NATO reduced response time to the Baltic to 30 minutes – because of Russia, the ghost fleet and the submarine cables

Ships, sea drones and artificial intelligence, this is how the alliance is reinforcing the defense of the critical submarine cables of the Baltic

On Christmas morning, the Estonia power operators had an unwanted surprise: the Estlink 2 electric cable that connects them to Finland had failed.

The failure left only the Estlink 1 cable in operation, reducing the flow of electricity to the stony by almost two thirds.

The rupture had little impact on services due to reserve capabilities. However, it has feared an increase in energy prices while the cable is out of service – potentially for months.

The next day, the Finnish authorities approached and detained the Eagle S, a tanker with the Cook Islands Pavilion that would carry Russian oil to Turkey. According to the Finnish authorities, the ship had passed over the cable, apparently dragging the anchor.

Like Estonia Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur, he was quick to point out in an interview with CNN in Tallinn last week, this was not the first suspicious “hybrid attack” in recent months, all with the same mode of operation apparent. He acknowledged, however, that there are those who believe that what happened was accidental.

But it would be the most consequent.

The NATO, which was already accompanying the cable cut suspicion incidents, reacted. Within three weeks, the alliance had placed at sea a group coordinated from war ships, specifically to dissuade such suspicious attacks.

By announcing the new mission of surveillance and deterrent, nicknamed Baltic Sentry, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he was “seriously concerned” about a “growing threat to our critical underwater infrastructures.”

Although NATO had already intensified patrols in the Baltic Sea and increased coordination with the National Police and the border guards of the affected nations, the incident of December 25 was only the latest of what the European Union described as “a series of attacks suspects to critical infrastructures ”.

Russia denies any role in the damage. But Pevkur does not believe it, blaming the Russian ships that violate the sanctions, the so -called “shadow fleet” of aged oil tankers accused of trying to circumvent western restrictions on the sale of Russian oil.

“We are facing the situation as it is, and we know that these ships, when we talk about the shadow fleet, are a threat, not only from the point of view of security, but, above all, from an environmental point of view,” said Pevkur .

It is an open skepticism already shared by many of the members of Baltic Sentry.

Suspected Russian connections

Last week, aboard the Dutch frigate HNLMS Tromp – Batic Sentry’s state -of -the -art target ship – the mission commander told CNN that he was already gathering a standard of maritime activity in the Russian version.

“Many of the ships we find out are strangely act in a Russian port or go to a Russian port,” said Comodoro Arjen S. Warnaar, who leads the Nato Permanent Maritime Group.

Warnaar said that in some cases the anchors of ships had been dragged “a few hundred miles,” adding that in terms of allegations that the crews had not realized what was happening, “my guess is not , a captain knows this ” – which means that the anchor’s drag was” probably intentional. “

Finnish authorities have not yet announced the results of the investigation into the failure of Estlink 2.

Finnish lawyer Herman Ljungberg, who represents the owner of Eagle S, operated by Caravella LLC FZ based in the United Arab Emirates, told CNN that he believes the ship was carrying Russian oil, but it was “totally legal load, sold to the shelter the maximum applicable price ”. The official has classified the sabotage allegation as a “nonsense” and said that Finnish police have been investigating four weeks without communicating any conclusions that indicate sabotage. He also said that the alleged damage of the ship in submarine equipment occurred outside Finland’s territorial waters and, therefore, Helsinchia had no jurisdiction to intervene.

Russia has denied the allegations of involvement in the sabotage of submarine cables. The Russian embassy in London said last week that NATO was reinforcing naval and aerial forces under the “fictional pretext of the” Russian threat. “

Global impact of interruptions

In the Baltic Sea there are dozens of vulnerable internet and electricity cables, mostly placed without protection at the bottom of the sea. According to Rutte, more than 95% of worldwide internet traffic is transported through submarine cables, with about 1.3 million kilometers of cables that ensure an estimated daily international trade in $ 10 billion.

