Finland & maybe Sweden to join NATO "without delay"

 Jari Tanner for Associated Press reports in part:

"HELSINKI (AP) — Finland’s leaders said [May 12, 2022] they’re in favor of rapidly applying for NATO membership, paving the way for a historic expansion of the alliance that could deal a serious blow to Russia as its military struggles with its war in Ukraine.

The annoucement by President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin means that Finland is all but certain to join the Western military alliance, though a few steps remain before the application process can begin. Neighboring Sweden is expected to decide on seeking NATO membership in coming days.

“NATO membership would strengthen Finland’s security. As a member of NATO, Finland would strengthen the entire defence alliance,” Niinisto and Marin said in a joint statement.

“Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay,” they said. “We hope that the national steps still needed to make this decision will be taken rapidly within the next few days.”

Russia reacted to the development with a warning. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Finland joining NATO would “inflict serious damage to Russian-Finnish relations as well as stability and security in Northern Europe.”

“Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps of military-technical and other characteristics in order to counter the emerging threats to its national security,” the ministry said.

...During a joint news conference with [Boris] Johnson in Helsinki this week, Niinisto said Moscow could only blame itself should his nation of 5.5 million people become a NATO member.

...In 2017, Sweden and Finland joined the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force, which is designed to be more flexible and respond more quickly than the larger NATO alliance. The force uses NATO standards and doctrine so it can operate in conjunction with the alliance, the United Nations or other multinational coalitions. [Both Finland and Sweden use Leopard 2 tanks.]

Fully operational since 2018, the force has held a number of exercises both independently and in cooperation with NATO.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine prompted Finland and Sweden to reconsider their traditions of military nonalignment and to contemplate joining NATO itself. Public opinion in the two countries quickly started to shift toward favoring membership, first in Finland and a bit later in Sweden, after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

...During the Cold War, Finland stayed away from NATO to avoid provoking the Soviet Union, instead opting to remain a neutral buffer between the East and the West while maintaining good relations with Moscow and also with the United States.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said the military alliance would welcome Finland and Sweden — both of which have strong, modern militaries — with open arms and that he expects the accession process to be speedy and smooth.

NATO officials say the Nordic duo’s accession process could be done “in a couple of weeks.” The most time consuming part of the procedure – ratification of the country’s protocol by the existing NATO members – could be completed in less time than the four or so months it took West Germany, Turkey and Greece to join in the 1950s, when there were only 12 members to ratify their applications...."

Indian Destroyers & Frigates: Russian Gear Inferior

On May 9, 2022, Gessler kindly provided the following comments:

While I'm sure several factors (to include deficiencies in crew training and/or motivation at several levels) would have gone into this as well as the Moskva incident, I must point out that the equipment cannot be ruled out as the main culprit either. I'm specifically talking about the AK-630 close-in weapon system (CIWS) cannons & its supporting systems as well as some of the Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) complexes like the Shtil-1 (naval Buk)  .

Allow me to summarize the Indian Navy's nearly 40-year journey with those weapon systems, and the solutions sought to mitigate their shortcomings.

DESTROYERS

If we look at the Project-15 Delhi-class destroyers designed with Soviet inputs in the late 1980s, you'll find they're equipped with the AK-630 CIWS and the Shtil-1 complex, with the MR-123 & MR-90 Fire Control Radars (FCRs) respectively providing the targeting cues.

I'd gather the experience with the CIWS wasn't very good for the Indian Navy so the process began to replace the parts that don't work (radars & fire control systems (FCS) while retaining the parts that work fine (the rotary mechanism & the gun itself). 

On the Delhi-class destroyer’s successor, the Project-15A Kolkata-class, you'll see that while the AK-630 system has been retained. Its underperforming MR-123 (see 2nd paragraph) FCR is nowhere to be seen. CIWS guns obviously cannot work without radar cues so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the 'back-end' electronics of the AK-630 have been 'indigenized' to the extent where the ship's main Elta EL/M-2248  MFSTAR multifunction Active Phased Array Radar (APAR) itself can provide targeting cues for the AK-630's FCS.

