{"id":36713,"date":"2024-01-04T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2024\/01\/04\/european-navies-try-to-keep-up-in-cat-and-mouse-game-of-seabed-warfare\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:59:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:59:28","slug":"european-navies-try-to-keep-up-in-cat-and-mouse-game-of-seabed-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/battlefield-tech\/2024\/01\/04\/european-navies-try-to-keep-up-in-cat-and-mouse-game-of-seabed-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"European navies try to keep up in cat-and-mouse game of seabed warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ROME \u2014 The balance between offense and defense in war swings back-and-forth, often depending on who has the best kit. But on the seabed\u2019s battlefield<\/a>, the aggressors are currently very much in charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October, all it reportedly took was an anchor, dragged along the seabed for about 112 miles by a Chinese cargo ship in the Baltic Sea, to rip through an undersea gas pipeline and a telecoms cable linking Estonia and Finland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finnish politicians alleged sabotage, just as the severing of a cable off Norway in 2022 was linked to a Russian fishing trawler that had sailed back-and-forth above the cable 20 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding to the alarm over the rupturing of the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea in 2022, the incidents raised fears for the world\u2019s 750,000 miles of seabed internet cables that keep the planet online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeabed warfare is a game where the aggressor currently has considerable advantages thanks to the sheer scale of infrastructure to protect, the fragility of pipelines and the various opportunities to attack in shallow water \u2014 with the Chinese cargo ship incident a possible example,\u201d said Sidharth Kaushal, an expert in sea power and military science at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cgame\u201d is nothing new, dating back at least to the 1970s when U.S. Navy divers placed listening devices on undersea Soviet communications cables in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a tough lesson for Russia, which responded by investing in undersea espionage throughout the 1990s, even after the Cold War; the country now has an \u201cin-built advantage\u201d on the seabed, said H.I. Sutton, the author of the blog Covert Shores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussia has the Belgorod submarine with seabed capability as well as two, stretched Delta-class submarines \u2014 all three are nuclear-powered and are host submarines, which can each carry two manned and one unmanned submarine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ready to be ferried by their hosts are at least four deep-diving submarines, 45-70 meters (148-230 feet) long, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subs are operated by Russia\u2019s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, which also has a vessel, the Yantar, with a reputation for hovering over internet cables, Sutton said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt can carry several robot subs and crewed subs which can descend to 6,000 meters. It is suspected that the ship\u2019s primary function is mapping cables and preparing attacks on them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response, the U.S. has deployed two ships under its Cable Ship Security Program<\/a> to monitor critical infrastructure. \u201cTwo ships are a good start, but just not enough,\u201d said retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Foggo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the U.K., Adm. Ben Key, first sea lord of the Royal Navy, said in October that more than ships and subs, the West needs better legal backing before it can properly protect pipelines and cables that stretch across the seabed in international waters \u201cowned by nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This map, last updated Dec. 12, 2023, shows active and planned subsea cables in the European region. Cable-tracker TeleGeography estimates there were about 870,000 miles of subsea cables in service globally as of early 2023. (TeleGeography via https:\/\/www.submarinecablemap.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, Kaushal said, \u201cthe legal aspect of countering aggressors is crucial since there are limited options for prosecuting an attack which occurred in international waters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also politically risky if you react and get it wrong,\u201d he added. \u201cThe alternative is go public about the attacker, but that risks revealing the source of the intelligence you used to discover the culprit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as the number of undersea internet cables soar, the damage to global communications by an attack may be reduced, said Elio Calcagno, a research fellow at the IAI think tank in Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRedundancy may prove the best defense,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defensive measures<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, European nations<\/a> are now accelerating their efforts to defend the seabed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France was an early starter<\/a> with a new seabed strategy, while the U.K. has launched Proteus, a 6,000-ton vessel designed for undersea surveillance that can also act as a mothership<\/a> to Cetus, a planned 12-meter-long, uncrewed submarine that former British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace described as a response to \u201cthe growing threats to our underwater infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in November, the U.K. announced it would contribute seven naval vessels and a Royal Air Force P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to a task force patrolling seabed infrastructure; that group also involves several other northern European, Nordic and Baltic nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Italy and Norway are tapping commercial companies for data to help protect cables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe commercial sector has more unmanned underwater vehicles than most navies and can also provide data from pressure sensors placed on pipelines that detect movement nearby,\u201d Kaushal said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Italy took the lead in a new joint European Union seabed security program in 2023, Italian Navy officials heard from local energy firm Saipem about its work on undersea drones able to autonomously monitor pipelines and park in underwater bays connected to the surface. From those bays, the systems can recharge and upload data, allowing them to stay submerged for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are going to see this kind of persistence more and more in the military field,\u201d Calcagno said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But just as drones could help guard cables, they may also have the ability to position explosives or self-detonate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaushal said the defense of cables and pipelines could profit from the improving performance of low-frequency, active sonar. \u201cIt gives wide-area surveillance but has been known to give false positive results. However, that may change as machine learning allows it to sift them out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another technology making strides is synthetic aperture sonar, which can guarantee resolution in the inches. Based on a principle similar to airborne synthetic aperture radar, this tech mimics a much larger antenna array by collating a series of signals received as the emitter moves through the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers are also working on turning fiber-optic cables into giant sensors able to spot incoming saboteurs. Since pressure and vibrations undersea change the way light travels through cables, those changes can be recorded, they believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Sutton said getting tipped off to an attack does not mean you can stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven if you are warned, can you get there in time? Everything happens in slow motion under the sea,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is just another example of how seabed aggressors remain in the driving seat, he explained; that is, until the next evolution of seabed warfare \u2014 the arming of undersea drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe West has hang-ups about arming undersea drones, and it comes down to communications. You can put a human in the loop with an aerial drone, but underwater you do not have constant communication with the drone. You would have to leave decision-making to the drone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut China already likely has armed undersea drones, and experience in Ukraine may well change the West\u2019s view,\u201d he added, referring to Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the Ukrainian Navy damaged Russian ships using surface drones carrying explosives, and the service is already working on underwater versions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre we going to see undersea drones armed with torpedoes fighting each other?\u201d Sutton said. \u201cIt\u2019s inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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