Ultra Maritime's Sea Spear (Image: Ultra Maritime )
Protecting our waters from the real risk of Russian sabotage and surveillance is the Ministry of Defence’s "next frontier”, experts have said. And now a British defence company has announced a landmark deal to develop a new state-of-the-art underwater drone to protect our vital undersea assets.
Ultra Maritime has already developed Sea Spear, an autonomous undersea vessel that is launched by a mother ship and then expands to 50 times its length to patrol wagers, silently listening for Russian submarine activity. But a new deal with US dronemaker Anduril will see Sea Spear become a mother ship of its own, carrying Anduril’s novel Seabed Sentry system, a series of low-cost “sensor nodes” use sophisticated artificial intelligence to vastly increase its range.
Last year we warned how a Russian spy ship which damaged an undersea electricity cable on Christmas Day also dropped sensors in the English Channel.
Finnish Special Forces seized the spy ship Eagle S after it dragged its anchor to disrupt electricity supplies between Nato allies Finland and neighbouring Estonia.
A month earlier, another Russian spy ship, Yantar, was found in the Irish Sea loitering near cables carrying data for Microsoft and Google.
It is equipped with unmanned underwater vehicles and two mini-submarines capable of reaching depths of 6,000m and which allow the Yantar to find and map infrastructure, as well as to cut cables, tap them for information or even scramble them.
Yantar - which can carry and repair several mini-submarines - is one of more than 50 vessels operated by Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, Gugi, and has the capability to deploy robots deep into the English Channel and North Sea.
Though not officially part of Russia’s navy. Gugi draws personnel from the 29th Separate Submarine Division and answers directly to Moscow's MoD.
1 of 4
Ultra Maritime's Sea Spear in action (Image: Ultra Maritime)
Ultra Maritime's Sea Spear in action (Image: Ultra Maritime)
Ultra Maritime's Sea Spear in action (Image: Ultra Maritime)
Ultra Maritime's Sea Spear in action (Image: Ultra Maritime's Sea Spear )
The UK is the undersea cable hub between the US and Europe (Image: Express)
“And it’s not just Russia we should be worried about - the adversarial alignment that we've seen emerging throughout the war in Ukraine has brought Russia, North Korea, and indirectly China and Iran into the bigger picture picture and they are all developing capabilities to interfere with our national infrastructure," said Prof Alessio Patalano of KCL.
“Undersea protection is the next frontier of national security - everything that has to do with our daily lives, from accessing NHS data to financial transactions and even offshore wind farms needs protecting."
The stakes are high.
As an island, the UK is heavily reliant on subsea cables, which carry £7 trillion in daily financial transactions.
The cables - larger than garden hoses with tiny fibre optics housed inside nylon and copper - are an increasingly tempting way for Moscow to cause economic damage.
Because of its geography, the UK is a transatlantic “hub” around which the hundreds of fibre-optic cables pass along the sea bed to Europe.
These cables transmit 98 per cent of global communications and include Google’s 4,000-mile Grace Hopper, which stretches between New York to Cornwall and Bilbao.
Russia’s increasingly blatant actions have already forced defence secretary John Healey to send a clear warning to Vladimir Putin: “We know what you are doing and we will not shy away from robust action to protect this country.”
A USN engineer maintains an undersea cable (Image: US Navy )
Invalid email
We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our Privacy Policy
To counter this, the Royal Navy has already begun to run autonomous drones to patrol our waters.
These include SeaCat, capable of running at a depth of 300m for up to 24 hours at as a time, Gavia, which can dive 1,000m, deep enough to cover most of the waters surrounding the UK and Defender, which can be fitted with manipulator arms to neutralise any Russian mini subs.
But the UK would need at least a hundred of these undersea drones to be on patrol at all times in order to cover the risks we face.
Crucially, a new programme - Project Cabot - has been rolled out to develop a new range of air, surface and submersible vehicles, as well as sensors in partnership with private firms such as Ultra Maritime.
"The United Kingdom faces unprecedented undersea threats to its freedom of the seas in the North Atlantic and to its undersea critical infrastructure," said Carlo Zaffanella, President & CEO of Ultra Maritime.
"Modern, quiet and capable Russian submarines routinely deploy in the North Atlantic threatening the sea lanes and Royal Navy ships and submarines and, along with Russian spy ships, conducting seabed warfare by disrupting undersea communications cables and damaging petroleum pipelines in the North Atlantic and North Sea.
"Recently, undersea acoustic sensors washed ashore in the waters surrounding the UK that were deployed by Russian undersea forces in an effort to detect both Vanguard strategic ballistic missile and Astute classes of Royal Navy submarines.
"Anduril’s Seabed Sentry with Ultra Maritime’s Sea Spear, through Project Cabot, will provide the Royal Navy the capability for unmanned autonomous detection of Russian submarines and can monitor and protect UK critical undersea infrastructure."
