Emerging Trends in Protecting Undersea Infrastructure
Executive Summary:
The seabed is a region of rapidly increasing geopolitical focus, and this is a trend that began prior to the Nordstream explosions and will continue once that issue has settled.
Most nations are ill-equipped to conduct operations, or to protect infrastructure, on the seabed.
Technological and expertise transfer from the civilian sector, and developments in unmanned and autonomous systems are the emerging trends for states looking to rapidly develop seabed capabilities.
Protecting infrastructure will continue to be a far harder task than tampering with it.
The Seabed and the Grey Zone:
The explosions that destroyed three of the four Nordstream Pipelines on the 26th September 2022, and the ongoing mystery of who orchestrated it, cast global public and media attention towards the undersea environment in a way that has never been done before. While undersea competition, surveillance and clandestine activities are by no means a new phenomena, their repackaging into the “Grey Zone” of warfare, and the continuing construction of critical infrastructure has seen the seabed attain a central importance to national security.
Policymakers have responded to the Nordstream incident, among others, with a sense of urgency. States are rapidly studying and acquiring capabilities to protect their undersea infrastructure that for so long was a case of out of sight, out of mind. This article will provide a broad overview of the stakes of competition undersea, and the importance of this infrastructure to a globalised world. Before briefly covering several major actors in the undersea domain to provide a brief overview of emerging trends within their programs at improving undersea protection and resilience.
Undersea Critical Infrastructure
The scale of the services provided by critical undersea infrastructure cannot be underappreciated. The major purposes of critical undersea infrastructure can be seen as transmission via cables, transport via pipelines or research/surveillance via undersea sensors. This puts the vast majority of this infrastructure under the umbrella of national security, which shapes how governments approach their protection. Much of the infrastructure, particularly those aimed at transmission or surveillance can be easily constituted as dual use which is an added element of complication. Likewise, much of the equipment used to maintain or repair undersea infrastructure could just as easily be used to tamper with or damage it.
Submarine Cable Map, Image Courtesy of the Energy Industry Review, 2022
Approximately 95% of global intercontinental data travels via underwater cables, by far the dominant method enabling long-distance communication. These cables are inherently vulnerable. They stretch for thousands of miles and are spatially fixed. Surveilling the entire length of these cables is an exceptionally difficult challenge, and it only takes significant damage to one stretch of these cables to render them inoperable. Beyond damaging these cables, tapping them is also a capability that some states possess, allowing access to huge amounts of information, or potentially the ability to selectively and reversibly impair their function.
Likewise, the energy security of many states relies on undersea infrastructure, be it pipelines transporting fossil fuels from other states, or offshore rigs. The Nordstream incident is the best example of this, and it has set a precedent that has prompted many states to reconsider how they can protect their pipelines. The transition towards green energy too sees cables required to transport generated electricity offshore into national grids. Some governments such as that of the United Kingdom are actively looking to address this vulnerability.
Finally, undersea networks of sensors, both civilian and military, provide both valuable oceanographic information and the tracking of submarines or other state assets. The tracking of submarines has long been a part of state interactions, with distributed sonar networks forming a key part of security strategies. These sensors will form a core part of strategies to protect other infrastructure, but they themselves are also vulnerable to damage and will need strategies for protection now the capabilities to tamper with them are increasing.
All of this is before emerging interests in the undersea environment are also considered, such as in deep sea mineral extraction, or the expansion of commercial activities into the Arctic. It can be safely predicted that the undersea environment is only set to see more use in the coming decades.
Existing and Emerging Undersea Capabilities
The current suite of capabilities available to states can be seen to stem from both military and civilian sources. The Cold War legacies of the military interest and experience in deep sea operations is evident. The development and deployment of undersea sensor networks, and undersea salvage and tampering operations can all be seen as being rooted within this period. Civilian technologies and expertise too however can be utilised to operate on the sea bed with the offshore fossil fuel industry having primacy in the conduct of routine undersea operations.
Russia sets the benchmark for undersea capabilities in a number of areas, particularly in their breadth of platforms. The majority of its capability falls under their Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research (GUGI), which exists alongside the Navy as directly subordinate to the MoD. GUGI possesses a pair of modified submarines that can act as a mothership for smaller and very deep-diving, up to 2500m, nuclear-powered vessels. Alongside these are a range of surface vessels that have the capability to operate manned, and likely unmanned, submarines. Russian surface vessels have been suspected of mapping undersea infrastructure in the North Sea and Baltic, and it is in light of this that many European programs aimed at improving undersea engineering capabilities have been initiated.
In response to the realised threats to undersea infrastructure, there has been a broad recognition that most navies are ill-equipped to protect their nation’s undersea infrastructure. The most active countries in developing counters to seabed warfare are the AUKUS nations, the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. The United States’ submarine the USS Jimmy Carter is well suspected to have extensive undersea espionage and engineering capabilities, and recently the USN announced its plans to develop a new variant of its Virginia class submarines with seabed warfare capibilities. These full-sized nuclear submarines are expensive, and will remain a high-end capability that only a handful of states might be able to afford.
In response to the need of protecting much more infrastructure than can feasibly be done by manned system, each of the AUKUS nations are investing extensively in UUVs and Autonomous UUVs (AUUVs). These systems are very much in their infancy with opportunities for these UUVs still being investigated, but on paper, they can greatly expand the coverage of undersea infrastructure. The Russian “Poseidon” autonomous torpedo has been mooted as potentially beingly deployed via a container that can be installed on the sea floor in advance and can be launched remotely, which is a capability that could provide UUVs a degree of independence from launch platforms. The proliferation of UUVs is the most likely driver for the expansion of undersea warfare, and they will become central to both offensive and defensive capabilities in the undersea domain.
The 17-tonne Cetus, an autonomous submarine designed and built for the Royal Navy by MSubs and tasked with monitoring hostile underwater activity, Image courtesy of the Royal Navy, 2022
While spy submarines and UUVs might be the more glamorous seabed platforms under development, they are far from the only ones. Seabed sensor networks offer a continual monitoring capability in the undersea domain, particularly crucial to tracking and attribution. The US is upgrading its undersea sensor networks, while both Russia and China are deploying their own versions of these. Meanwhile, surface support ships offer much of the same capabilities as submarines albeit on a more detectable and less deniable platform. The Royal Navy has, in light of the threat of Russian operations, expedited its acquisition of two Multi-Role Oceanographic Survey Vessels with the aim that they are able to survey, inspect, and repair infrastructure on the seabed. Notably the first of these vessels is to be converted from a specialised civilian ship, showing the tacit lead of civilian industries in this area.
Dipping a Toe
Most militaries have little experience operating on the seabed, nor the resources to dedicate whole vessels to operating in that environment. Given the increasing relevance and political visibility, of the seabed, there are pressures on states to develop capabilities in this region. National strategies are the first step in focusing efforts and funding on undersea competition and warfare. It can be expected that commercial expertise and hardware will be the first port of call for any nation looking to acquire seabed capability, with the proliferation and development of UUVs likely to enable continued development in a cost-efficient manner. Despite the attention now being given to the defence of this infrastructure, conducting operations on the seabed will continue to be far easier than detecting and preventing them. Leaving security planners with an unenviable challenge for some time.