Soviets building quick-strike fleet

Press, 8 September 1980, Page 7

Soviets building quick-strike fleet

NZPA;./ Paris • The Soviet Union is building up five-flotillas-capable of.; intervening anywhere on the seven seas in the 19905, an American military expert has reported. It. was to this ..striking force that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation secre-tary-general (Dr Joseph Luns) was alluding when he told the Atlantic Treaty Association in the .Madeira Islands last week that the Soviet Union’s new naval strategy was “making;things more difficult" fnr NAT.O. planners. The emerging Soviet Navy capable of action anywhere, sponsored by the Vice-Minis-ter for Defence and -Commander of the Fleet (Admiral ... -Sergei Georgiyevich Gorshkov), will be spearheaded by the Soviet Union’s first • nuclear-pro-pelled heavy cruisers. The prototype of these Kirov-class vessels . , began sea trials in July.. . According to Michael McGuire, a leading expert on Soviet naval affairs at the - Brookings Institute- in Washington, Kirov-class cruisers will be the flagships off the new go-anywhere task fleets. -

The next decade, he says, wilt see the-creation of five standing fleets of this- kind at the. rate of one. every three years; ' ; , ‘.J J ;

Each fleet will include three 12,000-tonne cruisers, a- Kiev-type aircraft carrier, and" about ten new-model of 8000 tonnes. The 70,000-tonne Kiev-type carriers are.:scheduled to enter service-before the end of this decade. -. - ‘Admiral • Gorshkov has been intent on - creating a( •flexible surface .-Navy, caps able of covering /vast' dis« • tances speedily, and in one leap, as a support to the submarine fleet which has! until now been at the centre of Soviet naval strategy. The . development of his new-style navy is in line with the ninth five-year plan passed by the twenty-fourth Soviet Communist Party Congress in 1971.

In the 19905, according to Mr McGuire, the Soviet; Navy will have four new types of surface vessel: four or five heavy cruisers of the Kirov class;, about 15 12,000tonne cruisers; 65 destroyers of 8000 tonnes; 55 oceangoing escort .vessels or frig-< ates of 4000 tonnes, With these there can -be included two Kiev-type aircraft carriers already under construction, two Moskvatype aircraft carriers on 70,000 tonnes at present in service, and two newer typo air-superiority carriers, tho first of which will ti in service by '.the .end. of .this decade; ’ •• '■