Repairs can be expensive and damage may lead months to repair. Although submarine networks often have incorporated redundancy, a concerted attack could paralyze communication networks of many nations, endangering hospital surgeries, police responses and more.

Even small interruptions could prevent tens of thousands of people from accessing their favorite programs and movies and affecting online shopping and home deliveries.

In a life dependent on the internet, an anchor of a dragged ship hundreds of miles can ruin your day.

Last week, according to the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense, the British Navy was forced to escort what he described as a Russian spy through the narrow Canal da Mancha, “weeks after being caught to wander over submarine infrastructures criticism in British waters ”.

Just a day earlier, the UK had announced that it would send planes to join Operation Baltic Sentry, along with ships sent by Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

France also has a mining hunting ship in the working group, the CMT Croix du Sud.

Earlier this month, the French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Leconnu, denounced the “aggressive action of Russia,” after a French maritime patrol plane was blocked by the fire control system of a Russian S400 air defense system and The signs of GPS were also blocked while patrolling international airspace under Operation Baltic Sentry. GPS interference is not new – for months, it prevented the landing of civil planes in the region.

I would help create “life patterns”

Operation Baltic Sentry is supported by Artificial Intelligence (IA) from the new NATO Maritime Center for the safety of critical underwater infrastructures in the United Kingdom.

“Speed ​​is the most important factor in this case. We need to react very quickly, ”NATO’s chief of maritime operations told Captain Niels Markussen to CNN last week.

According to Markussen, a Danish Navy captain, the team is creating “life patterns” in the Baltic, observing anomalies, such as ships that often change direction, who are stopped or slowed around critical cables. “We have this image of the underwater infrastructure and compare it with the surface image,” he explained.

With combined war, IA, high -tech location data and F -35 fighters, Markussen says that the reaction time for suspicious behaviors will be “half an hour or an hour” – a long way away during 5 pm during the which a ship suspected of sabotage dragged his anchor last year.

But with the speed and strength of this new operation comes the danger, warned Markussen. “It’s sensitive because it’s an area where we have to find a balance between this change and something that can become very ugly – and what I mean by war.”

It is not as simple as blaming Russia, he noted. “The assignment of guilt is difficult,” he added, stressing that “the proof, the steaming weapon … is very, very difficult.”

Pevkur, the Minister of Defense of Estonia, whose country has deep historical reasons to fear Russia and is on weeks to disconnect from a joint energy grid with his much larger eastern neighbor, is also cautious about the assignment of blame. “We have to gird the rules as well as the legislation, because this is exactly what Putin wants to see,” he said, referring to the need to build a watertight case to prevent Russia from exploring any doubts or gaps.

Even so, he noted, “it is not a surprise” that the cable cut occurred at this time, or so ambiguously. Russia, he recalled, has a strategy. “They have always been using civil ships. We have seen that the ships of your secret services are marked as civilians, say (to) academic purposes, or whatever. So this is not a surprise to us. ” Kremlin has previously rejected the accusations that he used civil ships to collect information.

Pevkur sees the cut of cables as an extension of the war in Ukraine, saying that Putin wants Western nations “not to deal with Ukraine and (instead) deal with their own problems.”

Drones at sea research obscure depths

At the sea, off the coast, the German FGS Datteln hunt crew is at the end of Baltic Sentry.

Perhaps more than any other Baltic Sentry’s crews and ships are transition from old war combat methods to the ability to overcome a hybrid war. Mine hunts went from the fight against maritime mines to detect damage to submarine cables.

A few meters above the cold water, in an open deck on the back of the old war ship, a shelf of red sea drones is stacked. Each is about 2.4 meters long, fed by four thin thrusters and requires three sailors to maneuver it carefully above water before dropping it into the sea.

Arrested to the ship by a thin orange wiring, wrapped in a manual crank drum, the images are transmitted from the bottom of the ocean.

What drone operators see underwater, long before repair teams are called to repair a damaged cable, can be the trigger that leads to diplomacy to the action that Markussen fears.

If irrefutable evidence of Russian misconduct is found, NATO will have taken another step towards confronting your opponent.