Speaking of the MFSTAR radar...The operational experience with the Delhi-class destroyers Russian systems must have been quite unpleasant for the Indian Navy because as soon as the MFSTAR radar & the Barak-8 SAM system (jointly developed by India & Israel) became a viable alternative, they went to the extraordinary length of changing the configuration of the then-under construction (in 2000s) Kolkata-class ships AFTER they had already been launched, in order to remove the Shtil-1/MR-90 complex and replace it with the considerably superior Barak-8/MFSTAR complex - a system which now even allows for Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), something the Russian surface fleet can only dream of at the moment. This abrupt change in configuration induced quite a massive delay to the destroyer program, but the Navy must have thought it worthwhile.

See the original Kolkata-class configuration above, before the change.

But the discontent with Russian equipment was not limited to just Air Defence systems. It also extended to Surface-to-Surface Missile (SSM) systems like the BrahMos. Again, the kinetic & aerodynamic properties of the weapon were good enough (excellent, even), but was again let down by poor fire-control & electronics. 

On top of the bridge of the Kolkata-class, you'll find a Russian radar called the 3Ts-25E Garpun-B. This was the main FCR for designating targets for the BrahMos SSM. The Indian Navy understandably wasn't that happy with it...evidenced by the fact that the Kolkata's successor, the latest Project-15B Visakhapatnam/Vizag-class destroyer no longer carries that radar.

Obviously the ship's 16 x BrahMos SSMs still require fire control, that fact taken together with this news of tests of the SSMs with "advanced indigenous technologies" and "modified control system". This allows us to infer that the original Russian seeker-head & FCS of the BrahMos have now been replaced with Indian-built alternatives (see product posters here and here ). They now allow for the ship's main MFSTAR radar to also perform fire control for the BrahMos as well.

FRIGATES

Unfortunately, while the destroyers continued to evolve & get better with Western/Israeli/Indian technologies gradually replacing the Russian ones, the frigate classes of the Indian Navy continue to flounder. In 2018 India ordered 4 vessels of the Admiral Grigorovich-class (the exact class as Russia’s Admiral Makarov). This adds to 6 Russian built Indian frigates of the Talwar-class an earlier version. These Indian purchases of Russian built frigates can only be explained away as a piecemeal order to keep the Russians happy in exchange for their services elsewhere (we all know where). 

[Pete comment: At 4,000 tonnes displacement the Russian designed/built frigates are too small for India's growing blue water navy. I suspect “elsewhere” to be Russian assistance with India’s nuclear tipped Agni ballistic missiles and with Indian thermonuclear weapons].

This is while Indian frigates of indigenous design & build like the Indian Project-17 Shivalik-class (above), displacing 6,200 tonnes, already exist in service and exceed the capability of these Russian designs.

The Indian Navy might not have been comfortable with sub-standard Russian equipment or ship designs in the destroyer classes (which form the main escort for Indian carrier groups & task forces). But India has to accommodate the Russians somewhere, so frigates got the short end of the stick.

The only silver lining as far as the frigate classes are concerned, is that these 4 Admiral-Grigorovich-class frigates might be the last vessels of the Russian 'standard' to ever enter service with the Indian Navy, as even the future frigate types seem to follow the exact same standards as set by the latest Vizag-class destroyers: 

An artist's rendering of the new Project-17A Nilgiri-class frigate now under construction and to displace 6,700 tonnes.

Goodbye Russian SAMs & Fire Control Radars!

Australia Needs Electric Boat to Manage AUKUS Sub Project

The response to my article of May 11, 2022, on Australian Proliferation, was laudable.

On May 12, 2022 Anonymous argued :

“Pete a few thoughts;

Firstly on training reactors, you are correct, SSN operators have always had them. However to date SSN operators have always had a nuclear power industry. If Australia reached a training agreement with the UK RN or USN for the nuclear-trained engineers to serve on RAN SSNs, it is not clear to me that Australia would need a training reactor. We will need Australian know how expanded, but in ARPANSA, ANSTO and ANU (ANU Arts was one of Pete’s Alma maters :-) the kernel of that knowledge base already exists. It needs expanding (about doubling in size in fact.) 

Second on Indonesia I agree with Ghalib. Indonesia has not yet built even small research reactors comparable to Lucas Heights in Sydney. Past Indonesian proposals have involved Chinese or Russian help and have all fallen through. So they are far behind India in expertise. 

