Subsea Warfare Need Not Involve Target Destruction
This week, two unmanned surface vessels (USVs) were launched as part of a trial by Denmark's defense ministry aimed at boosting the nation’s maritime surveillance capabilities.
Countries bordering the Baltic Sea are on high alert after a number of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
As defense analyst David R. Strachan points out in the May/June issue of Marine Technology Reporter: “Seabed warfare will increasingly be defined by the need to contest a dense battlespace teeming with sensor networks, communications nodes, autonomous vehicle hubs and energy systems, with a range of commercial, scientific and military assets, potentially finding themselves on a subsea strike target list.”
Strachan explains the potential targets, and the weapons, and points out that a subsea strike would not require a target’s complete or even near destruction to achieve operational or strategic impact.
“Minor damage, such as throttled power throughput, a degraded hydrophone array or a compromised pressure housing, could achieve mission kills like localized ISR blackouts, severed C2 comms, drained batteries or the suppression of a prepositioned effectors. Moreover, repair or replacement of damaged systems would require specialized vessels, ROVs and trained crews operating in challenging conditions. Adversaries may lack the capacity or an uncontested environment to respond, turning a minor subsea strike into a long-term disruption.”
This means attacks offer a means to project power and impose costs without crossing the threshold of open conflict, all while avoiding detection or attribution, making them a strategic force multiplier as well.
Read the May/June issue of Marine Technology Reporter magazine here.