Navy-Killers: Russia is Deploying New Anti-Ship Missiles in Crimea

Michael Peck

Security, Europe

How will America and NATO respond?

During the Cold War, when the Crimean peninsula was part of the Soviet Union, Russia built an elaborate coastal defense system of underground anti-ship missile launchers.

That system lapsed after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine, which owned Crimea. But after Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014, the Russian military began refurbishing the region’s defenses.

Now, Russian officials hint that the next step may be deploying advanced anti-ship missiles to the region. “The point at issue is the possible rearming of this system with new types of missiles,” Alexander Leonov, CEO of missile maker Tactical Missile Corporation, told Russian news agency TASS.

The coastal defense system is known as Utyos (“cliff”), or Object 100 to its Soviet builders. It comprised a series of bunkers and underground missile launchers armed with the P-35, a variant of the 1950s Shaddock missile that armed Soviet surface ships and submarines. With a range of about 200 kilometers (125 miles), the thirty-three-foot-long Shaddock was a large, turbojet-powered ship-killer.