As a child of the Cold War, and a veteran of the U.S. Navy that entered service right at the end of that conflict, I grew wargaming against the Soviet Navy before studying how to fight them to watching their decline. Two new books from the Naval Institute Press show how the Soviet Navy was and what the Russian Navy could be.
Admiral Gorshkov: The Man Who Challenged the U.S. Navy
Polmar, Norman, Thomas A. Brooks, and George E. Fedoroff. Admiral Gorshkov: The Man Who Challenged the U.S. Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019.
Do you know your enemy? Harpoon II (Adventure Games, 1982) and the Fleet series (1985+) certainly taught me much, but it was the Simulations Canada wargame Seapower & the State (1982) that taught me that our high seas opponent had a name and it was Gorshkov.
The New Battle for the Atlantic
Nordenman, Magnus, and James Stavridis. The New Battle for the Atlantic: Emerging Naval Competition with Russia in the Far North. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019.
Written by a NATO maritime expert, in 2019 it certainly looked like Russia was looking to challenge not just NATO but the U.S. in the North Atlantic once again. Just three years (and one invasion of the Ukraine) later it doesn’t look like it. Or could it?
Feature image courtesy RMN
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