Head Quarters of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet (Vladivostok)

 military, 1973_construction, military staff / headquarters (staff)

The Red Banner Pacific Fleet (Russian: Тихоокеанский флот, translit: Tikhookeanskiy Flot) is part of the Russian Navy stationed in the Pacific Ocean, which formerly secured the Far Eastern borders of the Soviet Union. The fleet headquarters is located at Vladivostok and a number of fleet bases are located in the Vladivostok area.

Another important fleet basing area is Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy in Avacha Bay on the Kamchatka Peninsula with a major submarine base at Vilyuchinsk in the same bay. In the Soviet years, the Pacific Fleet was also responsible for the administration and operational direction of the Soviet Navy's Indian Ocean (8th) Squadron and Soviet naval technical support points hosted by nations in the Indian Ocean rim, such as the facilities at Socotra Island.

On May 5, 1965, the Pacific Fleet itself was awarded with the Order of the Red Banner. Following the conquest of South Vietnam, a Soviet naval technical support base was established at Cam Ranh Bay in the south of the unified country. The Pacific Fleet then started deploying forces to the Indian Ocean, called the SOVINDRON (Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron) by the U.S. Government, in 1968 after the British government announced its intention to withdraw its military forces east of the Suez Canal by 1971.

In the 1980s, Soviet naval strategy shifted to an emphasis on bastion defense, fortifying the Sea of Okhotsk for that purpose. In the 1970s and 1980s, the aircraft carriers Minsk and Novorossiysk served with the fleet, until they were scrapped in the 1990s. The Admiral Lazarev 'battlecruiser' of the Kirov class served with the fleet in the 1980s and 1990s as well.

However, in the in the 1990s and 2000s the Pacific Fleet lost much of its larger units. Just years after the collpase of the Soviet Union the Fleet lost all its aircraft carriers and by early 2000 only one cruiser remaind active. By the end of the 2010s the Fleet consisted of one large missile cruiser, five destroyers, ten nuclear submarines and eight diesel-electric submarines.Plans for deployment of new large units to the Fleet have been anounched. Several new Mistral class Ampf ships, SSBN submarines and large cruisers are to join the Fleet in the coming years.