Given recent Sino-Russia flotilla steaming through Aleutians vicinity, it makes sense to carve out a subsection of our Naval War College Review article on cooperation between the countries late last year.

The “stuck in traffic” version is about six lines below these words. For the “nightstand reading” full edition, go to: Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins (2022) “Putin’s Ukraine Invasion: Turbocharging Sino-Russian Collaboration in Energy, Maritime Security, and Beyond?,” Naval War College Review: Vol. 75: No. 4, Article 8. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol75/iss4/8

Key Threat Vectors…

Beyond the realm of technology and intelligence, there is one major military advantage that Russia conceivably could offer to China: naval, and possibly air, basing access in geographies of high strategic interest. China seeks overseas basing and access in a range of countries, but none of the current or likely additional near-term locations have airfields yet.[i] Occasional access to Russian airfields could enable Chinese Y-20s to refuel or have crew rest, thereby extending options for military diplomacy, noncombatant evacuation operations (NEOs), and other activities farther from China.

For more-sensitive military aviation operations, access to Chuguyevka Air Base north of Vladivostok (from whence Viktor Belenko defected by flying his MIG-25 to Hakodate, Japan, in 1976) or the Dolinsk-Sokol Air Base on Sakhalin (from whence came the Su-15 that shot down commercial airliner KAL 007 in 1983), Yelizovo in southern Kamchatka, or Klyuchi in northern Kamchatka all would be relevant for establishing new PLA aerial vectors of approach to Japan or to reconnoiter/interdict American air approaches from Alaska, including the Aleutians. Some of these could require infrastructure upgrades to host a PLAAF presence. But as a general premise, facilities that hosted Soviet tactical aircraft (or continue hosting the Russian Air Force today) could immediately–or with some minor upgrades–be configured to host Chinese airframes that in the case of the J-11/15/16 series are very nearly members of the Russian Flanker family.

On the naval side, access to Russian Pacific Fleet facilities would facilitate a sustained PLAN presence in the Sea of Japan. The most strategically meaningful step for Moscow would be to grant PLAN SSBN access to Russia’s two major submarine ports: the Rybachiy submarine base near Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Pacific and the Sayda-Guba (Sayda Bay) submarine base on the Kola Peninsula in the Barents Sea. Cold War operations may suggest a limited-access model: U.S. SSBNs used to operate out of Holy Loch, Scotland, and Rota, Spain, but still pulled in to Faslane, Scotland from time to time. They were not homeported there, but access allowed them logistical support to operate better and far forward. Alternatively, to operationalize such an opportunity fully, particularly given current limitations in Russian infrastructure, the PLAN conceivably might seek a dock and dry dock at Rybachiy, or Sayda-Guba, or both, and it might base a submarine tender there—all highly visible signs for which to monitor. Even if Chinese submarines used Russian infrastructure to try to maintain a lower profile, the exposed open-air piers of Rybachiy or Sayda-Guba would permit regular overhead observation via optical and synthetic-aperture radar satellites, among other means.

A major appeal of Russian port access would be to allow PLAN SSBNs to operate within protected bastions from which their submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) could range key targets while minimizing U.S. and allied submarines’ ability to track, trail, and hold them at risk. China doubtless is extending the range of its JL-2 and next-generation JL-3 SLBMs, including by replacing aluminum skin with lighter composite materials, but it has not yet demonstrated mastery of SSBN quieting and clearly lacks experience. Type 094 SSBNs seem too noisy for effective open-ocean deterrence patrols.[ii]

Within a bastion in the Sea of Okhotsk that Russia works so hard to protect, China could deploy SSBNs with next-generation JL-3 SLBMs that might well have range to reach anywhere in the continental United States, including Washington, DC, via great-circle routes. Rybachiy also would offer proximity to Arctic sea-lanes in which PLAN strategists have expressed great interest for naval presence in general and potential incipient submarine operations in particular. The Kamchatka Peninsula port is navigable year-round for priority vessels such as submarines that could have icebreakers assigned to them to clear channels through any ice. While Sayda-Guba is far from China, it lies within a bastion that Russia has even greater capacity to protect, and it would allow even range-limited JL-2 SLBMs to cover Europe fully and most of North America.

