Europeans wade into fighting seabed threats with drones and sensors

EUROPE and WASHINGTON — Shaken by an underwater explosion that ripped through the Nord Stream pipelines in September, European nations are waking up to the task of securing the ocean floors that house the continent’s arteries of wealth.

But protecting the vast network of energy pipelines and communications cables that line the surrounding bodies of water comes down to a familiar question: Who’s in charge?

That’s because the responsibilities for infrastructure that traverses multiple countries, is privately owned and serves vital national interests are anything but clear. Militaries, with their special skills and equipment for underwater operations, are expected to pick up a chunk of the work. But the scope of the assignment and the technologies involved is still coming into focus.

Analysts consider seabed warfare a growing national security discipline with influences from submarine warfare, countermine operations and harbor protection.

“There are two thrusts here,” said Sebastian Bruns, a naval expert at the University of Kiel in northern Germany. For one, there are high-tech, offensive tactics that involve clusters of autonomous weapons quietly lying on the ocean floor until activated, potentially organizing into something like movable mine fields never to be recorded on any maps, he said.

And then there is the field of protecting critical underwater infrastructure, which has a lot to do with understanding, by way of sensors, what is going on around cables and pipelines, he added. Observing hard-to-reach places deep below the surface is challenging enough; being able to do it at the scale required is another.

“An analogy would be the assignment of two cop cars to watch over the entire highway network of the United States,” he said.

Developments are afoot in individual countries and at the European Union level. At the European Defence Agency, for example, officials are awaiting word from Italy in the first quarter of 2023 on a proposal for a dedicated program for critical seabed infrastructure protection. If approved, the effort could join the growing list of so-called PESCO projects — small, multinational government and industry teams whose work serves as a blueprint for solving specific military capability problems.

The agency also is kicking off a series of studies in January to identify capability gaps and find emerging technology in industry that could fill them, said Conor Kirwan, an Irish naval officer detailed to EDA’s office on maritime programs in Brussels.

Also planned is an examination of national governance mechanisms that touch underwater infrastructure protection.

The analyses are expected to culminate in an EDA-sponsored symposium in late April that aims to bring together military and civilian authorities, private companies and academic researchers.

Peeling back the layers of authorities — military, civilian and commercial — may turn out to be the biggest impediment to Europeans acting jointly against threats. “That’s where the complexity around critical seabed infrastructure lies,” Kirwan said in an interview.

France: Drones to the rescue

France has rushed ahead with new investments in the undersea domain ever since it became the first European nation to launch a national security-oriented seabed warfare strategy in February 2022 .

Other nations have published seabed strategies before, but in more civilian capacities, such as the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s strategy for ocean mapping, exploration and characterization . What made France’s release stand out was its military emphasis, especially as Russia and China — considered adversaries by the U.S. and much of Western Europe — are heavily investing in ways to conduct warfare on the seabed, said Steven Horrell, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

“Russia and China are clearly moving out to utilize the seabed to hold at risk those transoceanic cables and other things on the seabed,” he told Defense News.

Traditionally, the military has focused on anti-submarine warfare in the undersea domain, he added. With the development of underwater unmanned vehicles and mine countermeasure missions, as well as the increasingly critical need to protect transoceanic cables and gas pipelines, that scope has widened.

This map, last updated Dec. 15, 2022, shows active and planned subsea cables in the European region. Cable-tracker TeleGeography estimates there were more than 807,000 miles of subsea cables in service globally as of 2021. (TeleGeography via https://www.submarinecablemap.com/)

“Seabed warfare is another evolution,” Horrell said.

France in particular has high stakes to conquer the mostly unexplored domain. The Earth’s seabed takes up about 139 million square miles, with an average depth of about 2.3 miles. According to France’s seabed strategy, of the approximately 450 submarine cables that convey 99% of intercontinental digital data exchanges, 51 cables land in French national territory (including 27 in metropolitan France), and 24 in overseas French territories.

About three-quarters of the seabed is accessible around 3,000 meters, the strategy states, while 97% is accessible at 6,000 meters — nearly 20,000 feet, thus the nation’s ambitions for reaching those depths.

