Watching the Russians... Off Floridas Coast The Nikolay Chiker is widely considered to be one of the worlds most powerful ocean tugs, but more important from this observers perspective, the tug seems to always be escorting high value assets of the Russian Navy when it deploys. So the question is, why have the Russians parked their premier Northern Fleet naval tug off the coast of Florida? There are probably several valid reasons, but if I was to speculate, the following two reasons strike me as the most likely. The ship is observing the launch of Falcon 9 SpaceX CRS3 scheduled for early Sunday morning from the SLC-40 Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Dragon C3 for its fifth operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. The flight is being conducted under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. In addition to that though, during previous visits to the US east coast by the tug, US media reported that Nikolay Chiker escorted Russian nuclear attack submarines that were patrolling our coast at the time. Given circumstances taking place in Ukraine, I think it is very possible that Nikolay Chiker is staying near Cape Canaveral for legitimate reasons (to monitor the launch) but is also standing nearby as one or more Russian nuclear attack submarines monitor US Navy activity out of Kings Bay, Mayport, and or Norfolk during a period of political crisis between the US and Russia. Indeed, given the presence of Nikolay Chiker off the Florida coast and given the events unfolding in the Ukraine, I believe it would be foolish not to assume that Russia is operating submarines off our East coast naval bases.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:12:05 +0000