular, it is planned to deploy two new coastal defense units in the coastal areas of the Northern Sea Route.
As Izvestia writes, their task is to ensure the safety of sections of the route and the adjacent coast. It is assumed that new military units are planned to be created on the Kola Peninsula on the basis of the coastal forces of the Northern Fleet.
Geographic difference
According to TASS military observer Viktor Litovkin, coastal defense units created in the RF Armed Forces may have a different composition depending on their location and tasks assigned to them.
One of the tasks of the Crimean coastal defense brigade is to protect the bases of the Black Sea Fleet and the coast from amphibious assault forces and a possible "enemy" attack from land. In 2016, it became known about the creation of the same connection in the north of the country.
The expert believes that, possibly, anti-amphibious, anti-sabotage units, combined into battalions and companies, will move around the tundra in winter and summer on ATVs, articulated snowmobiles or on light armored multipurpose armored personnel carriers, reinforced with large-caliber machine guns, grenade launchers and flame throwers.
Short-range air defense systems should also be placed on articulated snowmobiles or their analogues - the Tor-M2 and Pantsir-S1 complexes are available in modular versions, they can be placed on any transport base, including articulated snowmobiles.
Cover up Siberia
According to Litovkin, parts of the coastal defense on the Kola Peninsula and the adjacent Arctic archipelagos and on individual islands of the Kuril ridge will perform approximately the same tasks.
The expert also believes that it is not only a matter of ensuring the safety of the Northern Sea Route, which for our country can become "something like the Suez Canal for Egypt", passing caravans of ships with cargo from Asia, Australia and the west coast of North America for Europe, service and the protection of this route, which is beneficial from all sides, but also to protect the natural resources in the waters of the Arctic Ocean.
In 2016, it became known that the Bal and Bastion anti-ship missile systems were deployed on the Kuril Islands Iturup and Kunashir. These units are part of the 72nd Coastal Missile Brigade of the Pacific Fleet, formed in 2014. In Kamchatka, crews of the Pantsir-S1 complex took up combat duty.
The Bastion coastal missile system is equipped with P-800 Onyx supersonic missiles (Yakhont is an export version. - TASS note). It is capable of destroying surface ships of various classes and types. One complex, the ammunition of which can include up to 36 missiles, is capable of protecting more than 600 km of the coast.
Armed with the Kh-35 subsonic low-altitude anti-ship missiles, the Ball complex is capable of eliminating enemy ground and surface targets at a distance of about 130 km. The X-35 is capable of destroying ships with a displacement of up to 5,000 tons. The missile can be used in simple and difficult weather conditions, day and night, in conditions of enemy fire and electronic countermeasures.