At the time of the strategy’s release, France only had two remotely operated vehicles capable of reaching 1,000 meters: the H1000 Ulisse and the H2000 Diomede. The two crafts were developed by ECA Group, which recently joined forces with navigation and autonomous systems developer iXblue to rebrand as Exail .

But the Armed Forces Ministry soon announced new investments to test existing underwater vehicles capable of probing further depths, with a stated goal of developing one new sovereign autonomous underwater vehicle and one new remotely operated vehicle by 2025.

On Dec. 15, the ministry announced plans to perform sea trials of Exail’s A18D AUV down to 3,000 meters starting in 2023, for a total of €3.5 million (U.S. $3.7 million). During the biennial Euronaval conference outside Paris this past October, the ministry announced a €4 million contract to similarly test the ability of Kongsberg Maritime’s Hugin Superior AUV to operate at depths of 6,000 meters.

The ministry also signed on for a new six-month trial of Exail’s DriX medium-depth AUV to study more optimized means of launching and recovering unmanned systems. That trial is slated to begin in February 2023 aboard the hydrographic vessel Beautemps-Beaupré.

All three AUVs underwent trials with the French military in 2020 and 2021 under the CHOF (capacité hydrographique et océanographique future) program, which aims to replace France’s three hydrographic vessels with newer ships that can more accurately monitor the seabed and underwater activities.

To date, the DGA military procurement office has aimed to define the future architecture of the next-generation vessels; assess what types of autonomous systems would best help France see a twofold increase in surveying capabilities; and increase its coverage of the seabed by 10%.

Another French program, SLAM-F, will see new developments in 2023: The ministry plans to begin ordering new anti-mine robots built by Thales early in the year , which will ultimately replace the Navy’s manned countermine warfare vessels.

While the ministry’s seabed strategy is focused on the military prospects in the domain, industry partners are also targeting civilian customers for their unmanned underwater vehicles.

Marine Garde's Manta unmanned hybrid vehicle was on display at the 2022 Euronaval conference outside Paris in October. (Vivienne Machi/Staff)

French companies Marine Tech and Hologarde joined forces to develop the Manta unmanned hybrid vehicle, an all-electric drone envisioned as operating in three versions: as an underwater surface vehicle or subsurface vehicle at about 3 meters deep; as an underwater surface vehicle/autonomous unmanned vehicle at 300 meters deep; and as a platform able to operate down to 6,000 meters deep.

The Manta, a silver vessel resembling its animal namesake, can provide ocean mapping, reconnaissance and underwater interventions. The variant that can operate down to 300 meters will be commercialized in January 2023, said Jean-Luc Pierrisnard, technical manager and co-founder of Marine Tech. The initial target customers are in the oil and gas sectors in the Middle East, Pierrisnard added.

Under their temporary joint venture dubbed Marine Garde, Hologarde — a subsidiary of Aeroports de Paris — and Marine Tech developed the Manta, with 60% financial support from the French Armed Forces Ministry’s Defense Innovation Agency — an office similar to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The project launched in 2019, when both companies were partnering with the agency on separate efforts. The businesses came together as the ministry began to seek new unmanned underwater vehicles for seabed operations, Pierrisnard and Hologarde Managing Director Thierry Lamaire told Defense News on the Euronaval show floor in October.

Pierrisnard said the ultimate goal is to field a model that can work at depths of 6,000 meters, which will require a different motor and a resizing of the electronic units. No date is set for a sea trial, he added.

Companies at Euronaval noted the challenges in not only developing unmanned underwater vehicles capable of descending to such depths, but in testing them. It can be prohibitively expensive for a small business to rent a boat and sail out to waters that are approved for testing and are that deep; thus, co-financing from government partners is critical, noted Lamaire.

Italy: A serenade of signals

The Italian Navy is now actively involved in protecting subsea internet cables in the Mediterranean after signing a cooperation deal in July with Italian telecommunications company Sparkle.