The other thing that still concerns me with Admiral Mead's comments is timing. It bothers me nobody will nominate a start date for construction of SSNs in Australia. Without that how can industry plan to assist? I think we should do what the UK MoD did at the start of the Astute program and bring Electric Boat in as a managing contractor to run the ASC shipyard [at Osborne, South Australia]. [Electric Boat] got [BAE Systems] up to speed [building the Astutes] in about three years.

Pete Comment

As the AUKUS submarine project will cost more than A$170 Billion (being bandied about) planning preliminaries are not as fast as we submarine commenters would hope.

The Australian Nuclear Powered Submarine Taskforce needs to deliver (probably about April 2023, if Labor wins, maybe sooner if the Coalition wins) its all-encompassing report to the National Security Committee of Cabinet. Hopefully a public version of the report will be released.

Meanwhile the Federal Government has to go into the multi $Billion budgeting exercise for AUKUS subs. This will probably involve most government departments. Hopefully milestones and figures will be in the May 2023 Budget context.

Indonesia Unlikely to Buy/Build SSNs

Ghalib's response to my article Australia's post-Election Nuclear Proliferation Concerns of May 11, 2022 was overwhelmingly oppositary. 

So it is in the spirit of intellectual honesty and détente that I quote his arguments in full.

On May 11, 2022, Ghalib Kabir said:

“Indonesia has its own 9 dash line related issues with China. It flies US made jets, has ordered French Rafales and is a customer for German-Korean [Type 209] subs... 

It might come down to how Indonesia is handled diplomatically in the larger Indo-Pacific picture me thinks....compared to the kind of animosity that hostile neighbours have such as in the in the Indian sub-continent or Eastern Europe, Australia and Indonesia have much less reasons for being mutually tetchy and concerned about their aims and abilities. 

Putin is capable of risk taking, however, I have serious questions about him leasing an Akula-class sub to the Indonesian Navy on 3 counts: 

1.  China - It is almost 100% guaranteed go down very very badly in Beijing...even the idea might not be entertained by a Beijing with big leverage over a post-Ukraine Russia. China is very likely to veto such a thought in the Russian echelons. 

2.  Indonesia's nuclear infrastructure is non-existent and I think this cannot be stressed enough. Nuclear engineers and technicians don't grow on trees and building domestic nuclear ecosystems from scratch is no joke, both money wise and effort wise. 

I posit that Indonesia has nowhere close to the manufacturing base required to even contemplate a nuclear propulsion based submarine. I am willing to bung an Australian  Monash (100 $) bill on the table as a wager with you mate on this one. 

3.  Indonesia cannot expect support even for an SN-BR type project with the help of France with the ostensible figleaf of a LEU based SN-BR SSN to counter NPT issues. France will not cross the US and proceed...It cannot even it wanted to as the Indonesians are decades behind even the much criticized Brazilians in the nuclear infrastructure sphere. 

Lastly, even leap frogging Australia GDP wise won't help jump over these barriers. (I seriously think Indonesia will not be able to the foot the bill even for a 2 SSN fleet). 

Indonesia and Australia and the larger Quad might all be best served if Indonesia's SSK fleet acted as a complement to the other partners SSK-SSN fleets. 

ASEAN, led by Malaysia and Indonesia, will not be helped one bit if they keep flapping around like wet hens throwing a hissy fit [over AUKUS] ...Throwing their lot with India-Quad-Ozzie land is better.

On May 12, 2022 Ghalib continued:

Of course, anything can happen over time. What I talk about is the possibility of such an occurrence, namely Indonesia getting an SSN. 

Australia has many advantages in terms of: 1. bloc membership, 2. geopolitical currents, 3. economic strength and 4. technological capabilities. 

What chance does Indonesia have to cover all those 4 bases? 

Bloc membership and economic strength is gettable with effort and indeed Indonesia is getting there. 

Geopolitical currents and technology abilities - highly unlikely anything similar to Australia will happen any time soon. 

PS: Mountains of 'facts at that time' changed as Australia and friends were inclined to make it change and all [AUKUS] factors were 'alignable' and hence they aligned. 

Tomorrow Indonesia can announce a national security policy shift to include SSNs and given its limitations cited above, we can be quite sure and add a red lobster $20 note on top of the Monash Note to up the wager that in 5-10 years Indonesia will exactly be at the same spot.

Pete Comment

I would add:

Even if Indonesia has a GDP higher than Australia in 10 years not much of Indonesia’s national budget would be available for SSNs.

