IA “FACT” already wrote that Great Britain launched the Nordic Warden system to monitor underwater infrastructure and detect threats from the Russian “shadow fleet”. This is in response to incidents of sabotage, including damage to the cable between Finland and Estonia. The system is based on artificial intelligence, analyzes satellite, sonar and reconnaissance data, detects suspicious vessel activity and quickly notifies allies. It is already used by the British-coordinated Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), which operates more flexibly than NATO.
It is worth noting: underwater cable critical to the global internet, financial transactions and energy supply, but remain vulnerable to sabotage. The “Shadow Navy” of the Russian Federation operates covertly, often turns off and distorts signals, spies, damages infrastructure, creating risks without declaring war.
War at the bottom of the sea: Russian underwater drones spy on Britain’s nuclear fleet
Russian underwater devices believed to have been spying on British nuclear submarines were recently discovered in the seas around the United Kingdom. About this reported The Telegraph after a three-month investigation, during which more than a dozen military and former officials were interviewed.
Journalists found out that the first such devices were spotted in 2020 near strategically important underwater cables. They were probably delivered directly from Russia: neither bases nor submarines were found nearby. Some of the devices were found on the shore, others were intercepted by the British military.
The main purpose of this adventure is to gather intelligence about the Vanguard nuclear submarines, which carry nuclear weapons, one of which constantly patrols the sea. A high-ranking official of the British defense forces declared about the unprecedented activity of the Russians in the Atlantic, in fact about “war on the seabed”.
According to sources in the field of defense, even before the full-scale war with Ukraine, the intelligence service suspected the use of superyachts by Russian oligarchs for covert surveillance near Britain. They also recalled the activity of the ship “Yantar”, suspected of espionage. In the past 15 months, at least 11 Internet cables have been damaged in the Baltic States.
Russia, as emphasizes The Telegraph, the only nation that has a fleet of submarines capable of waging war on the bottom of the ocean, and in some capabilities it is ahead of NATO.
How Russia conducts hostilities on the seabed and why it is time for the West to wake up
What British intelligence is currently recording in the Atlantic is nothing new. This is a continuation of the same hybrid war that Putin has been waging against the civilized world for over a decade. Just now – not only on land or in cyberspace, but under the waves, where it seems that the alarm bells of democracies have not yet reached.
One would think that the ship “Amber” is part of another deep-sea scientific expedition. This is how it is officially described by Moscow: they say that it is simply exploring the seabed. But can it be considered a coincidence that this vessel regularly appears near fiber optic cables in the North Sea, in the area of Ireland, Iceland, and now near Scotland, where the routes of British nuclear submarines are located?
This vessel is equipped with two deep-sea class devices – “Rus” and “Consul”, which can operate at depths of up to 6,000 meters. And what is especially important: they can physically manipulate the underwater infrastructure – not only “observe”, but also, if necessary, cut it. It is about such possibilities investigation by the Jamestown Foundation, which as early as 2021 warned about the risks of subversive use of “Amber”.
An atomic boat is even more revealing.Losharik“. It cannot be confused with typical submarines. It is a unique structure made of titanium spheres, which allows it to dive deeper than any other military object in the world. It was this boat that crashed in 2019, as a result of which 14 officers of the Russian Navy died. But then Putin personally emphasized the “importance of the mission” that the dead were performing. And not because they were saving whales.
In 2015, the US Ministry of Defense classified this underwater vehicle as a means of subversive activity, capable of disabling underwater communication cables. It is about the ability to work with NATO’s underwater strategic communication systems. About the ability to attack what previously seemed untouchable – fiber optic lines that feed the entire modern civilization.
While the West is debating artificial intelligence, Russia has created an autonomous underwater vehicle that plunged into the Mariana Trench without human involvement. This “Vityaz-D“. Formally a scientific pride, in fact another means of underwater expansion. The device demonstrates that Russia is the only one today capable of conducting reconnaissance or special operations at depths that remain inaccessible to Western fleets.
And, in the end, the worst thing: “Poseidon” – an unmanned nuclear torpedo. All discussions about the threats of the new Cold War pale against the background of this device. In the event of a conflict, the Poseidon is capable of approaching the coast undetected and causing a radioactive tsunami. This is no longer espionage, but the technology of the apocalypse.
And the most paradoxical thing is that the West does not have an equivalent answer. The Americans are creating unmanned submarines. But they are still far from an autonomous “doomsday torpedo”, which combines long-range, power and stealth.
If in 2020 Russian underwater devices were discovered near strategic cables, and in 2024 already near the routes of Vanguard nuclear boats, it is not easy intelligence. This is a strategic probing of the defense of the West. Trying to figure out how far you can go before you get an answer. This is the same war as in Georgia, Syria or Ukraine – only on the seabed.
If NATO does not respond to these challenges, the next battles will take place not in the darkness of the sea depths, but in the darkness of a new world disorder. And then the question will not be “how”, but “why did we fail again?”