“Joint activity is now underway on the cables we manage,” said Fabrizio Buglio, network and service platforms director at Sparkle, which owns or co-owns 600,000 kilometers (nearly 373,000 miles) of internet cables globally.

The deal envisages the Navy would not only keep an eye on cables in the Mediterranean Sea but also share maps of the seabed and intervene in “emergency” operations.

Rear Adm. Vito Lacerenza, the commander of the Italian submarine fleet, has said the Navy’s new sub types are designed to work with undersea drones, allowing the service to better watch cables.

Buglio said Sparkle already monitored the automatic identification system so it could know which ships were passing over its cables, as accidental damages can never be excluded. Buglio also said the firm was working with university research departments to see if subsea telecommunication cables can act as earthquake sensors.

An Italian Navy source said the service was considering research work into the sensor concept, adding that the service was aware of work undertaken by the the U.K.’s National Physical Laboratory and other partners.

Experts at the lab there believe undersea pressure and vibrations change the way light travels through subsea fiber-optic cables, and those changes can be recorded. The team used a 5,860-kilometer cable between the U.K. and Canada for tests, discovering the spans between signal boosting repeaters could be used as individual sensors.

That suggests the 400-plus subsea cables around the world could be harnessed as a global sensor network, spotting earthquakes and tsunamis.

To be really useful to navies protecting cables, sensor readings would need to register nearby submarines or drones tampering with the cables, but a scientist with the lab, Giuseppe Marra, said that level of sensitivity is not yet in the cards.

“Earthquakes can be registered, but a submarine would be quite challenging, while more research is needed to sense tampering,” he said.

Britain: Mythical multirole kit

Britain is immersed in unmanned underwater technology, partly thanks to offshore oil and gas exploitation in the North Sea.

The country has for years used submarines of various shapes and sizes to deploy and extract special forces on enemy coastlines. And the Royal Navy for several years now has used small, unmanned vehicles, mainly to hunt mines.

Now, technological breakthroughs are enabling all sorts of new unmanned underwater capabilities to be investigated, from anti-access and area-denial to surveillance, reconnaissance, protection of underwater infrastructure and most roles in between.

A recent £15 million (U.S. $18 million) deal between the Navy and MSubs — a small company in Plymouth, England, specializing in underwater tech — will see the service receive a 17-ton, 12-meter-long demonstrator vehicle with a mission range of 1,000 miles.

The aim of the latest contract is to use the Cetus project , named after a mythological sea monster, to develop the Royal Navy’s operational understanding of long-endurance autonomous vehicles; to build trust in autonomous capabilities; to explore potential mission roles; and to inform how the vehicles fit into the underwater battlespace and the service’s future vision.

Delivery of the Cetus platform is scheduled within two years.

A man waves a British flag as the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth sails out of the Tokyo bay in 2021. (Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)

Announcing the deal early in November, the Royal Navy said part of the exploration activities would involve the potential for the vehicles to operate alongside conventional submarines, including the service’s Astute-class nuclear-powered hunter-killer boats.

In addition to Cetus and ocean-surveillance ships, Britain is investing in capabilities to support an infrastructure protection program. The Defence Ministry revealed recently it intends to spend £20 million to acquire a remotely operated deep-water salvage vehicle with the ability to manipulate objects and produce high-resolution imagery down to a depth of 6,000 meters.

Independent defense analyst John Louth said the ministry would like to field a fleet of vehicles with the adaptability to undertake a range of missions from similar platforms, among other goals.

“Part of the thinking in governments, particularly the U.S. and U.K., is that you don’t necessarily need different craft to undertake a whole range of missions,” he said. “If you are looking at underwater cables and the deep Atlantic, that’s different to special forces and the littoral environment. But the investment might be better if pooled so their assets can do all those sort[s] of things. The emerging requirement is for something that can do a range of missions.”

The analyst said flexibility extends to the types of platforms from which the autonomous vehicle can operate. One platform option for Cetus, and later vessels, is the multirole ocean-surveillance ships the Royal Navy is hurriedly building to meet a fast-emerging need to further protect critical national infrastructure.