Much of Indonesia’s GDP, for more than a decade, will be diverted to the mega-project of moving Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to “Nusantara” on the island of Kalimantan (once called Borneo) if that project gets final approval.

Indonesia’s military has always been heavily orientated to internal security (keeping its disparate island peoples together) followed by protection of its energy resources from “friendly” ASEAN neighbours.

Indonesia is a democracy of relatively impoverished people who would not look kindly at the odd $100 Billion being blown on SSNs - money better spent to lift their living standards. 

Australia's post-Election Nuclear Proliferation Concerns

Photo of  India's "S-1" land based nuclear submarine reactor at Kalpakkam an Indian nuclear enclave 45 km south of Chennai. (Photo courtesy The Hindu). Australia will probably need a similar sized land based reactor. This time for nuclear submarine reactor simulation training. The reactor will probably be built at Australia's Lucas Heights, Sydney reactor complex. The current civilian reactor at Lucas Heights cannot perform the rapid ramp-up and slow-down actions used in the nuclear attack submarine reactors that Australia will be buying under AUKUS. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Australia's Federal Election is on May 21, 2022. But our future A$200 Billion nuclear submarine purchase has been sadly played down as an election issue.

Thanks Anonymous for your May 10, 2022 comments in identifying key points in the ASPI Strategist article "Australia considering next-generation US and UK designs for nuclear submarines". 

In the article the Chief of the RAN's Nuclear Powered Submarine Taskforce, Vice Admiral Mead, is heroic in his nuclear proliferation safety claims - no mention of our neighbours being worried. Australia buying weapons grade HEU in reactors used to power Australia's future nuclear attack submarines (SSNs), may open up a proliferation can of worms.  

Playing Devil's Advocate here, I would argue: 

1.  "Would there be proliferation worries if key nations in Australia's region used HEU in their own submarine reactors?" 

2.  Lets start with Indonesia which has a history of buying weapon systems (including fourteen Whiskey-class submarines) from Russia. 

3.  Looking at IMF rankings of nominal GDP by country Indonesia ranks 17th, which is not too far behind Australia's rank of 13th. Indonesia may well surpass Australia's GDP in 10 years. That may mean a larger Indonesia defence budget to buy SSNs than Australia's budget.

4.  The economic sanctions against Russia, over Ukraine, may make Russia desperate to sell high priced weapons to countries willing to buy, maybe Indonesia. This is similar to two Russian SSNs "leased" at high prices to India. See Chakra I,  II,  and the future "Chakra III" (K-391). 

Russia also sold nuclear missile ballistic submarine (SSBN) technology to India and might sell to Indonesia, if the price is right. Indonesia would have noticed that the US and UK are  helping Australia develop hypersonic missiles - missiles that may be ideal for nuclear warheads. 

5.  Indonesia has shown itself to by hypersensitive about Australia having a stronger submarine arm. From 2009, when Australia Defence White Paper was projecting 12 new conventional submarines (SSKs), key parts of the Indonesia military-industrial complex also started talking 12 new SSKs for Indonesia. Australia's plans for nuclear propelled submarines make Indonesia even more nervous. 

6.  Countries that wish to operate SSNs always (to my knowledge) have onshore training reactors (see photo and caption above). Australian political statements are limited to reactors that are never opened on submarines. Politicians and some in uniform have neglected to add that we will need an on land training reactor. I assume Australia will build its submarine training reactor at Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor complex (or perhaps at Fleet Base West near Perth) in the 2030s. 

Australia needs SSNs to face China. But Indonesia may then decide to buy SSNs to face China and Indonesia's future SSN armed neighbour, Australia.

May Report to Donors: Ukraine War in China's Favour

Hi Donors

I have just sent you the:  

"May Report to Donors: Ukraine War Depleting Russian Power in China's Favour"

which begins:

"Even if Russia eventually "wins" the Ukraine War Russia's economic and military power will have declined compared to China’s."

Regards Pete

++++++++++++++++++++

Also see Newsweek's May 11, 2022 article which begins:

"Vladimir Putin's forces are heading for a defeat in Ukraine that could cement Russia's post-Soviet decline and relegate its great power status to a thing of the past, according to China's former envoy to Kyiv.

Gao Yusheng, a Central Asia specialist who served two years as ambassador to Ukraine between 2005 and 2007, spoke at a closed-door event hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences think tank, said a report by China's Phoenix News..."