Russia has a “pretty good map” of Britain’s essential community of undersea cables, consultants have warned – doubtlessly presenting Vladimir Putin with a “vulnerable soft underbelly” to assault.
Whereas separated by 21 miles of water, an internet of cables and pipelines nonetheless connects the UK and Europe.
These traces carry crucial civilian and army communications, electrical energy and gasoline – issues that underpin the material of our society.
Nevertheless it’s laborious to continually control a whole lot of miles of subsea cables, leaving them susceptible to sabotage.
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HMS Somerset shadowing Russian ship Yantar. Pic: Royal Navy/PA
A Russian ‘spy’ ship in English waters
When the Yantar analysis vessel sailed by means of the English Channel earlier this yr, she was adopted intently by HMS Somerset.
At first look, it could be odd for a Royal Navy warship to be requested to shadow a civilian boat. However Britain would not imagine the Yantar is a civilian vessel, it believes it’s used for Russian surveillance.
Defence Secretary John Healey spelled it out in parliament, saying: “Let me be clear, this is a Russian spy ship used for gathering intelligence and mapping the UK’s critical underwater infrastructure.”
The Yantar complied with worldwide guidelines of navigation, Mr Healey mentioned. However this was not the primary time it had been detected close to Britain’s subsea installations, he added.
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Fibre optic cables on the ocean ground. File pic: iStock
What are undersea cables?
They’re pretty vast, he says, and normally encased in a steel sheath. Nearer to shore, they’re typically buried beneath concrete to additional defend them. There are additionally pipelines which carry gasoline from the continent.
Some cables are in comparatively shallow waters and are comparatively simple to restore – they’re typically broken unintentionally by industrial exercise – whereas others are in deeper waters and require specialist gear to repair if an issue arises.
A current report from the IISS thinktank (the Worldwide Institute for Strategic Research) highlighted the extent to which the European and world economies depends on them.
“Cables transmit around 95% of global data flows and underpin an estimated $10trn in financial transactions every day,” it mentioned.
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Round 60 subsea cables join the UK with the world past
Making a map?
Consultants imagine Russia has spent current years covertly mapping undersea cables within the West – a few of that are army and whose places usually are not public data.
“We have seen an uptick in activity of Russian surveillance,” mentioned RUSI thinktank skilled Dr Kaushal.
Floor vessels have been gathering intelligence, however there have additionally been reviews of Russian uncrewed submersibles being operated close to undersea cables, he added.
“Given that this has been a persistent activity in an area on which they have placed some importance for quite some time… one would expect they have a pretty good map.”
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What does sabotage seem like?
Severing undersea cables can have a detrimental affect on the international locations they serve.
“There’s quite a bit of redundancy in the cable networks running across the Atlantic and indeed the cable networks that service the UK,” Dr Kaushal mentioned. “It certainly would not be very easy to sabotage cables… in a way that would be impactful.”
Whereas it could be simple for a hostile state to disclaim slicing one or two cables, a scientific effort to have an effect on the UK by slicing sufficient to have an effect could be tougher to disavow, he added.
That is significantly the case with cables which might be in deeper water, reachable solely by a handful of states.
Current disruption to undersea cables has been blamed on “anchor-dragging by Russia’s shadow fleet”, the IISS mentioned in its report.
In December, Finland seized the Eagle S oil ship which had been carrying Russian oil and was suspected of damaging the Estlink 2 undersea energy cable within the Baltic Sea by dragging its anchor throughout it.
Russia has beforehand denied damaging undersea infrastructure.
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RFA Proteus monitoring Russian ship Yantar in November 2024. Pic: Royal Navy/PA
Does the UK want to organize?
Confronted with an more and more fraught worldwide image because the battle in Ukraine grinds on, the UK parliament’s Nationwide Safety Technique committee launched an inquiry into undersea cables earlier this yr.
It’s analyzing how properly the UK is ready to defend its undersea infrastructure – and the way resilient the nation could be within the occasion of a significant, protracted disruption to our web connection.
“Our internet cable network looks like an increasingly vulnerable soft underbelly,” chairman Matt Western MP mentioned because the inquiry started.
“There is no need for panic – we have a good degree of resilience, and awareness of the challenge is growing. But we must be clear-eyed about the risks and consequences: an attack of this nature would hit us hard.”
Dr Kaushal argued that whereas there’s a diploma of redundancy within the undersea cables that serve the UK, the pipelines that convey gasoline to British properties are maybe extra susceptible.
“I think in some ways the pipeline network is far more fragile because there we are more reliant on a handful of critical pipelines,” he mentioned.