The ministry is initially purchasing a commercial off-the-shelf platform for its seabed warfare program, with an operational date set for 2023. The second ship in the program is currently in the concept phase, with no final decisions taken yet regarding the procurement process.

Germany: Data-driven designs

As EU officials ponder their next moves in securing seabed-borne cables and pipelines, it’s becoming clear that collecting and connecting whatever data exists on undersea goings-on will be a key first step.

Luckily, they need not start from scratch. Private companies emplacing and operating the connections tend to have already installed the technical means to collect information on the condition of their hardware, said Kirwan, the European Defence Agency official.

“The number of sensors that have been developed even to date are generating huge quantities of data,” he said. That explains his agency’s appetite for novel information-processing techniques that can translate signals picked up by sensors into actionable intelligence.

German Navy chief Vice Adm. Jan Christian Kaack has made a similar case for keeping tabs on infrastructure in the country’s territorial waters of the North and Baltic seas. His idea is to integrate sensor data generated by operators, oceanic research institutions, police and the Navy into one operational picture that covers activity above and below water, a sea service spokesman told Defense News.

“Keeping such a picture current would help detect anomalies quickly and enable follow-up,” the spokesman added.

Germany has pledged to support Denmark, Norway and Sweden in protecting their critical maritime infrastructure. The Navy has turned its ships’ travel routes to and from northern naval exercises into patrols to that effect, and officials have sent P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft to watch over objects off the Norwegian cost, according to the spokesman.

Reporting by Vivienne Machi in Stuttgart, Germany; Tom Kington in Rome; Andrew Chuter in London; and Sebastian Sprenger in Washington.

欧洲和华盛顿——9 月份北溪输油管道发生水下爆炸，震惊了欧洲各国。如今，欧洲各国正着手保护承载着欧洲大陆财富动脉的海底安全。

但保护遍布周围水域的庞大能源管道和通信电缆网络，归根结底是一个熟悉的问题：谁负责？

这是因为，对于横跨多个国家、私有且服务于重要国家利益的基础设施，其责任划分远不明确。拥有水下作业特殊技能和装备的军队预计将承担一部分工作。但任务的范围和涉及的技术仍在逐步明朗。

分析人士认为，海底战争是一门日益重要的国家安全学科，其发展受到潜艇战、反水雷行动和港口保护的影响。

“这里有两个发展方向，”德国北部基尔大学的海军专家塞巴斯蒂安·布伦斯说道。一方面，存在着高科技进攻战术，即利用成群的自主武器悄无声息地沉睡在海底，直到被激活，它们可能组成类似移动雷区的阵地，而这些雷区永远不会被任何地图记录下来。

他还补充道，保护关键水下基础设施领域也至关重要，这很大程度上依赖于通过传感器来了解电缆和管道周围的情况。观测水下深处难以到达的区域本身就极具挑战性；而要达到所需的观测规模则更是难上加难。

他说：“这就好比派两辆警车巡逻整个美国的公路网。”

各国和欧盟层面都在酝酿着一些新进展。例如，欧洲防务局的官员们正在等待意大利在2023年第一季度就一项专门用于保护关键海底基础设施的提案作出答复。如果获得批准，该项目有望加入日益增多的所谓“永久性结构化合作”（PESCO）项目行列——这些项目是由小型跨国政府和行业团队组成的合作项目，其工作成果将为解决特定的军事能力问题提供蓝图。

爱尔兰海军军官康纳·柯万（Conor Kirwan）被派往欧洲防务局（EDA）布鲁塞尔海事项目办公室，他表示，该机构还将于1月份启动一系列研究，以确定能力差距，并寻找可以填补这些差距的新兴行业技术。

