The Strategic Balance and the Arctic Ocean: Soviet Options

• Published in: Cooperation and Conflict
• Main Author: Østreng, Willy
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 1977
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Greenland; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/001083677701200103; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001083677701200103

Seventy percent of the Soviet Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine force (SSBNs) operates from bases in the Arctic. The most frequently cited explanation for this deployment is that transit of Soviet SSBNs through the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap to launch station off the east coast of the United States is secured. This explanation is both reasonable and possible, but not necessarily fully exhaustive. It seems for instance to overlook the operational capabilities of SSBNs in the Arctic Ocean and to underrate the problem of passage out of the region. In this article the hypothesis is regarded as supplementary to the traditional explanation, and emphasizes that the Arctic Ocean, favoured by tactically advantageous conditions of climate and geography, may have served the Soviet Union as an alternative missile-launching and SSBN transit area for some time.