Monitoring Russian Navy operations

Yesterday evening we tracked an apparently unusual mission of a US Navy Boeing P-8A Poseidon that took off from NAS Sigonella. After a brief leg off the Syrian coast – an area often patrolled by US Navy aircraft – the Poseidon shifted south, orbiting off Alexandria.

Coincidentally, yesterday the Russian Navy tug Jakob Grebelsky reached this area after covering more than 400 km within 24 hours. The tug had previously remained for about twenty days off Tartus, Syria, where Russia once maintained a naval base, now effectively abandoned.

In the absence of a permanent naval base, the tug has been providing support to the Russian submarine Novorossiysk. In the past, we have already observed how the area west of Alexandria has been chosen by the Russian Navy as a support point for submarine–tug operations.

For this reason, the US Poseidon mission was likely aimed at keeping an eye on the Russian activities in the area and gaining a clearer picture of their operations. The loss of the Tartus base has significantly reduced Russia’s naval capabilities in the Mediterranean, particularly for submarines, which have been forced to limit their operational endurance in the region.