The World’s Largest Cruiser and Heaviest Interceptor Are the Perfect Pair to Guard the Russian Arctic

Following confirmation in the final week of July that Russia’s first modernised Kirov Class cruiser, the Admiral Nakhimov, and been re-floated, and the subsequent confirmation that the vessel had begun sea trials in the White Sea, questions have increasingly been raised regarding how the world’s largest and most heavily armed warship may be utilised in the defence of the Russian Arctic. The cruiser has long been expected to play a particularly large role in the region under the Navy’s Northern Fleet. Russia faces considerable security challenges in the Arctic due to both the territory’s vastness, which makes it difficult to defend, and to the rapid expansion of Western Bloc forces in the region. The defence of Arctic airspace has long posed particularly significantly challenges, and although both S-400 and S-500 long range air defence systems have been deployed to the region in the past, their lack of mobility means that unless deployed in unaffordably vast numbers, they cannot cover more than a fraction of the territory.

The Admiral Nakhimov deploys by far the largest arsenal of long range surface-to-air missiles of any warship in the world, with 96 of its 176 vertical launch cells being allocated to accommodating missiles from a navalised variant of the S-400 long range air defence system. Not only is this equivalent to three full battalions’ worth of ground based S-400 launchers, but the Admiral Nakhimov also benefits from particularly high levels of mobility due to its use of twin nuclear reactors, allowing this air defence arsenal to be rapidly redeployed across much of the Arctic. The S-400 provides a 400 kilometre engagement range using the 40N6 missile, and benefits from engagement speeds of over Mach 14 allowing for interceptions of hypersonic missiles travelling at speeds of over Mach 8, and for the particularly rapid targeting of new threats.

Despite its advanced air defence capabilities, the Admiral Nakhimov suffers from significant limitations in defending Arctic airspace. Even with its very long engagement range and high sustained cruising speed, the warship can only carry a small fraction of Arctic airspace. No other classes of Russian warship deploy similarly capable long range air defence systems, meaning the warship will have little support from other Russian Navy assets for air defence duties. A lack of forward deployed sensors may also limit the S-400’s ability to engage targets over the horizon at lower altitudes. A potential solution to these issues is to pair the warship’s advanced capabilities with those of the highly complementary MiG-31BM Foxhound heavy interceptors that are primary tasked with guarding the Arctic, and were developed specifically for such a role during the 1970s.

Designed to operate in regions that lack significant coverage from ground control or air defence systems, the MiG-31 has a particularly long range, by far the world’s highest cruising speed at close to Mach 2.3, and by far the world’s largest radar the N007 Zaslon – which is well over three times the size of the largest radars carried by Western fighters. The MiG-31BM entered service from 2009 as a heavily enhanced variant of the Soviet era aircraft with a new radar and avionics, a number of improvements to the airframe, and integration of new R-37M air-to-air missile as its primary armament. The aircraft’s highly potent long range air-to-air capabilities were demonstrated in the Ukrainian theatre, where it proved to be significantly more capable than other Russian tactical combat jets such as the Su-35 due to its combination of superior sensors, its higher missile carrying capacity, and its ability to launch missiles from much higher altitudes and speeds.

The MiG-31’s elevated sensors have the potential to provide critical targeting data to the Admiral Nakhimov to facilitate over the horizon targeting using the S-400 system onboard, much as Russian AEW&C systems have done for ground based S-400 systems in the Ukrainian theatre to facilitate engagements of very low attitude targets at ranges approaching 400 kilometres. The interceptors could thus compensate for a primary limitation of S-400 systems operating without support. The MiG-31 itself suffers from its ability to carry only four R-37M missiles – an issue which was set to be addressed with the development of the enhanced MiG-31M that could carry six R-37s before this program was cancelled in 1994. The Admiral Nakhimov’s carriage of 96 long range surface-to-air missiles could help address this issue, allowing multiple ship-based missiles to be guided by MiG-31s towards their targets, and thus avoiding the need for interceptors to return to base should their R-37Ms be expended. While the MiG-31BM is expected to form the backbone of Russian air defence capabilities in the Arctic for the foreseeable future, the service entry of the Admiral Nakhimov has the potential to provide invaluable support at a time when the future of the Russian aviation fleet in the region appears increasingly uncertain.