Security of Underwater/Overwater Installations - Cables and Piplines, Oil Rigs etc

[Pelican]

Russian seabed "research" and intelligence gathering vessel Yantar seen by Norwegian Polar research vessel RV Kronprins Haakon in Arctic.

Unsurprisingly Yantar did not respond to calls for identification or have AIS active.

See - https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/ ... 0342423935

[Pelican]

British warship arrives in Baltic to deter Russia

HMS Richmond will be joined by a task force of Royal Navy ships to deter threats to critical undersea cables, pipelines and other assets.
According to a Royal Navy statement, her arrival comes as six additional ships will join a task force to patrol an area from the English Channel to the Baltic Sea in an agreement between Joint Expeditionary Force nations to ensure stability and deter threats to critical undersea cables, pipelines and other assets.

Continues - https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british ... er-russia/

[Pelican]

HMS Richmond has used her advanced sensors to gather crucial information to support operations in the Baltic as she continues her patrols of the region.

The Royal Navy warship left Sweden last week to head to the Baltic Sea after leaving her home port of Devonport last month.

She has experienced several interactions with Russian vessels during her operations in the Baltic Sea supporting the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) Response Option (JRO) to protect underwater critical national infrastructure.

Richmond is one of seven UK ships joining a task group in an agreement with Joint Expeditionary Force nations. It will see ships and aircraft from the 10 nations come together to ensure stability and contribute to the protection of critical underwater infrastructure such as pipelines and cables.

Continues at - https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-l ... 5-acLP5Adg

[Pelican]

Do Nothing: An Alternative Opinion on Critical national Infrastructure and Seabed Warfare

Aim
The aim of this paper is to reflect on some key questions around the problem of seabed infrastructure defence and explore what the ‘Do Nothing’ (or at least very little) option would look like. This is by no means a hit piece on the military policies of any nation; in times of increasing financial constraints, looking at current priorities and asking ‘what should we be doing?’ is helpful. Ruthless prioritisation and clarity of purpose, rather than denuding decision-makers of choices, is a liberating exercise; it focuses mission statements, organisational structures and husbands resources, materiel and personnel for vital, obligatory and necessary tasks rather than discretionary. Asking whether protection of CNI is a military responsibility is the first step in achieving strategic coherence.

To limit the scope of this paper, the focus will be on what to do to deal with deliberate sabotage of seabed infrastructure. This paper will look to answer four questions:

Can deliberate sabotage be stopped?
What happens after?
Is redundancy its own deterrent?
What should defence do?

This paper will focus on physical actions against seabed infrastructure. Whilst outside the scope laid out above, it should not be ignored that an alternative attack vector would be a cyberattack against the network infrastructure. Deliberately targeting the systems which enable the transfer of data along the cables could lead to widespread outages and potentially more significant impacts. In the maritime domain, there is little that can be done to protect or prevent this kind of attack, the responsibility for protection resting with government and corporate IT and cybersecurity professionals.

Continues at - https://wavellroom.com/2024/02/15/alter ... %28Copy%29