此外，还计划对涉及水下基础设施保护的国家治理机制进行审查。

预计分析结果将在 4 月下旬由 EDA 赞助的研讨会上达到高潮，该研讨会旨在将军事和民事当局、私营公司和学术研究人员聚集在一起。

层层剥离军事、民用和商业等各级权力机构，或许会成为欧洲人携手应对威胁的最大障碍。“关键海底基础设施的复杂性就在于此，”柯万在一次采访中说道。

法国：无人机来救援

自 2022 年 2 月成为第一个推出以国家安全为导向的海底战争战略的欧洲国家以来，法国一直在大力推进对海底领域的新投资。

其他国家此前也发布过海底战略，但更多是出于民用目的，例如美国国家海洋和大气管理局的海洋测绘、勘探和特征分析战略。欧洲政策分析中心高级研究员史蒂文·霍雷尔表示，法国发布的这份战略之所以引人注目，是因为它侧重于军事方面，尤其是在俄罗斯和中国——这两个被美国和西欧大部分国家视为对手的国家——正在大力投资海底作战技术的情况下。

“俄罗斯和中国显然正在采取行动，利用海底来保护那些跨洋电缆和海底的其他设施，”他告诉《防务新闻》。

他补充说，传统上，军方一直专注于水下领域的反潜作战。随着水下无人航行器和水雷对抗任务的发展，以及保护跨洋电缆和天然气管道日益迫切的需求，这一范围已经扩大。

这张地图最后更新于2022年12月15日，显示了欧洲地区正在运营和计划建设的海底电缆。据电缆追踪机构TeleGeography估计，截至2021年，全球已投入使用的海底电缆总长度超过80.7万英里。（TeleGeography，来源：https://www.submarinecablemap.com/）

霍雷尔说：“海底战争是另一种演变。”

法国尤其渴望征服这片尚未开发的领域。地球海底面积约1.39亿平方英里，平均深度约2.3英里。根据法国的海底战略，在传输99%洲际数字数据交换的约450条海底电缆中，51条电缆登陆法国本土（其中27条位于法国本土），24条位于法国海外领地。

该战略指出，约四分之三的海底在 3000 米左右的深度可以到达，而 97% 的海底在 6000 米（近 20000 英尺）的深度可以到达，因此该国雄心勃勃地想要到达这些深度。

该战略发布时，法国仅有两款能够下潜至1000米的遥控潜水器：H1000 Ulisse 和 H2000 Diomede。这两款潜水器均由 ECA 集团开发，该集团近期与导航和自主系统开发商 iXblue 合并，更名为 Exail。

但武装部队部很快宣布了新的投资，以测试能够探测更深水域的现有水下航行器，并明确表示，到 2025 年，将开发一种新的自主水下航行器和一种新的遥控水下航行器。

12月15日，该部宣布计划从2023年开始对Exail公司的A18D型自主水下航行器（AUV）进行3000米深度的海上试验，总金额为350万欧元（约合370万美元）。在去年10月于巴黎郊外举行的两年一度的欧洲海军会议上，该部宣布了一项价值400万欧元的合同，用于测试康士伯海事公司的Hugin Superior型AUV在6000米深度作业的能力。

该部还签署了一项为期六个月的新试验计划，使用Exail公司的DriX中深度自主水下航行器（AUV）来研究更优化的无人系统投放和回收方式。该试验计划于2023年2月在水文测量船“博坦-博普雷”号上进行。

这三艘 AUV 于 2020 年和 2021 年在 CHOF（未来水文和海洋能力）计划下接受了法国军方的试验，该计划旨在用能够更准确地监测海底和水下活动的新型船舶取代法国的三艘水文测量船。

迄今为止，法国国防采购局 (DGA) 的军事采购办公室的目标是：确定下一代船舶的未来架构；评估哪些类型的自主系统最能帮助法国将勘测能力提高一倍；并将其海底覆盖率提高 10%。

法国另一项名为 SLAM-F 的计划将在 2023 年取得新的进展：法国国防部计划在年初开始订购泰雷兹公司制造的新型反水雷机器人，这些机器人最终将取代海军有人驾驶的反水雷作战舰艇。

