Russian spy ships mapping undersea infrastructure in the North Sea

Investigations by Danish media have discovered that in the past year multiple Russian civilian vessels have been conducting a detailed reconnaissance of offshore wind farms, gas pipes and power cables in the Baltic and North Sea. Here we summarise what is known and the implications.

Know your enemy

It is no surprise that the Russians are making contingency plans to target undersea infrastructure but a concerted effort to monitor suspicious vessels by Scandinavian journalists has revealed the true extent of this campaign to the public. NATO naval intelligence has probably been well aware of this activity for some time but these reports highlight the growing and complex threat. Should the Russians choose to sabotage undersea targets, it is potentially possible to carry the attacks out in a ‘deniable’ or ‘non-attributable’ manner such as the attacks on the Nordstream pipeline. This kind of asymmetric attack is difficult to deter and awkward to respond to when it is hard to prove responsibility or how it was carried out. Small-medium scale interference with critical national infrastructure provides the Russians with a perfect opportunity to inflict damage on its adversaries while remaining just below the threshold of full-scale ‘kinetic’ warfare.

This vulnerability has become an increasing concern for Western leaders over the last 5-10 years and seabed warfare is increasing in priority. The relatively rapid acquisition of the Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance ship, RFA Proteus, due to enter service by this Summer, is a good example but a large-scale coordinated multi-national effort is needed to secure assets over such a vast area. Operating within the Exclusive Economic Zones of NATO nations, it is quite legal for Russian vessels to carry out seabed observations within international waters, besides close monitoring, there is not much that can be done immediately to prevent this kind of intelligence gathering.

Russian mapping of the seabed can be seen as a task in line with preparations for a war with NATO. With detailed surveys, it will be possible to identify the parts of the networks where maximum damage could be inflicted if attacked. These include offshore substations and clusters where multiple power cables are connected or junctions where gas pipes meet. A really systemic attack on communications cable and energy supply lines could cause economic destruction, chaos and potential loss of life in the weeks or months it would take to restore these services. The UK, Scandinavia and the Baltic States are very reliant on such maritime infrastructure and are especially vulnerable. Russia has its own vulnerabilities but is far less dependent on subsea infrastructure so NATO has limited options to respond directly in kind, other forms of deterrence need to be devised.

Vessels of opportunity

Besides the Nordstream attack which has not conclusively been proven to be the work of the Russians, there is speculation that a they have already conducted a small scale ‘capability trials’. Two Shetland Island subsea cables, one between the Scottish mainland and another between the Faeroe islands, were cut within a few days of each other during October 2022. At the time the Boris Petrov, a Russian ‘scientific research ship’ was observed in the vicinity. In January 2022 entire sections of submarine fiberoptic communication cables connecting northern Norway to the Spitzbergen archipelago were cut. Notably, the damage to the cables was in very deep waters and unlikely broken by fishing activities or dragging anchors, indicating the use of deep-diving submersibles.

Up to 50 Russian vessels in the Baltic have been observed in unusual operating patterns using open sources such as communications monitoring and on rare occasions AIS when enabled. Non-naval vessels with AIS turned off are usually engaged in nefarious activity but their movements were plotted by intercepting position reports. It is now part of official Russian military doctrine to follow the Chinese practice of utilising its civilian fleet, from fishing boats to cargo ships as vessels of opportunity that can be employed in hybrid warfare. Apparently, innocent vessels can conduct surveillance and intelligence gathering, perhaps equipped to deploy autonomous systems. Potentially they could also covertly lay sea mines in the shallow waters of the Baltic and North Sea.

Voyages of the Vladimirsky

Of particular note is the Russian oceanographic research vessel Admiral Vladimirsky, a vessel of interest for Western navies. The last survivor of six vessels built in Poland in 1975 to serve the Soviet Union she has observed NATO exercises in the past although has also been employed on more innocent hydrography and oceanography tasks. She is capable of underwater surveillance missions as well as gathering electronic (ELINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT) and has recently been on a voyage taking particular interest in wind farms from the Baltic to the North Sea. Danish journalists located and actually approached the ship in a small boat while she was at anchor in the Baltic and observed armed personnel in uniform on the upper deck.

The Vladimirskiy was observed conducting surveillance off the northeast coast of Scotland in mid-November 2022. She arrived from the Baltic and loitered in the Moray Firth for 3 days just outside the UK territorial limit. The shelter provided by the Moray Firth has been used regularly by Russian vessels for many years to conduct alongside refuelling or replenishment operations but it is possible the Vladimirskiy was attempting to intercept V/UHF communications from RAF Lossiemouth.

On leaving the Firth, she headed slowly south down the east coast of Scotland, passing over the UK section of the TAMPNET offshore fibre-optic cable network and then loitered east of Montrose for two days. It is believed HMS Enterprise (now decommissioned) was conducting trials with USVs and UUVs in the area at the time and this may have been an attempt to observe or record the electronic emissions associated with this activity. Vladimirskiy presence in the North Sea also coincided with HMS Queen Elizabeth conducting flying operations in the area during her short autumn deployment.

Main Image: Admiral Vladimirskiy, 2016. Photo L. M. Correia