Michael Peck
Back in the 1980s, when Tom Clancy’s fictional North Atlantic boiled with Cold War naval action, the West really was worried about the Greenland-Iceland-UK, or GIUK, Gap.
A glance at a map shows why. The GIUK Gap is one of the most crucial maritime choke points on the globe. It’s the gateway for ships in European waters to enter the Atlantic. During World War II, German U-boats passed through the gap on their way to attack Atlantic and North American shipping lanes. During the Cold War, Soviet subs would have had to transit the chokepoint to do the same. In both conflicts, the West invested great effort to sealing off the gap with antisubmarine patrol ships and aircraft, and even underwater microphones like SOSUS.The GIUK Gap is busier than ever with commercial shipping, as well as oil and gas rigs and fishing vessels. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, the gap has faded into a strategic anachronism while attention has shifted to the Pacific.
But with Russia more assertive, and Moscow modernizing its submarine fleet, the gap is again becoming a battleground, warn some Western analysts.
Indeed, NATO is considering whether to revive its Cold War–era Atlantic Command. But should hostilities erupt between NATO and Russia, it won’t be a replay of World War II or the Cold War, predicts Magnus Nordenman in an article for the Royal United Service Institute, a British defense think tank. That’s because neither Russia nor NATO have more than a shadow of their Cold War capabilities for penetrating or defending the gap.
“While the Russian navy is indeed making a comeback with increasing skills and sophisticated capabilities, including quieter submarines and the ability to fire land attack cruise missiles, it is nowhere close to its Soviet days in terms of numbers,” writes Nordenman, director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center. “On the other hand, NATO’s maritime posture and capabilities have changed dramatically, and resource constraints and other security priorities – both in Europe and globally – mean that the Alliance will be unable to bring to bear the same quantity of capabilities as it did during the Cold War.”
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/red-storm-rising-report-warns-russian-subs-threaten-north-20981
