As RIA Novosti reported, the guided-missile cruiser Varyag this week is carrying out live firing exercises in the Pacific Ocean to test its weapons systems.

The Varyag is one of Russia's formidable Slava-class missile cruisers. Its sister ships, the Marshal Ustinov and the Moskva, also are currently employed with Russia's Baltic and Black Sea fleets.

As RIA Novosti noted, the Slava-class cruisers were constructed to operate as attack warships primarily against large, hostile naval forces. Specifically, the Slava ships, including the Varyag, were explicitly designed to be able to fulfill the task of "killing" gigantic nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carriers that weigh 80,000 to 90,000 tons with crews of 5,000 sailors.

The Slava ships also carry protective anti-aircraft weapons and can defend themselves with their anti-submarine capacity. Unlike U.S. super-carriers, which command the skies over the oceans of the world but require a host of protective smaller warships to defend them, especially against submarines, Slava-class cruisers are designed for independent operation.

Their main punch, RIA Novosti reported, lies in their 16 SS-N-12 Sandbox nuclear-capable supersonic anti-ship missiles that they carry in four pairs on either side of the ships. This makes a Slava-class ship exceptionally easy for hostile aircraft or submarines to identify: Their silhouette is unmistakable.

Because the Slava ships are designed to destroy and threaten U.S. super-carriers and because they are also designed to operate as "lone wolves," especially in the Pacific, they also bristle with state-of-the-art anti-aircraft missiles. RIA Novosti said the Varyag was equipped with 64 SA-N-6 Grumble long-range surface-to-air -- SAM -- missiles and 40 SA-N-4 Gecko short-range SAMs.

As we noted in these columns on Wednesday, for all their hitting power and defensive systems, the Varyag and its sister Slava-class cruisers by themselves are not remotely capable of wresting surface command of the world's oceans and skies away from the U.S. Navy. But that was not what they were designed for.

They are certainly capable of killing U.S. aircraft carriers and potentially of exacting a formidable toll of U.S. Navy aircraft attacking them, although U.S. superiority in aircraft electronic and other defensive countermeasures could negate much of the SAM defensive firepower that the Slavas carry.

But in strategic terms, the Slavas, especially the Varyag in the Pacific, are the heirs of the major battleships and battle-cruisers of the German navy during World War II. Leviathans like the Bismarck, the Tirpitz and the Scharnhorst were never capable by themselves of disputing British command of the sea: The main threat to Britain's survival came from Nazi submarines, or U-Boats, sinking the convoyed cargo ships bringing the feed and oil from North America to keep Britain in the war.

But the big German battlewagons earned their keep by tying up far larger forces of the British navy to prevent them breaking out and wreaking havoc. The mere fear that the Tirpitz was on its way led Britain's top naval commanders to panic and scatter the Arctic convoy to the Soviet Union's PQ-17 in 1942. Many ships were sunk and hundreds of sailors killed.

The Bismarck showed its deadly punch by sinking the battle-cruiser HMS Hood, the largest warship the British navy had ever built, in just a few minutes of gunfire in the Denmark Strait off Greenland in May 1941. And the Scharnhorst's formidable anti-aircraft batteries, with its sister ship Gneisenau and accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and a protective covering of Me-109 fighters, made mincemeat out of obsolete British Swordfish biplanes attacking it in the Channel Dash of February 1942.

Like those famous German warships, the Varyag and its sisters are no paper tigers: Their destructive power is very real. But like the old German ships, the Varyag's larger, strategic purpose is to deter U.S. carrier battle groups from operating freely in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean by the very threat of its presence. The Varyag is a masterpiece of asymmetrical war.

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