NATO allies ramp up efforts to protect critical undersea infrastructure

Military and civilian experts from across NATO met at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on 10 December 2024 to ramp up further co-operation in countering threats to critical undersea infrastructure.

The specialists were joined by industry representatives, including telecommunications operators. Participants at the meeting reviewed mechanisms to boost situational awareness, to enhance information sharing and preparedness, and to deter and defend against attacks to undersea infrastructure.

“Leveraging innovation and technology, including through increased sensing and monitoring to detect suspicious activity near critical undersea infrastructure, is a key focus,” Ambassador Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, NATO’s Assistant Secretary General for Innovation, Hybrid and Cyber, was quoted as saying in a NATO press release. “This is not a new problem set for NATO, but it is one that requires even closer co-operation between civilian and military actors in the face of intensifying hostile campaigns, including by Russia.”

In May 2024 NATO launched a new Maritime Centre for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure within the alliance’s Maritime Command in the United Kingdom. With growing threats to subsea infrastructure, NATO created earlier in 2024 its Critical Undersea Network to improve information sharing and co-ordination for the security of undersea cables and pipelines. The network brings together stakeholders from allies’ governments and industries as well as NATO’s civilian and military headquarters and other relevant actors.

On 4 December 2024 NATO foreign ministers wrapped up two days of meetings in Brussels by vowing to address the increasing incident of sabotage and other hostile actions being inflicted on NATO countries.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated that “both Russia and China have tried to destabilise our countries and divide our societies with acts of sabotage, cyber-attacks, and energy blackmail”.

On 17 and 18 November 2024 a Chinese bulk carrier, Yi Peng Three, is suspected of severing two undersea cables – one linking Sweden to Lithuania and the other between Finland and Germany – by deliberately dragging its anchor along the seabed for more than 160 km.

On 26 September 2022 a series of underwater explosions and consequent gas leaks occurred affecting the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines within the economic zones of Denmark and Sweden. Both pipelines were built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea.

In August 2024 it was reported that German authorities had issued a European arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national suspected of having used the sailing yacht Andromeda along with two others to sabotage the Nord Stream pipelines, although some sources have suggested this might have been a Russian ‘false flag’ operation.