虽然该部委的海底战略侧重于该领域的军事前景，但其工业合作伙伴也在瞄准民用客户，推广其无人水下航行器。

海军卫队的“蝠鲼”无人混合动力艇于10月在巴黎郊外举行的2022年欧洲海军会议上展出。（薇薇安·马奇/摄）

法国公司 Marine Tech 和 Hologarde 联手开发了 Manta 无人混合动力航行器，这是一款全电动无人机，设想以三种版本运行：作为水下水面航行器或水下航行器，深度约为 3 米；作为水下水面航行器/自主无人航行器，深度为 300 米；以及作为能够在 6000 米深度运行的平台。

“蝠鲼号”（Manta）是一艘银色的潜水器，外形酷似其同名动物，可提供海洋测绘、侦察和水下作业服务。海洋科技公司（Marine Tech）技术经理兼联合创始人让-吕克·皮埃里斯纳尔（Jean-Luc Pierrisnard）表示，可在300米深度作业的改进型将于2023年1月投入商业运营。皮埃里斯纳尔补充说，首批目标客户是中东地区的石油和天然气行业。

在名为 Marine Garde 的临时合资企业下，巴黎机场集团旗下的 Hologarde 公司和 Marine Tech 公司开发了 Manta 无人机，其中 60% 的资金来自法国武装部队部国防创新局（类似于美国国防高级研究计划局）。

该项目于2019年启动，当时两家公司分别与该机构开展不同的合作项目。Pierrisnard和Hologarde的总经理Thierry Lamaire在10月份的欧洲海军装备展上告诉《防务新闻》，随着国防部开始寻求用于海底作业的新型无人水下航行器，两家公司走到了一起。

皮埃尔斯纳尔德表示，最终目标是研发一款能够在6000米深的水下作业的型号，这将需要更换电机并对电子单元进行重新设计。他还补充说，目前尚未确定海上试验日期。

欧洲海军展的参展企业指出，不仅开发能够下潜到如此深海的无人水下航行器面临挑战，测试这些航行器也同样困难。拉梅尔指出，对于小型企业而言，租用船只前往获准进行测试的深海水域可能成本高昂；因此，来自政府合作伙伴的共同资助至关重要。

意大利：一曲信号小夜曲

意大利海军在7月份与意大利电信公司Sparkle签署合作协议后，目前正积极参与保护地中海海底互联网电缆的工作。

Sparkle 的网络和服务平台总监 Fabrizio Buglio 表示：“我们管理的电缆目前正在进行联合作业。” Sparkle 在全球拥有或共同拥有 60 万公里（近 37.3 万英里）的互联网电缆。

该协议设想海军不仅要监视地中海的电缆，还要共享海底地图，并在“紧急”行动中进行干预。

意大利潜艇舰队司令维托·拉切伦扎海军少将表示，海军的新型潜艇旨在与水下无人机协同工作，使海军能够更好地监视海底电缆。

布格里奥表示，Sparkle公司已经对自动识别系统进行了监控，以便了解哪些船只正在经过其海底电缆，因为意外损坏永远无法完全排除。布格里奥还表示，该公司正在与大学研究部门合作，探索海底通信电缆是否可以用作地震传感器。

一位意大利海军消息人士称，该军种正在考虑对传感器概念进行研究，并补充说，该军种了解英国国家物理实验室和其他合作伙伴开展的工作。

该实验室的专家认为，海底压力和振动会改变光在海底光缆中的传播方式，而这些变化是可以记录下来的。研究团队利用连接英国和加拿大的一条5860公里长的光缆进行了测试，发现信号增强中继器之间的距离可以作为独立的传感器使用。

这表明，全球 400 多条海底电缆可以作为全球传感器网络，用于探测地震和海啸。

要真正对保护海底电缆的海军有用，传感器读数需要能够检测到附近潜艇或无人机对电缆的篡改，但该实验室的科学家朱塞佩·马拉表示，这种灵敏度目前还无法实现。

他说：“地震可以被记录下来，但潜艇很难做到这一点，而且还需要更多的研究来感知篡改行为。”

