In the end of the valley, the entrance to an underground storage can be seen. Three new reinforced bunkers and five similar bunkers under construction are visible. The nuclear warheads are, for the most, stored inside the mountain to the left. The missiles are driven to the jetty from the storage in the valley behind where both the original storage and the new under construction are visible. This barge was tranferred from Italy to the Kola Peninsula last spring.Īt the jetty in the bay, a Delta-IV class submarine is visible dockside the crane for loading and unloading ballistic missiles. It is possible to date the image to late summer 2016 by counting the 81 reactor compartments stored in the nearby Saida Bay where also the “ Itarus” transport barge can been seen. Soon, at least three more Borei-class submarines will get Gadzhiyevo as homeport. The base is homeport to the fleet of six Delta-IV submarines and the « Yury Dolgoruky» of the Borei-class. This is likely Russia’s most important location for naval strategic nuclear forces. The image below shows Yegelnaya Bay, better known as Gadzhiyevo naval base. All four storage sites on Kola are within a radius of 190 kilometers from Norway and 180 kilometers from the Finnish border. The Norwegian town of Kirkenes is 94 kilometers away. Zaozersk is the nuclear weapons storage nearest to Norway in a distance of 65 kilometers to the border in Grense Jakobselv. Several of the storage locations are visible on photos, although mainly in distance, available by searching Yandex, Russia’s own search engine.Īlso, Wikimapia, an online editable map where people can mark and describe places, has been a good source to information when writing this article. Comparing satellite images with photos posted on internet by naval officers or their family members makes it possible to get a pretty good impression of the current situation. Also inside the outer fences, the different sections of the facilities are separated with similar security fence barriers. All are surrounded by double or triple layer barrier of barbed wire fences with extraordinary security at the single entry-exit checkpoints. From satellite images, these storages are not too difficult to find. There are four storages for nuclear weapons on Kola. What now takes place in regard to submarine-launched ballistic missiles’ facilities hasn’t been seen at the naval bases on Kola since the large-scale infrastructure construction to support the Typhoon submarines at the Nerpichya base in Zapadnaya Lista happened in the 1980s. Most of the actual warheads are underground. The satellite images, however, only reveal what is visible on the surface. At both locations, new reinforced bunkers, auxiliary buildings and infrastructure partly finished and partly still under construction can be seen. The results are frightening.Įxpansion of the two base-level storages in Okolnaya Bay near Severomorsk and Yagelnaya Bay in Gadzhiyevo are clearly visible. The Barents Observer has studied satellite images of the Kola Peninsula open available via Google Earth, combined with open-source data on numbers of nuclear warheads in Russia. There are extensive construction work at two of the Northern Fleet’s facilities for storage of warheads and ballistic missiles for submarines (SLBM) on the coast of to the Barents Sea. Over the last two years, Russia has increased the number of deployed warheads and is now 215 over the max limit to be reached. The New START Treaty says USA and Russia must limit the numbers of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 by February 5, 2018.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |