NATO is racing to develop technologies that can detect suspicious activity near critical underwater infrastructure in real time. What led it in this strategic direction was the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline a year ago, which demonstrated the difficulty of monitoring.
Exercise in Portugal
The 14 countries of the Atlantic military alliance and Sweden, which has applied for membership, are testing maritime unmanned aerial vehicles, sensors and the use of artificial intelligence to achieve development in this sector. According to the information announced by the Bloomberg agency, a 12-day exercise is being carried out off the coast of Portugal, which will end on Friday, September 29. According to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia continues to map allied cables and pipelines that it has identified as possible future targets. While Moscow rejected the accusations made by some Western countries immediately after the explosions on the Nordstream natural gas pipeline, NATO did not officially blame any actor. The challenge for both governments and private companies, according to Atlantic Pact leaders, is to make precise attribution to these attacks in the first place.
How does detection work?
NATO explained how the systems they tested worked. If suspicious activity is detected, the organization’s 31 allies will be able to decide whether to opt for diplomatic or military intervention, based on seriousness and urgency. Lieutenant General Hans-Werner Wiermann, head of NATO’s cell responsible for the protection of underwater infrastructures, told reporters that these choices could be made based on the “solid information base” provided by the survey. Real-time detection “sends a deterrent signal to the enemy, whether it is Russia or anyone else,” Wiermann said during a visit to the ongoing exercise in Troy, south of Lisbon. The Lieutenant General stated that artificial intelligence can be used to track the movements of ships and flags if they pass critical infrastructure several times.
Fiber optic sensors
The goal is to detect potentially harmful behavior in underwater infrastructure as it occurs and share this information with governments and private operators. During the exercises, allies sought to stop a “hostile actor” trying to disrupt data networks and wreak havoc on financial markets by using a state-backed commercial ship to make its activities harder to detect. By placing fiber optic sensors on infrastructure cables, it was detected that the fictitious enemy ship was trying to deploy an unmanned underwater vehicle. This information was passed to the NATO chain of command and control. Once the threat was confirmed, operations management dispatched a combination of air, surface and underwater drones to intercept and escort the suspicious ship.
suspicious activities
Although responsibility for the Nordstream gas pipeline has not yet been determined, several incidents attributable to Russian spy ships operating near allied systems have occurred in recent months. This has raised concerns among Atlantic pact member states in light of Russia’s “advanced submarine capabilities”, which are largely intact compared to Moscow’s land forces and instead bogged down in the invasion of Ukraine. Already in May, NATO warned of the risk of Moscow targeting infrastructure in Europe and North America. The aim will be to target countries that support Ukraine financially and militarily.
Russian submarine capabilities intact
Wiermann said Moscow has naval warships, scientific ships and commercial fishing boats at its disposal. The Kremlin will also have container ships and oil tankers, which are also useful for tracking critical submarine systems of the Atlantic military organization’s allies. At the press conference, NATO emphasized that underwater data cables carry financial transactions worth approximately $10 trillion and approximately 95% of global Internet traffic every day. Extraction and transportation by sea also accounts for two-thirds of the world’s oil and natural gas. From here we understand the fundamental role of monitoring, although it is made very complex due to the characteristics of cables that can be thousands of kilometers long and hundreds of meters deep under the sea.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