英国：神话般的多功能装备

英国正大力发展无人水下技术，部分原因是北海近海石油和天然气的开发。

多年来，该国一直使用各种形状和尺寸的潜艇在敌方海岸线部署和撤离特种部队。而英国皇家海军也已使用小型无人艇数年，主要用于扫雷。

如今，技术突破使得各种新型无人水下作战能力得以研究，从反介入和区域拒止到监视、侦察、保护水下基础设施以及介于两者之间的大多数角色。

英国海军与位于英国普利茅斯的一家名为 MSubs 的小公司（该公司专门从事水下技术）最近达成了一项价值 1500 万英镑（1800 万美元）的协议，海军将获得一艘重 17 吨、长 12 米的演示艇，其任务范围为 1000 英里。

最新合同的目标是利用以神话中的海怪命名的“鲸鱼座”（Cetus）项目，来发展英国皇家海军对长航时自主航行器的作战理解；建立对自主能力的信任；探索潜在的任务角色；并了解这些航行器如何融入水下战场以及海军的未来愿景。

Cetus平台的交付计划在两年内完成。

2021年，一名男子挥舞着英国国旗，英国皇家海军航空母舰“伊丽莎白女王”号驶出东京湾。（Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images）

英国皇家海军在 11 月初宣布了这项协议，并表示部分勘探活动将涉及这些车辆与常规潜艇（包括该海军的机敏级核动力猎杀艇）协同作战的可能性。

除了“鲸鱼座”级潜艇和海洋监视船外，英国还在投资提升基础设施保护能力。国防部近日透露，计划斥资2000万英镑购置一台遥控深水打捞艇，该艇具备操控物体和拍摄高分辨率图像的能力，作业深度可达6000米。

独立国防分析师约翰·卢斯表示，国防部希望部署一支能够从类似平台上执行各种任务的车辆舰队，这也是其目标之一。

他说：“各国政府，特别是美国和英国政府，部分人的想法是，执行各种任务并不一定需要不同的舰艇。比如，海底电缆和深海大西洋的作业与特种部队和近岸环境的作战截然不同。但如果将资源集中起来，让他们的装备能够胜任所有这些任务，投资效率可能会更高。目前的需求是能够执行多种任务的舰艇。”

分析师表示，灵活性还体现在自动驾驶车辆可运行的平台类型上。Cetus（以及未来的舰艇）的一个可选平台是英国皇家海军正在加紧建造的多用途海洋监视舰，以满足日益增长的进一步保护国家关键基础设施的需求。

该部最初将为其海底作战计划采购一款现成的商用平台，预计于 2023 年投入使用。该计划中的第二艘舰艇目前仍处于概念阶段，尚未就采购流程做出最终决定。

德国：数据驱动设计

欧盟官员正在考虑如何保障海底电缆和管道的安全，而收集和连接现有的海底活动数据显然是关键的第一步。

幸运的是，他们不必从零开始。欧洲防务局官员基尔万表示，负责部署和运营这些连接的私营公司往往已经安装了收集硬件状况信息的技术手段。

他说：“迄今为止，已开发的传感器数量庞大，产生的数据量也极其惊人。” 这也解释了他的机构为何如此渴望获得能够将传感器采集到的信号转化为可操作情报的新型信息处理技术。

德国海军司令扬·克里斯蒂安·卡克中将也提出了类似的观点，认为有必要密切监控德国在北海和波罗的海领海内的基础设施。一位海军发言人告诉《防务新闻》，卡克的想法是将运营商、海洋研究机构、警方和海军生成的传感器数据整合到一个涵盖水上和水下活动的统一作战图中。

发言人补充说：“保持这种图像的实时更新有助于快速发现异常情况并进行后续跟进。”

德国已承诺支持丹麦、挪威和瑞典保护其关键海上基础设施。据发言人称，德国海军已将舰艇往返北方海军演习的航线改为巡逻航线，并已派遣P-3C“猎户座”海上巡逻机监视挪威海岸附近的目标。

德国斯图加特的 Vivienne Machi、罗马的 Tom Kington、伦敦的 Andrew Chuter 和华盛顿的 Sebastian Sprenger 对此报道。