The Russian ballistic missile submarine fleet is being modernized but conducting so few deterrent patrols that each submarine crew cannot be certain to get out of port even once a year.

During 2012, according to data obtained from U.S. Naval Intelligence under the Freedom of Information Act, the entire Russian fleet of nine ballistic missile submarines only sailed on five deterrent patrols.

The patrol level is barely enough to maintain one missile submarine on patrol at any given time.

The ballistic missile submarine force is in the middle of an important modernization. Over the next decade or so, all remaining Soviet-era ballistic missile submarines and their two types of sea-launched ballistic missiles will be replaced with a new submarine armed with a new missile (see also our latest Nuclear Notebook on Russian nuclear forces).

The new fleet will carry more nuclear warheads than the one it replaces, however, because the Russian military is trying to maintain parity with the larger U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Sluggish Deterrent Patrols

The operational tempo of the Russian SSBN fleet – measured in the number of deterrent patrol conducted each year – has declined significantly – actually plummeted – since the end of the Cold War.

At their peak in 1984 – the year after the Russian military became convinced that the NATO exercise Able Archer was in fact disguised preparations for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, Russian SSBNs carried out 102 patrols. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, operations quickly declined in the second half of the 1980s. But even as the Warsaw Pact collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the fleet was able to muster a slight comeback in 1990.

As the Cold War officially ended in 1990, the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia descended into financial recession, the SSBN force increasingly stayed in port until in 2002, when no deterrent patrols were conducted all.

Since then, the performance has been a mixed bag. After a slight whiff of new life with 10 patrols in 2006 (up from 3 in 2007), the number of SSBN patrols has declined again to around five in 2012.

The recent decline contrasts with the Russian Navy’s declaration last year that it would resume continuous deterrent patrols from mid-2012. Assuming the five patrols occurred throughout the year and not just in the last six months, the fleet would have had a hard time maintaining a continuous at-sea presence with only five patrols. Theoretically, it could be done if each patrol lasted an average of 73 days. That is how long a U.S. SSBN deploys on a good day. But Russian SSBNs are thought to do shorter patrols, probably 40-60 days each, in which case most of the five patrols would have had to occur between July and December to maintain continuous patrol from mid-2012.

Even if the navy were able to squeeze a more or less continuous at-sea presence out of the five patrols, it would at best have consisted of a single SSBN – not much for a fleet of nine submarines or demonstrating a convincing secure retaliatory capability.

Perhaps more significantly, the five deterrent patrols conducted in 2012 are not enough for each SSBN in the fleet to be able to conduct even one patrol a year. The five patrols by nine SSBNs indicate that only five or less submarines are active. That means that submarine crews do not get much hands-on training in how to operate the SSBNs so they actually have a chance to survive and provide a secure retaliatory strike capability in a crisis. Crews probably compensate for this by practicing alert operations at pier-side at their bases.

Unlike U.S. SSBNs, which can patrol essentially with impunity in the open oceans, Russian deterrent patrols are thought to take place in “strategic bastions” relatively close to Russia where the SSBNs can be protected by the Russian navy against the U.S. and British attack submarines that probably occasionally monitor their potential targets....