So what? Has anyone ever thought of attacking or threatening merchant ships or indeed warships away from a choke points? Napoleonic Wars? First World War? Second World War? Cold War? Falklands War? Tanker War?
Look at the thickness of the line representing transatlantic traffic, or in the Mediterranean.
@jrwlynch perhaps you can say something to
@PhotEx and other Doubting Thomas types that the Atlantic is of economic and strategic importance to the countries either side of it. Also I wonder if he could be educated that it is important for NATO reinforcement and resupply, and that potential adversaries will seek to interdict and attack
you need to stop running off to the others every time you dig a hole. Try argue your own point.
top tip, we, as in NATO, own the North Atlantic, the Russians stick their noses out at our pleasure. If push came to shove, they’d be stopped dead in their tracks.
You seem transfixed by a once a month maximum effort Russian ‘look at me! Look at me!’ with a Russia RT film crew aboard Jolly.
Hint, every time a Russian ship ventures more than a few miles out of port, it does so with a rescue tug in attendance. Guess why that is?
the First time the Russians can deploy a battle group into the north Atlantic for a month without something catching fire or breaking down, get back to me.
And as for their handful of operational submarines? I’ll give the crews top marks for courage, so many Russian submariners die in accidents and cock ups, war would be a welcome relief.
ditto the occasional coat trailing flight round the coast of Ireland.... BFD.
if it was serious, we’d have shot it down north of the Orkney’s.
guess why it’s only the odd plane once in a while?
Its because that’s pretty much all they can manage. As soon as I see Regiments of Backfires on a daily, weekly basis flying nuisance flights, I’ll be interested.
The Russians are not a blue water Navy, they are a small green water Navy of desperately old ships; that has only managed to build a handful of frigates and corvettes in the last 30 years - they don’t dominate the North Atlantic, nor could they.
As Secretary Lehman observed in 1982...’In a confrontation with the United States Navy, the Soviet Navy would have a short, but very exciting war’.
Now the Chinese, they are a far bigger and far more credible threat, one that needs countering, especially their Belt & Road initiative that will give them naval ports along our main SLOC from the Far East.