EXACTLY what the British nuclear-powered attack submarine was doing off the coast of Syria and Lebanon is uncertain.

But we can speculate.

Washington, Paris and London had already decided to punish Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad for an alleged attack with chlorine and sarin gas on the rebel enclave of Douma.

Another cruise-missile attack launched from warships in the Mediterranean Sea was an obvious option for the Coalition partners.

Perhaps too obvious.

This time the stakes were high.

Russia had vowed to shoot-down any missiles fired at Syria, and counter-attack the “source” of any missile strike.

And it had the means to do so.

On Syria’s Mediterranean coast is the naval base of Tartus. Russia has been granted its use for its navy.

Nearby is the Russian operated air base of Khmeinin. From here advanced Su-34 ‘Fullback’ and Su-35 ‘Flanker’ strike fighters, as well as the Su-25 ‘Frogfoot’ attack aircraft, make regular forays against Islamic State — and US-backed Syrian rebels.

In the week before the West unleashed its devastating cruise missiles, the Russian warships at Tartus all suddenly put to sea.

Internet aviation watchers also noticed a sudden surge of US and NATO surveillance aircraft. These were operating across the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar in the west all the way across to near the coast of Syria and Lebanon.

Now we may know why.

HUNTER KILLERS

As Presidents Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron, along with Prime Minister Theresa May, discussed the finer points of their strategy, The Times quotes unnamed military sources as saying Russian forces began to stalk allied warships in the area.

“They are using ships to gain presence and win the peace, because they know all they have to do to be involved is to show up,” Dr Clarke says. “They don’t have to do any more and Russia will get a seat at the table ... if they choose to do more, as they have in Syria, then as long as they are successful they just serve to burnish that great power image.”

In this instance, two Russian frigates out of Tartus and anti-submarine aircraft from Khmeinin were searching for Western submarines. They were accompanied by submarines.

#BREAKING: Satellite photos of Russian naval base in Tartus, Syria show all 11 Russian battle ships have left Syria (Pictures: ImageSat International (ISI)/https://t.co/vHpEjFoxzV) pic.twitter.com/IJhcscOD9x — Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) April 11, 2018

According to The Times, they ‘found’ a British nuclear-powered Astute-class attack submarine.

This sparked a deadly, days-long dance.

“This is interesting, considering the Astute class are arguably fitted with the finest sonar suite ever to go to sea and are equivalents to the US Seawolf class in terms of their ‘stealthy underwater ninja-ness’,” Dr Clarke says. “The odds of one being found if it didn’t want to be, seem very remote or very unlikely ... yes they do make more noise than a diesel-electric submarine running on batteries, but its not a lot of noise and again it comes back to the sonar suite, they’d have known the Russians were there a long time before the Russians knew where they might be ...”

According to The Times, the Russian forces strove to keep the pressure up on the British sub day after day. Meanwhile, it sought to lose itself among the currents and temperature layers of the Mediterranean to get within firing range of Syria.

Dodging the Russian ships and aircraft was the easy part.

But the Project 638 Improved Kilo-class submarines, which Russian media calls “Black Holes”, was likely another matter. One, named Krasnodar, last year demonstrated their ability to run silent and evade Western trackers.

They also trailed Britain’s new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth as it undertook its first sea trials. Later, another watched NATO naval drills off Scotland.

Last week, Russia’s submarines appear to have been involved in an attempt to interfere with preparations for the strikes on Syria.

After 9hrs eastern Mediterranean Sea mission this USNavy Boeing P-8A (168849) departed at 04:03 LT from NAS Sigonella is back to Sicily#Syria pic.twitter.com/MwKGR5c9Cs — ItaMilRadar (@ItaMilRadar) April 13, 2018

US Navy P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine maritime patrol aircraft were seen flying search patterns south and east of the island of Cyprus. An unknown number of British, US and possibly French submarines were also active.

It was a volatile mix.

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And how did one of the West’s best submarines get spotted so early anyway?

Naval analyst and historian Dr Alexander Clarke says puts forward the proposal: perhaps it always intended to do so.

“I have a strong suspicion it was to keep the Russians away from the surface ships actually involved in the Syria strike, so they wouldn’t get too much notice ...”

DISINFORMATION GAMES

Moscow and Damascus was expecting something to happen.

On April 11, Moscow expressed outrage that a US warship had approached Syrian waters — and the port of Tartus — without notification.

It was the USS Donald Cook, a Tomahawk cruise-missile equipped destroyer. It also carries the advanced AEGIS radar and anti-aircraft system.

It was a highly visible stick, ready to back-up President Donald Trump’s Twitter threats.

While it remained in international waters 100km offshore, it — and an accompanying French warship — were reportedly ‘buzzed’ by Russian warplanes.

