Echoes of the Cold War

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/10/2014 (3465 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Talk of a new cold war between Russia and Europe may be overdoing it, even in the wake of the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, but the scenes being played out in Kanholmsfjarden, an area of water some 40 kilometres east of Stockholm, Sweden, are vividly reminiscent of a drama from an earlier era.

In 1981 a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine, U137, ran aground near Karlskrona, a Swedish naval base. The incident, regarded as a flagrant breach of the country’s neutrality, became known as “Whiskey on the rocks.” It was far from a one-time incident, of course. Soviet submarines carried out operations in Swedish waters throughout the cold war, reaching a peak of aggression in the 1980s.

History may be repeating itself, however. On Oct. 17 Sweden’s armed-forces command reported that, following a visual observation by a “credible source,” it was investigating probable “foreign underwater activity.” The following day, as the navy stepped up the search by deploying additional vessels armed with sensors, Sweden’s leading newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, claimed that a distress call in Russian had been picked up, as had encrypted radio traffic, between a location outside Stockholm and the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. The apparently well-sourced story said that all of the evidence pointed to the presence of a Russian submarine lying damaged in Swedish waters.

Since then a small fleet consisting of corvettes, minesweepers and fast patrol boats, pursued by a waterborne media pack, has crisscrossed the coastal waters outside the capital in the hunt for the mysterious submarine. Despite several reported sightings by civilians, who possibly may have been overexcited, it had not been found as this article went to press.

The frustration is beginning to show. Sweden’s senior commander, General Sverker Goransson, told reporters: “This is very serious. I would even go so far as to say it’s (fouled) up.”

Goransson has authorized the navy “to force whatever it is up to the surface.” Meanwhile the helpful response from Russian authorities has been to suggest, rather implausibly, that the submarine — if there is one — may be Dutch.

Whether the submarine, if that is indeed what it is, will ever be found remains unlikely, unless it is severely damaged. Anti-submarine warfare is hard, and the Stockholm Archipelago provides plenty of places to hide from even the most advanced sensors and skilled operators.

Moreover, since the end of the Cold War, Sweden has neglected its anti-submarine capabilities, even retiring its anti-submarine helicopters. Last year the country had a nasty surprise of another kind, when six Russian planes carried out a simulated missile attack on Stockholm without Swedish fighters even taking off.

Defence gets only 1.2 per cent of Sweden’s G.D.P., and cracks are showing. On a visit this week to Estonia, whose airspace is constantly violated by Russian aircraft, Sweden’s new center-left Prime Minister Stefan Lofven promised that defense spending will rise.