While Russia prepares for battle on the seabed, the West continues to look to the sky
The world is too used to looking at the sky. We fear hypersonic missiles, monitor the launch of Iranian drones, analyze the orbits of satellites. Meanwhile, Putin has been looking into the black abyss of the Atlantic for a long time. And it is there that he plans the next battle for strategic advantage. The irony is that the West is everything sees, but cannot do anything. And this is not powerlessness, but technological unpreparedness.
British military admits: Yantar, a Russian oceanographic vessel operating near strategic cables, is not a researcher, but a spy and potential saboteur. The West is aware of the threat, but “Yantar” continues to operate in neutral waters, unstoppable by anyone. Because international law does not prohibit it, and the West continues to play by the rules, while Russia has long gone beyond their limits.
British Parliamentary Defense Committee in 2023 made public a report on the vulnerability of underwater infrastructure. It clearly says: the British fleet does not have a sufficient number of ships capable of providing round-the-clock cable monitoring and seabed patrolling. In response, the government announced on the creation of a new unit of underwater monitoring. But this is only an intention. While Putin already has an operational submarine fleet.
Americans are investing in the program Orca XLUUV — an autonomous drone for underwater missions. This is a response to the Russian “Poseidon” and similar systems. But Orca is still at the testing stage, and Poseidon, an unmanned nuclear torpedo capable of approaching the coast unnoticed and hitting a metropolis with a radioactive wave, has already been put into service.
In 2023, a NATO underwater monitoring center was opened in Norway. But this is an intelligence center that has no fleet and no interception powers. And, as the Atlantic Council admits, the allies continue to consider the underwater threat secondary. In practice, this means that Russian deep-sea missions can operate with impunity as long as the West agrees on a response at the level of bureaucratic structures.
While we debate whether the war in Ukraine is hybrid or full-scale, Putin is preparing the next phase — an underwater blockade of digital civilization. This means attacks on Internet cables, paralysis of military communications, blackmail of commercial traffic.
And most importantly: the West is not ready in this area. We have no parity. There is only an illusion that the depths are not a battle arena. But it is there that a new phase of the conflict can begin – quietly, without shots being fired, but with catastrophic consequences.
How oligarchs’ superyachts and pseudoscientific vessels became weapons of the Kremlin’s underwater espionage
In the post-Soviet world, we are used to considering luxury as a symbol of the absence of ideology: gold instead of a party, a yacht instead of a doctrine. But Putin’s Russia once again deceived the world, turning its signs of decadence into tools of the special services. And now, when billion-dollar superyachts drift aimlessly off the coast of NATO, they are not looking for picturesque bays. They are looking for submarine cables and the routes of British nuclear submarines.
One of the Kremlin’s key approaches to espionage is civilian camouflage. And it was superyachts that became a convenient tool. They are not controlled by the Navy. They are not marked on radar as military units. Their course is formally touristic.
Ships with underwater hangars like the Graceful yacht (officially decorated on structures linked to Putin), or Scheherazade, have on-board equipment that allows submerging small devices under water. The possibility that in this way some of the Russian underwater drones could end up near the strategic routes of the Vanguard – British nuclear submarines, confirm sources The Telegraph.
This whole scheme is not new. The Kremlin uses everything: diplomatic dachas as wiretapping centers, consulates as logistical hubs for agents, and now superyachts with “scientists” on board. And the West again lacks the determination to see the obvious: everything flying under the Russian flag is part of the state apparatus of aggression. Even if it has leather sofas and a glass of Moët on the captain’s bridge.
There is no private in Putin’s Russia. There is only state and temporarily borrowed for state purposes. And if British intelligence notes that superyachts are espionage platforms, and “scientific” vessels are invasion devices, then this is not a sensation, but a regularity.
The West should stop looking for logic in the actions of the Kremlin. We need to look for a system. And this system is global. She uses both military bases and deck pools. Because for the Kremlin, espionage is not the shadow of war. This is her form.
…The West has already made several fatal mistakes. He did not recognize the annexation of Crimea as the beginning of a hybrid war. He did not perceive Syria as part of Russia’s strategic offensive. He did not believe in the reality of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – even when it was already on the threshold. Today, the situation repeats itself: we look up again, watching missiles and drones, while the next phase of the war is being prepared underwater.
While the world’s attention is fixed on the sky, Russia is waging a quiet but purposeful war on the ocean floor. Its underwater vehicles track the movement of nuclear submarines, scan fiber optic cable routes and collect data on energy infrastructure. One precise detonation in the darkness of the sea depths — and the West will remain without communication, without exchanges, without coordination between armies. This is no longer intelligence, it is preparation for paralysis.
Next time, we’ll take a look at how to stop the Kremlin’s underwater aggression, from deploying a fleet of autonomous drones to creating new legal rules to end spying under civilian flags.
Tetyana Viktorova
