Nato base in Britain ‘would be knocked out' by undersea cable attack

Yahoo

20-05-2025

A major Nato base is at risk of being knocked out by a coordinated attack on the subsea cables serving Britain, a parliamentary committee has been warned.
The Allied Maritime Command, known as Marcom, acts as the operational headquarters for all of the alliance's maritime forces and is based in Northwood, Hertfordshire.
But the military facility is one of several that rely on fibre-optic cables connecting the UK with Europe and America via the seabed – leaving it potentially vulnerable if an adversary attacks multiple cables at once – a retired Navy commodore told a joint committee of MPs and peers.
In a hearing on Monday, the parliamentarians were also warned that Britain and its Nato allies had forgotten how important undersea infrastructure was to modern society due to a greater focus on 'distant wars' in recent decades.
It follows recent incidents of suspected Russian-sponsored sabotage against subsea cables carrying huge quantities of data between European countries.
Asked whether a coordinated attack on the cables running into Britain risked knocking out Marcom, Commodore (Rtd) John Aitken told the joint committee on national security strategy: 'Yes, they would be in a very difficult position. There was a known fragility around those cables. It is something that is being treated at the moment, I think.
'There are reversionary systems available, but they wouldn't be immediately available, and they would offer a reduced capability.
'But yes, if there were a coordinated attack against specific cables, then there would be a loss of capability – which would take hours to restore.'
Danish navy captain Niels Markussen, the director of Nato's Maritime Centre for Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure, added that members of the alliance were 'behind the curve' on threats to subsea infrastructure.
He said: 'I think what we haven't focused on, what we haven't realised, is how important this is and how important it has grown over time. We have simply forgotten that.
'So security has, in a long period of time where we have been fighting the distant wars, moved a long way from [where it is] in our head, so we haven't really thought [about] security in this area.'
He added that dealing with an incident involving undersea cables was not always straightforward because it is often hard to distinguish between accidental damage and intentional sabotage.
Many cables also have lengthy sections that pass through international waters, Mr Markussen said, creating a legal 'grey zone' that clouds how to respond.
The revelations highlight the UK's dependence on cable infrastructure for military capabilities, as well as other important systems such as international financial markets, telecommunications and the internet.
Roughly 500 cables around the world carry 95pc of all international data. But their remote locations make them difficult and costly to monitor, an issue that has come to the fore amid recent suspected incidents of sabotage.
At least 11 subsea cables have been damaged in the Baltic Sea since October 2023 and similar issues have been reported in the North Sea.
The incidents have fuelled concerns about potential vulnerabilities, with more than 50 Russian ships observed in areas of high cable density.
Experts have suggested in future that unmanned, autonomous underwater drones – such as the Navy's recently named Excalibur – could be deployed to protect undersea infrastructure in future.
But Mr Aitken warned that doing so would be more complicated than it sounds, due to the difficulty of controlling and communicating securely with such vehicles at depth.
'I do get nervous about the focus currently on drones and people thinking they will be able to act in the same way as unmanned aerial vehicles did in Ukraine,' he said.
'The underwater domain is completely different to the air domain. Communication and control with an unmanned underwater vehicle are much more difficult than with an airborne vehicle or a land vehicle.'
He added that potential missions could include sending a drone to check up on a cable before returning to a 'mothership' to report back.
But Mr Aitken said: 'Once any vessel has dived, then communication at depth becomes extremely problematic.'
A Nato spokesman declined to comment on 'hypotheticals' but said the alliance remained 'flexible and agile in its ability to command and control Allied Forces'.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: 'We are committed to maintaining and enhancing the security and resilience of critical undersea infrastructure.
'Just as the Defence Secretary called out the activities of the Russian spy ship Yantar hovering over our undersea cables, let those who threaten the UK or our allies be in no doubt that we will defend our undersea infrastructure.
'This is one area that the Strategic Defence Review is looking at in order to enhance our homeland security.'
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