- Bastion (naval)
A bastion in
naval strategy is a heavily-defended area of water in which friendly naval forces can operate safely. Typically, that area will be partially enclosed by friendly shoreline, defended bynaval mine s, monitored by sensors, and heavily patrolled by surface,submarine , and air forces.Soviet and Russian Naval Bastions
The bastion became an important strategy for the ballistic missile submarine fleets of the
Soviet Union during theCold War . TheBarents Sea was made a bastion for theSoviet Red Banner Northern Fleet , and theSea of Okhotsk for theSoviet Pacific Fleet , both of which remain important to theRussian Northern Fleet and theRussian Pacific Fleet .The
Soviet Union had (and, of course,Russia now has) limited access to the world's oceans: her northern coast is ice-bound at least the majority of the year, and access to the Atlantic requires transiting theGIUK gap ; much of her eastern coast is also ice-bound and requires moderately close approaches to eitherAlaska orJapan ; travel from her southern ports involves transiting first theBosphorus andDardanelles , and then either theStrait of Gibraltar or theSuez Canal .The
Soviet Navy originally attempted to directly contest with the navies ofNATO for control of theblue-water ocean. As theCold War progressed, however, it became clear that the Soviets could not win a toe-to-toe fight in the deep water, and the information sold to the Soviets by theWalker spy ring in 1980s made it clear that the ballistic missile submarines, in particular, were very unlikely to be able to carry out their nuclear attack missions.Realizing their vulnerability, the Soviets adopted a two-level approach. They armed their older, noisier, and less reliable "second generation" ballistic missile submarines with shorter-range nuclear weapons and deployed them as close as possible to the
United States .Soviet submarine K-219 , which suffered a catastrophic explosion and fire offBermuda on3 October 1986 , was one such boat. Meanwhile, they used the information provided by Walker to build both dramatically improved attack boats such as the "Akula"-class, as well as more-survivable "boomers" such as the "Typhoon"-class armed with increasingly accurate and long-range missiles. Then they held those "third-generation" boats close to home, patrolling only near and under the Arctic ice cap. To secure the bastions, they also built large numbers of "Sovremennyy"- and "Udaloy"-classdestroyer s, whose primary mission was anti-submarine barrier and picket patrol.The
United States Navy practiced penetrating these bastions; one such attempt resulted in the20 March 1993 collision between USS "Grayling" (SSN-646) and K-407 "Novomoskovsk", a "Delfin"-classballistic missile submarine . The collision was inadvertent and potentially catastrophic, but did demonstrate that US attack submarines were able to get rather near their intended prey.Chinese Naval Bastions
There are indications that the Chinese PLAN is adopting the concept as well, fortifying the
Bohai Sea for use by its growing number of ballistic missile submarines [http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.60/pub_detail.asp] .United States Naval Bastions
In the sense that a bastion is set up to protect the naval forces themselves rather than a land feature ("e.g." the
Panama Canal ), theUnited States Navy has never made significant use of the bastion concept.
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