The Pentagon’s 2019 China report states that “a strengthened Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean . . . could include deploying submarines to the region as a deterrent against nuclear attacks.”[iii] The Russian military historian Alexander Shirokorad articulates precisely such an approach. After highlighting the challenges that PLAN SSBNs face in operating undetected in Asia-Pacific waters and in covering the continental United States, he suggests, “In venturing to the Arctic, the Chinese ‘immediately kill two birds with one stone’: significantly decreasing vulnerability and simultaneously reducing the distance to potential targets.”[iv]

At a minimum, the following low-end model appears to be relatively likely: China has not learned lessons of operations in the Far North yet, it aspires to be there for competition and to protect northern passage sea-lanes for PRC trade, and it wants to develop a partnership that may facilitate technology transfer from Russia (particularly if economically advantageous). If Russia and the United States, and any other nation, are going to operate there, then—even if only for the peer recognition—China will want to operate there also. It may do so only episodically (annually), with perhaps a cooperative visit to Rybachiy, such as during a {LSC}Vostok exercise. With further development of land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs), the PLAN could extend reach and threat axes, but it is probably better suited to operations in the northwest Pacific and even the northern Pacific.

…And Potential Limitations

Sino-Russian interactions over the past decade concerning the Arctic have been more tense than would be expected from countries that truly saw each other as strategic partners. For instance, Russia blocked Chinese vessels from conducting surveys along the Northern Sea Route in 2012 and in 2020, and Russian officials arrested the head of the Arctic Civic Academy of Sciences on charges of providing classified information to PRC intelligence entities.[v] On the basis of recent trends, it appears that Russian distrust will modulate Sino-Russian Arctic cooperation aside from very specific areas, such as investment in energy facilities. PRC access to Arctic-adjacent submarine facilities would be a game changer sufficient to warrant continued close observation, although the probability of such events manifesting appears uncertain. Time will tell. Russian behavior in the South China Sea may offer a glimpse of at least one plausible future for Sino-Russian Arctic interactions. Rosneft’s Vietnamese subsidiary has continued drilling within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) despite PRC displeasure and China Coast Guard harassment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov apparently declined a 2019 request by PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi to halt Rosneft’s drilling in that area.[vi] The self-interest governing the actions of Russia—and its parastatal firms—as well as the geopolitical dimension would be magnified in the Arctic region. Unlike the distant South China Sea, the Arctic is a proximately located zone of high importance to Russian economic and national-security interests.

[i] DoD 2021,pp. xi, 130–32.

[ii] “Submarine Quieting Trends,” in The People’s Liberation Army Navy: A Modern Navy with Chinese Characteristics (Suitland, MD: Office of Naval Intelligence, August 2009), p. 22, available at irp.fas.org/; The People’s Liberation Army Navy: New Capabilities and Missions for the 21st Century (Suitland, MD: Office of Naval Intelligence, 2015), pp. 16–17, available at http://www.oni.navy.mil/.

[iii] U.S Defense Dept., Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2 May 2019), p. v.

[iv] Александр Широкорад [Alexander Shirokorad], “Борьба за Арктику нарастает: Зачем Китаю необходимы новые районы боевого патрулирования подводных ракетоносцев” [The Fight for the Arctic Is Escalating: Why China Needs New Submarine Patrol Areas], Независимое военное обозрение, [Independent Military Review], 17 May 2019, nvo.ng.ru/; and translation of quotation from Lyle J. Goldstein, “Chinese Nuclear Submarines Could Soon Be Visiting Russian Arctic Ports,” National Interest, 15 November 2020, nationalinterest.org/. Shirokorad hypothesizes extensively and gets some key points wrong, which are not addressed in Goldstein’s analysis. Shirokorad suggests incorrectly that operating under pack ice is an important advantage for Russia’s Northern Fleet, whereas in fact under pack ice there is no sea state (by definition); little to no shipping, therefore minimal background noise; and thus, little acoustic concealment. The real Northern Fleet benefit is operating not under multiyear pack ice but in the marginal ice zone, which has very high background noise—from wind, ice collision, and shipping.

[v] Jeremy Greenwood and Shuxian Luo, “Could the Arctic Be a Wedge between Russia and China?,” War on the Rocks, 4 April 2022, warontherocks.com/.

[vi] The authors thank Professor Alexander Vuving for these insights.