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NATO naval officials have repeatedly warned about Russia's submarines – a force they say it's more sophisticated and active.
US Navy officials have said several times that they are doing more cold war peaks.
They're also worried about where those are going. US officials have suggested that Russian subs are vital over undersea cables. (The US did something similar during the Cold War.)
But the most significant capability Russian can do what they can do on land.
Asked about the best example of growth by Russia's submarines, Adm. James Foggo, the head of US Naval Forces in Europe and Africa, pointed to their missiles, which offers relatively newfound land-attack capability.
"The Kalibr class cruise missile, for example, has been launched from coastal-defense systems, long-range aircraft, and submarines off the coast of Syria," Foggo said on his podcast, "On the Horizon."
"They've shown the ability to reach Europe in all," he added.
The Kalibr family of missiles – which includes anti-ship, land-attack, and anti-submarine variants – has been around since the 1990s.
The land-attack version can be used between 930 miles and 1,200 miles away, according to CSIS 'Missile Defense Project. It is said to fly 65 feet above the sea and at 164 to 492 feet over land.
After the first strikes in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said the Kalibr was accurate to "a few meters" – giving them a US missile capability.
In 2011, the US Office of Naval Intelligence quoted a Russian Federation of nuclear energy and the United States of America.
But the system was not used in combat until 2015.
In October that year, Russian warships in the Caspian Sea fired 26 Kalibr missiles at ISIS targets in Syria. The submarine Veliky Novgorod fired three Kalibrs from the eastern Mediterranean at ISIS targets in the future of the sea.
'They're messaging us'
Kalibr missiles at targets in Syria. But their use may be more than just a gain to an edge in Syria.
"There is no operational or tactical requirement to do it," NORTHCOM Commander Adm. William Gortney told Congress in early 2016. "They're messaging us that they have this capability."
"Magnus Nordenman, the director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council," said Business Insider said, "Russia has used the concept of submarine missile defense." year.
A 2015 Office of Naval Intelligence report cited by Jane's noted that the "Kalibr provides even modest platforms … with significant offensive capability, with the use of the attack missile, all platforms conventional warheads. "
"The proliferation of this capability in the new Russian Navy is profoundly changing its ability to deter [or to] threaten or destroy adversary targets, "the report said.
While Russia's submarine force is still smaller than its Soviet predecessor, that cruise-missile capability has to argue NATO needs to look farther north, beyond the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap that was a chokepoint for Russian submarines entering the Atlantic during the Cold War.
Today's Russian subs in Europe, so they do not have to approach the GIUK Gap, "said Nordenman in a recent interview. "In that sense the GIUK Gap is not important as it used to be."
'We need to deny that edge'
Foggo said US submarines still have the edge, but the Russia can deploy "are some of the most silent and lethal in the world."
Concerns about land-attack missiles now with NATO
"That's why Russian submarines are concerned," Nordenman said earlier this year. "One, because they can obviously sink and sink, but they are not so bad, but missiles to shoot at ports and airfields and so on."
"We know that Russian submarines are in the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting the control of the seas, and preparing for the future," Foggo said. "We need to deny that edge."
This article focuses on anti-submarine warfare, a facet of naval combat that NATO forces focused on less after the Cold War.
The US Navy has asked for more money to buy a lot of money. NATO members also plan to buy US-made P-8A Poseidons, widely considered to be the best sub-hunting aircraft on the market.
But the Kalibr's anti-ship capability also raises questions about whether ASW itself needs to change.
At a conference in early 2017, Lt. Cmdr. Ian Varley, deputy commander of the Royal Navy's Merlin helicopter force, said anti-ship missiles were pushing ASW away from "traditional … close-in, cloak and-dagger fighting" to situations where an enemy submarine "sits 200 miles away and launches a missile at you. "
"That becomes an air war," he said. "We need to stop it becoming an air war."
