Analysis: Royal Navy deploys seven ships on underwater infrastructure patrols

In an announcement made this week, the MoD has said the RN will deploy a substantial force of vessels to patrol areas with vulnerable undersea critical infrastructure in cooperation with other nations. Here we look at the context of this action and what this may mean in practice

On 28th November Defence Ministers from the Joint Expeditionary (JEF) nations agreed to activate a ‘Response Option’. This will take the form of a Royal Navy-led effort to bolster the security of undersea infrastructure and deter hybrid threats. Since the destruction of the NordStream pipeline in September 2022 and the attack on the Baltic Connector pipeline in October 2023, there has been increasing concern about underwater Russian activity. The Defence Secretary described this as “This historic and unprecedented agreement”. It is certainly been a long time since the UK conducted multi-lateral military activity in the European area that was not done under the auspices of NATO.

The JEF construct

The JEF was formed in 2015 by Northern European nations and its principal geographic areas of interest are the High North, North Atlantic and Baltic Sea region. It is a construct intended to respond to military, security or political challenges and operate across institutional boundaries in the domains of Maritime, Land, Air, Space and Cyber. It is not a pact with obligations like NATO and is intended to complement the alliance which is the bedrock of European security. JEF was able to include Sweden and Finland which were outside NATO initially and can react rapidly and flexibly, particularly to grey-zone or malign sub-threshold activity. It has no standing forces but there is constant dialogue between members and regular military exercises are held using NATO standards and doctrine as its baseline.

Russia is inevitably the main threat to JEF nations and preventing interference with subsea pipelines and cables is exactly the kind of scenario it was intended for. The members agreed in June 2003 to actively share tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data as well as pool and share capabilities in this domain.

Taskforce?

The MoD says from December a “task force of six RN ships and an RFA, supported by an RAF P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft based at RAF Lossiemouth will patrol the seas around northern Europe”. The activity will cover a large area including the North Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic. To describe the RN’s contribution as a ‘task force’ may be slightly misleading for some people who might expect this implies a great force of warships sailing in company. In reality, the surveillance work will partly dovetail with other pre-planned missions and the ships will mostly be operating independently. Monitoring activity at sea is routine naval work and keeping an eye on Russian ships of all kinds has been a task for European navies ongoing since the end of the Second World War.

To some extent, this is a political and signalling exercise, designed to demonstrate the unity of the JEF nations and concrete actions in response to the pipeline attacks. It should be noted that UK government has at least, been proactive and taking a lead in countering the very real and very serious threat to undersea infrastructure with this deployment and the purchase of RFA Proteus.

In total around 20 European warships will be involved but the most intensive patrol will be in the Baltic Sea. HMS Richmond sailed from Gothenburg on 1st December and will lead a contingent of ships in the Baltic sent from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Sweden. These states do not have major warships but Sweden will provide two of its Visby-class corvettes.

HMS Somerset is the other major warship earmarked for involvement. She has returned to Norway and was in Stavanger this week. It is understood she should be receiving the Naval Strike Missile soon, possibly delivered directly from the factory in Kongsberg. A senior source has said that bringing the Maritime Offensive Strike System (MOSS), in the shape of NSM, into service is a key priority for the RN.

Minehunters HMS Cattistock and HMS Penzance are included in the seven ships of the task force. 40-year old HMS Cattistock has just completed a major LIFEX refit that will see her serve into the 2030s and has been working up from her Portsmouth base. HMS Penzance is due to decommission in the near future as the penultimate Sandown class SRMH left in RN service and this tasking may be her final duty. As we have observed before, mine hunters have much utility beyond mine warfare and their hurried demise in favour of autonomous systems is going to leave a substantial gap.

Patrolling the waters around the UK is routine work for HMS Severn and HMS Tyne, the two OPVS allocated to the operation. HMS Severn is frequently employed as a platform for young officers to conduct navigation training but the two tasks are not incompatible. These two ships will likely be sent to the North Sea although they have occasionally been deployed well beyond the UK EEZ in the past.

RFA Mounts Bay is already in the Baltic, having recently completed participation in exercise Freezing Winds with the Finnish Navy that concluded on 1st December. She is not an ideal ‘patrol vessel’ but like any ship at sea, can contribute to the surveillance of the area around her and has Royal Marines and landing craft embarked. Her well dock would also be useful for deploying UVVs that could investigate underwater activities.

The RAF Poseidon is well suited to the task and can keep watch on a large area, cueing ships to investigate vessels of interest. The recent TV documentary featured coverage of a Poseidon crew monitoring Russian vessels acting suspiciously close to North Sea pipelines. The main issue for the Poseidon force is lack of numbers, with just 9 aircraft it cannot provide a persistent presence, given the number of missions and huge areas it has to cover. Support from other allied ISR assets as well as satellite imagery and AIS tracking data can all be compiled to build up a picture of maritime activity. This is nothing new but there will be a greater emphasis on monitoring undersea infrastructure.

Into the grey zone

The most obvious question about the JEF response option is how will the mission work? If a warship encounters a vessel (Russian or otherwise) in international waters, stopped and acting suspiciously over known cables or pipelines what action can they take? It may be quite difficult to discern or prove that malign activity is in progress. Interference with subsea assets can potentially be carried out from quite small vessels and a team of divers in shallower parts of the Baltic. The Russians have a wide range of options, from dedicated surface ships (such as the RFS Yantar) that deploy submersibles to specialist nuclear submarines such as the RFS Belgorod equipped with mini-submarines for entirely covert operations.

Even if the ships of the task force have UUVs that can be deployed to inspect the seabed in the immediate area, it may not be simple to discover if the vessel of interest is merely surveying the installations or is actively preparing to damage them. Assuming hard evidence of interference can be obtained, then it becomes a matter for higher authorities as the Rules of Engagement (ROE) are unlikely to allow for attempts to board and certainly not the use of force. It becomes a matter of intelligence and evidence gathering so at least the activity will no longer be deniable. No one has been able to prove who conducted previous attacks which have been the subject of controversy and misinformation, increasing the difficulty in dealing with it at a political level. (Unsubstantiated theories as to the culprits include the Russians, the US, Ukraine and even the UK.)

How long the RN can sustain 7 ships at least partially involved in this mission, remains to be seen. Unfortunately, the Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance ship, RFA Proteus, specifically intended for this task has taken longer to enter service than anticipated and is not available yet. She has to complete Operational Sea Training and will have to return to Cammell Laird shipyard in January for her 5-yearly dry docking and inspections that are mandated under DNV class rules.

Protection of Critical National Infrastructure will be a mission where success looks very unspectacular and has the potential to become an eternal task for navies. Infrastructure carrying billions of pounds worth of data and energy supplies are only going to become a more attractive target for any adversary wanting to conduct a campaign of harassment below the threshold of armed conflict or for all out destruction in time of war.