NATO turned to elite divers to test tamper protections for critical undersea cables increasingly at risk

• Elite NATO divers line up against new sensors to protect undersea cables from sabotage.

• Foreign adversaries have increasingly focused on submarine cables and underwater infrastructure.

• The training marks a new shift in the way NATO countries prepare for future warfare.

NATO sent special operations divers to test new systems designed to help protect critical underwater infrastructure from damage and sabotage, compounding the problems.

Underwater cables and pipelines that provide internet connectivity and energy have been damaged in a series of alarming incidents in recent years, with a number of further allegations of sabotage emerging in recent months.

These incidents highlight the vulnerability of these lines, but the NATO alliance is looking for answers.

Last fall, elite special operations divers from within the NATO alliance practiced bypassing underwater electronic detection sensors as part of an effort to improve the protection of critical underwater infrastructure. NATO this week shared images from the November training event – ​​Exercise Bold Machina 2024 in La Spezia, Italy – as well as comments from the leaders.

The 13-nation event was the first of its kind, said U.S. Navy Capt. Kurt Muhler, director of maritime development at NATO Special Operations Headquarters, and was designed to test new sensors that could be used to defend against underwater sabotage attempts. The exercise, first reported by Defense News, also tested allied special operations divers and their ability to operate in increasingly transparent battlespaces.

Divers on offensive operations may not always be able to rely on dark, opaque waters to conceal their movements, said Muhler, who has held leadership positions on the SEAL team, citing increased advances in underwater detection systems technologies.

“It’s not about whether anyone knows, or whether you get noticed,” Muhler told Defense News last fall. “It means understanding that there is a system that has the ability to detect you, but you don’t know about it and you don’t know exactly what the capability is.”

Submarine cables, pipelines and other critical underwater infrastructure are at risk

The joint exercise in Italy came as damage to critical underwater infrastructure has become increasingly worrying for Western officials as they scramble to prevent more damage to cables from ships often quietly linked to Russian and Chinese governments.

Several underwater cables have been damaged in the past two months, including a telecommunications line connecting Finland and Germany, and another connecting Finland and Estonia.

Finnish officials said they had found a 60-mile trail on the seabed, indicating that a tanker linked to Russia may be responsible for cutting cables. And around the same time, the cables connecting Germany and Finland and Sweden and Estonia were damaged when a Chinese ship was discovered nearby when the damage occurred.

Such damage has prompted British defense officials to set up a new joint operation with 10 European countries across the Baltic Sea region, using artificial intelligence to monitor potential threats from ships.

Undersea cables are critical components of the international telecommunications infrastructure and the global economy: approximately 750,000 miles of cables span the global seabeds and contribute to the transmission of 95% of international data, including approximately $10 trillion in financial transactions per day.

NATO officials last year highlighted growing threats to cables from Russia and pointed to surveillance activities by Russian units specializing in undersea sabotage. But the barrier to entry for sabotage is not particularly high. Russia has submarine units known to specialize in underwater sabotage, but cables have also been damaged by commercial ships simply dragging their anchors across the seabed.

And concerns about the risk of damage to underwater cables and infrastructure are not limited to European waters. Damage last week to cables off the coast of Taiwan led that island’s officials to suspect deliberate damage from China.

“The underwater domain is both difficult to protect and difficult to attack,” said Alberto Tremori, a NATO scientist at the Center for Maritime Research and Experiments who helped oversee NATO’s November exercise. “It’s not easy to protect because it’s a complex environment, it’s a vast environment.”

Read the original article on Business Insider