Reuters (“NATO allies foil Russian subsea cable sabotage plot“):
Deep in Arctic waters near the remote Svalbard archipelago this spring, NATO allies caught Russian subs training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints.
The clandestine Russian operation, described to Reuters by two Western officials, was carried out by Moscow’s GUGI undersea warfare directorate, which used deep-sea submersibles to simulate the deployment of the sophisticated and destructive technology.
A joint operation involving Britain, Norway and the United States tracked and confronted the Russian vessels at sea, said the two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. The vessels were prevented from completing their exercise and eventually left the area.
Britain and Norway disclosed in April that they had uncovered a covert Russian operation in Arctic waters. But the discovery of the new weapon, the location of the operation and the U.S. involvement have not been reported.
The deep-sea face-off comes at a time when some Western intelligence officials fear the Kremlin is ramping up sabotage operations in Europe and preparing for a conflict with NATO.
Some U.S. intelligence analysts are increasingly concerned Russia may test NATO’s mutual defence pact, known as Article 5, three U.S. officials said. If it does, destroying subsea cables could be a critical part of that effort, the Western officials said.
Cables no thicker than a garden hose, lying on the seabed or buried just below, are critical to global internet connectivity and financial transactions. Their economic and strategic importance has made them targets in past conflicts, including in the First and Second World Wars, when they were critical to delivering orders by telegraph or telephone.
Two 1,400 km subsea fiber-optic cables linking Svalbard to mainland Norway lie as deep as 2,700 metres below the sea’s surface. They carry vast amounts of satellite data downloaded at the SvalSat satellite ground station, the world’s largest and part of NASA’s Near Space Network.
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At the same time as the confrontations at sea, British and Norwegian officials took their findings to Moscow to show they were aware of the new technology – hoping it might make Russia hesitate to use it, the two Western officials said.
Russia didn’t damage any cables. The exercise focused on simulating the deployment of the technology in the event of a conflict with NATO, the officials said. They declined to detail how the technology works.
Asked for comment, NATO referred Reuters to Norwegian and UK authorities.
“Through our joint operation, we sent a clear message to Russia that they cannot operate covertly,” Norway’s Defence Minister Tore Sandvik said in a statement. “We have made it unequivocally clear to Russian authorities that any attempt to target our critical infrastructure will be detected and met with consequences,” he said. “It is in no one’s interest to escalate tensions in the High North.”
Britain’s Defence Ministry pointed to April 9 statements acknowledging attempted covert activities in and near Norwegian and British waters by Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known by its Russian acronym GUGI. Washington and London have both imposed sanctions on the secretive directorate.
It’s great that we foiled the sabotage this time. But this is a further escalation of a tactic Russia and China have increasingly used over the past two years or so.
It’s hard to overstate how much the global economy relies on undersea cables. They carry some 98 percent of international internet traffic and facilitate approximately $10 trillion in daily financial transactions. Granting considerable redundancy, this is a critical infrastructure that has been protected under international law since 1884.
Deliberately targeting them during peacetime is just wildly irresponsible. It very much risks escalating to armed conflict. And, of course, war with Russia would be waged under a nuclear shadow.
