Pentagon – Russian Subs Near US Coast Pose No Threat

Russian submarines patrolling off the US east coast are not cause for concern and pose no threat to the United States, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

“So long as they are operating in international waters as, frankly, we do around the world — and are behaving in a responsible way, they are certainly free to do so and it doesn’t cause any alarm within this building,” press secretary Geoff Morrell said at a Pentagon news conference.

US Northern Command issued a brief statement earlier that it was monitoring the submarines, which Morrell said were several hundred miles (kilometers) off the eastern coastline.

Morrell said he was unsure if Moscow gave Washington advance notice but the US military “had the means to derive where they were going.”

Morrell played down the episode, saying: “While it is interesting and noteworthy that they are in this part of the world, it doesn’t pose any threat and it doesn’t cause any concern.”

He acknowledged that US submarines have operated off the Russian coast “from time to time” as well, in international waters.

The New York Times first reported the presence of two Russian nuclear-powered, Akula class submarines off the American coast, the first such move in years that carried echoes of Cold War tensions.

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Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S.

A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.

The episode has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets and be poised for war.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union all but eliminated the ability of the Russian Navy to operate far from home ports, making the current submarine patrols thousands of miles from Russia more surprising for military officials and defense policy experts.

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According to Defense Department officials, one of the Russian submarines remained in international waters on Tuesday about 200 miles off the coast of the United States. The location of the second remained unclear. One senior official said the second submarine traveled south in recent days toward Cuba, while another senior official with access to reports on the surveillance mission said it had sailed away in a northerly direction.

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How To Survive A Nuclear Attack

The face of nuclear terror has changed since the Cold War, but disaster-medicine expert Irwin Redlener reminds us the threat is still real. He looks at some of history’s farcical countermeasures and offers practical advice on how to survive an attack.

Dr. Irwin Redlener spends his days imagining the worst: He studies how humanity might survive natural or human-made disasters of unthinkable severity.

After 9/11, Irwin Redlener emerged as a powerful voice in disaster medicine — the discipline of medical care following natural and human-made catastrophes. He was a leading face of the relief effort after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and is the author of Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now. He’s the associate dean, professor of Clinical Public Health and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

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Russia Refuses To Meet With U.S. on Iranian Nuclear Program

Russia Refuses To Meet With U.S. on Iranian Nuclear Program. Not a good sign considering their erecent military deployments.

From The New York Times

Russia said on Tuesday that it would not participate in a meeting with the United States this week to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, the most significant indication yet of how Russia’s war with Georgia has spoiled relations regarding other security issues. Read more

Putin Warns Of Direct Confrontation With U.S.

A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer yesterday after the Kremlin gave a warning about “direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea.

Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, declared that Russia was taking “measures of precaution” against American and Nato naval ships. “Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” he said. Read more