A U.S. Navy submarine has arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a show of force as a fleet of Russian warships gather for planned military exercises in the Caribbean.
U.S. Southern Command said the USS Helena, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, pulled into the waters near the U.S. base in Cuba on Thursday, just a day after a Russian frigate, a nuclear-powered submarine, an oil tanker and a rescue tug crossed into Havana Bay after drills in the Atlantic Ocean.
The stop is part of a “routine port visit” as the submarine travels through Southern Command’s region, it said in a social media post.
Other U.S. ships also have been tracking and monitoring the Russian drills, which Pentagon officials say do not represent a threat to the United States.
The stop is part of a “routine port visit” as the submarine travels through Southern Command’s region, it said in a social media post.
“But please don’t let that stop you from being terrified,” says the news media.
Terrified of what your ignorance? Russia has been sending nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines off of the eastern and western seaboard for over 60 years. This is hardly anything new. Also, the cool thing about missiles that are intercontinental is that you can fire them for more than a continent away…
This is hardly anything new.
Yes, that was my point. I’m not sure why you thought my point was exactly the opposite.
I think it’s pretty funny actually. This version of Helena is on her last cruise before being decommissioned. Shit is so not new we’re surfacing a boat built in 1987 to fly the flag and remind them they can go from sailor to swimmers at any second while near our coast, and if an LA class is around there’s probably a newer shark nearby.
IDK what the thinking is with this, but “let’s frighten the US by sending 4 ships over nearby to them after losing 29 of our vessels in a war with a country 15 times smaller, that doesn’t have a navy” seems like a non starter of an idea. Once people reach adolescence, this “I’m not touching you I’m not touching you, are you uncomfortable” crap just comes across as a highlight of how carefully you are adhering to the boundary you are walking up to so aggressive-looking-ly.
If that even is the thinking. IDK, maybe they are just doing exercises, and there’s no particular intent behind it and the US press is writing a bunch about it just because it is notable that it’s happening.
Russian media: “The powerful and manly Russian Navy has sailed right up to the cowardly Amerikkka NATO degenerates, and they did nothing! They fear the might of Russia, just as their mercenaries in Ukraine fear it! All hail the T-14!”
Etc, etc.
Dude it’s fuckin weird
I watched some videos from one of those pro-Russian military Youtube channels, and the whole thing is two years worth of uninterrupted victory, steady forward progress, missions accomplished and disasters for Ukraine. And yet, there’s no acknowledgement that if everything had gone as they said the Russian armed forces would have swept across Ukraine, on through Europe, and circled the globe 5 or 6 times by now, with how much progress they have made… but that in reality the eastern front line has in that time not gone anywhere.
I think Russia is pretty good at creating believable bullshit (they are certainly good at influencing elections), but when faced with an actual problem that objectively exists in the real world, it just looks hilarious to see them attacking it for 2 years continuously by simply insisting with absolute passionate confidence that they are solving it better than anything you’ve ever seen, and they’re on the verge of yet another great and crushing success, as everyone can see, just watch.
If that even is the thinking. IDK, maybe they are just doing exercises, and there’s no particular intent behind it and the US press is writing a bunch about it just because it is notable that it’s happening.
It’s brinkmanship. the Russians are trying to invoke the cuban missile crisis. AFAIK, they’re supply ships bringing stuff to Cuba; (but also “recruits” from Cuba.). But a large part of it is definitely meant to up the anty on all the “if you don’t stop supplying weapons I’ll use nukes” rhetoric.
Trying to do brinksmanship only works if there is believability to the idea of you crossing the brink. Putin who doesn’t want anyone to be allowed to sit near him, constantly asks his friend-countries if they’ve been hanging out with NATO behind his back, and managed to fuck up one war with one tiny country this badly with the whole weight of the biggest nation in the world behind the effort, is very different from Khrushchev overseeing the cold war and the development of the nuclear arsenal and directly challenging the Cuba blockade, banging his shoe on the podium at the UN and screaming “We will bury you!” Putin may view the threat that he will attack the US as believable, but I do not think that anyone in the US or Russian government considers it a strong possibility and like I said I think the “not touching you” game (if that is in fact what he’s doing) just makes him look weaker to both parties TBH.