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“A group of ships of the US Navy has appeared at a distance of 150 miles from the Tartus region. It is common in international practice potential participants of events in the area should be notified accordingly in advance. We have not been notified, although we had legally ratified the agreement on two bases in Tartus and Khmeymim,” Russia’s chairman of the State Duma Defence Committee Vladimir Shamanov told Pravda.

About the same time, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzia, was ratcheting up the stakes.

“We have repeatedly warned the American side about highly negative consequences that may follow if they apply weapons against the legitimate Syrian government, and especially if the use of these weapons — God forbid, affects our military men, who legally stay in Syria,” he said.

The USS Donald Cook was at that time the only cruise-missile carrying US warship close to the Syrian coast. The destroyer USS Winston Churchill was racing to join it. Between the two, they could unleash up to 180 Tomahawk missiles.

In the first punitive attack against Syria for using chemical weapons in April 2017, two similar vessels had taken up station between Cyprus and Lebanon before unleashing their barrage of guided weapons.

It looked as though the West was about to play again from the same script book.

And Russia wanted to make its presence felt.

Now, the Russians now knew there was at least one British submarine within strike range.

The cat-and-mouse game was on, in earnest.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

A retired Russian admiral had been blunt about the potential of a counter-attack against Western forces. In the week before the missile strike, he told Moscow-based television:

“It is unlikely that we will have to sink the Donald Cook. Yet, a torpedo is a very effective weapon that causes considerable damage to a vessel. Clearly, we are going to deal with a lot of pressure, but war is a dangerous thing for the Americans in the first place. They live in a completely different world over there, but we have no fear, we are fed up with the Americans, they are like a burr in the saddle.”

Such a torpedo would likely come from a hidden submarine.

It was a game Russia had played before.

In May last year, a Russian diesel-electric submarine is believed to have engaged in a cold-war style tussle with NATO warships in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Some analysts say it deliberately played a provocative game before ‘disappearing’ and unleashing a barrage of cruise missiles on the then Islamic State held stronghold of Palmyra.

It all took place as the nucler-powered aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush was moving through waters near Cyprus.

The Hi-tech Hunt for Russian Submarines The Hi-tech Hunt for Russian Submarines

Perhaps emboldened by this encounter, at least one — perhaps two — of the Project 638 Improved Kilo class submarines were active off the coast of Syria last week.

But so was the British Astute-class attack submarine.

It can carry cruise missiles. But not a lot of them.

Instead, it’s optimised to stealthily hunt-down and destroy enemy submarines.

So why was it forced to apparently spend days dodging the Russians?

After the tension-filled encounter, the British submarine did not launch any missiles against Syria.

“If you want the Russians to fall for it you have to act like the decoy is real,” Dr Clarke commented.

“What I’m saying is British subs are good killers ... but don’t carry enough missiles to really be worth it when a destroyer is available. However to distract and contain things from disrupting an attack they are perfect”

END GAME

Like the British submarine, neither the USS Donald Cook or USS Winston Churchill actually fired any Tomahawk cruise missiles.

It may never have been the point of their presence.

They were a distraction. A diversion.

Russia appears to have focused all its attention on these easily seen ‘threats’.

Instead, six Tomahawk cruise missiles suddenly appeared out of the Eastern Mediterranean from the hidden Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine USS John Warner.

All the 105 US, British and French missiles came from unexpected directions.

Bombers had refuelled at and above Cyprus before dashing in to unleash their guided weapons. Tomahawks were fired from warships in the Red Sea to the south and the Persian Gulf to the east.

It was all intended to overwhelm Syria’s defences.

It worked.

The arrival of the missiles was such a surprise that Assad’s antimissile weapons were only fired after all targets had already been hit, claimed US Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie at a press briefing.

The Russian forces based in Syria took no action.

In the Red Sea, the cruiser USS Monterey had fired 30 Tomahawks, and the destroyer USS Laboon seven. The destroyer USS Higgins fired 23 Tomahawks from the North Arabian Gulf.

The remainder came from British, French and US aircraft.

Syria claimed to have shot down 71 of the attacking missiles.

McKenzie disagreed.

“Taken together … these attacks on multiple axes were able to overwhelm the Syrian air defence systems,” he said. “No Syrian weapon had any effect on anything we did.”

He called the joint US, French and British operation “precise, overwhelming and effective.”

Dr Clarke says the underwater hide-and-seek duel had the potential to be deadly.

“If a strike a commander interpreted their orders too loosely or took things too far, then the effects could be catastrophic. If they collided with a ship (such collisions were quite common at points in the Cold War) then the resulting accident could seriously endanger both ships and their crew.”

This adds further credence to the idea the British submarine was acting as a decoy, he says.

“Most problematically for the West, the events of Salisbury and other actions, now suggest that Russia is both growing more confident in its aggressions, but also trying riskier more complex operations — which of course have a greater risk of going wrong and endangering others. It is the need to prevent this kind of event which makes the use of an Astute as part of a decoy operation so plausible — keeping the Russians away from the operation and distracted could well now be viewed as a critical precondition to any such operation.”