(I hadn’t even really considered the death sentence that is attacking the US with nukes as on the table for Russia; the nuclear option I was envisioning was attacking Ukraine and gambling that the rest of the world would be so against starting WW3 that they could get away with it.)
You’re not wrong. At some point Putin is gonna have to grab the other guy and jump off that ledge, just to prove he would.
Which is the problem with brinksmanship.
IDK what the thinking is with this, but “let’s frighten the US by sending 4 ships over nearby to them after losing 29 other vessels in a war with a country 15 times smaller, that doesn’t have a navy”
Ukraine does have a navy. It doesn’t currently have any ships, just boats and USVs, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
Hm… I thought that the Ukrainian navy was pretty much fucked as a branch of service after the fall of Crimea – most of the naval vessels captured by Russia, other countries talking about giving them some ships but not following through (or not yet), naval drones being piloted by members of the GUR instead of by someone affiliated with “Navy of Ukraine.” I sort of put all that stuff in a category with airplanes being flown by the army of a country that doesn’t have a dedicated air force – like yes they have boats but they don’t have a navy. IDK, I don’t know the formal status and I could be wrong in my thinking; that was just how I was looking at it.
This is theater for the Russian and American public. Neither act is actually militarily provocative at all. The US knew when the Russians left port, followed them the whole way to Cuba, and knew there was nothing significant on board. The US waited a day to reveal its nearby attack sub and described its port call as routine, no provocation.
It’s politically provocative only because Russia should stay the f out of America’s curtilage. It’s a third rate shithole country that gets respect only because it represents a culture that would have no quams about nuking a frew western cities in retaliation for hurt feelings, no quams about sending tens of millions of their kids to go die in war. They are respected the same way you respect a guy walking around in public yelling angrily to himself.
I have no knowledge at all, but this is what makes the most sense to me. I don’t have a high opinion of Russia’s strategic military decisions (and the truth is I have no idea what this is about), but I know that countries have ships that travel around, it is normal, and I just can’t imagine any country that is run by adults that would think that sending ships to Cuba in this way would be any kind of anything provocative or whatever.
But I can easily believe that the US news media would see the words “Russian ships” and freak out and start writing all kinds of stories about it. I mean, people are clickin on it. Mission accomplished.
The article was also pretty non-inflammatory in my opinion.
They (governments) don’t do it because it’s taken as threatening, but more because it’s not. It’s a very specifically not belligerent way to push back on a country. “I can wander in here right up against your borders because your zone of exclusive control isn’t as big as you claim”.
We do the same thing with China to push back on their claims that certain waterways belong to them. (Ours looks a little different since we routinely patrol shipping lanes, so a more overt ship but also more common to just see tooling around looming at would be pirates, so it’s not the same message as if a Russian missile destroyer showed up off the Florida coast. We send that message with a carrier group.). By overtly and openly using a waterway we say “LOOK AT US JUST NORMALLY USING THIS PUBLIC ROUTE LIKE A NORMAL SHIP IN PUBLIC WOULD DO WHEN THEY WEREN’T VIOLATING CHINESE TERRITORIAL WATERS”.
We would rather other nations not send military vessels near the US mainland. Russia would rather not have a bunch of stuff happen that we regularly facilitate. So they discreetly give us the finger by doing the tamest version of what we don’t want while still having a perfectly normal excuse.
I think the only big thing to note is I don’t think Russia sends ships elsewhere all that frequently. Their navy is a bit of a joke. It’s still not provocative, but it is different.
I’m assuming the us showed the sub as a signal saying “we were right there with you. Did you even detect us? You don’t stand a chance, so don’t start anything.”
That submarine was trailing the Russian ships the whole time, the Russian ships had no idea, and there are more submarines in the waters nearby. The whole purpose was to show the Russian ships that they are sitting ducks.
Submarines, much like wolves, travel in packs.
And the one you see always has friends nearby that you don’t.
Oh they knew there were subs in the water…they just didn’t know where. The officers at least know we could turn their whole little armada into starter reefs at any time, the fact that we sent a boat scheduled to be scrapped later this year to surface is an extra fuck you flex that has to be intentional. We’re just now phasing out boats from the 80’s and they can’t keep a fleet afloat in a landlocked sea.
