The United Kingdom has unveiled a plan to integrate the maritime defence capabilities of 10 countries, including the sharing of sea drones and warships, in response to what European countries see as a growing threat from Russia.
The Northern Navies Initiative is a British-led defence framework that will link the UK’s autonomous systems with its Baltic, Nordic and Dutch allies to create a unified surveillance capability to respond to growing maritime threats.
“The threats we face are multiplying … we must rise to the challenge before us,” First Sea Lord General Gwyn Jenkins said after the signing of the agreement on Tuesday.
“Together, we have shown what is possible when like-minded nations are united by a common purpose.”
The UK plans to spend 90 million pounds ($121m) on drones, sensors and artificial intelligence systems to help the Royal Navy counter Russian undersea threats in the North Atlantic and protect critical infrastructure.
According to Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at the European think tank Bruegel, the new alliance is “a very important initiative”.
“No single Western European nation can credibly defend itself,” he told Al Jazeera.
So what is the new defence framework and will it deter Russian threats?
What did the UK say when announcing the plan?
Luke Pollard, the UK minister for defence readiness, introduced the new plan, saying that Russian naval activity around the country has increased by 41 percent in the first nine months of the year, The Guardian newspaper reported.
Pollard said the “huge increase” in violations justified the new initiative.
“The model that we want is where British autonomy [drones] can be teamed with a British warship or a Danish warship or a Norwegian warship and can hand that autonomy off to an allied nation’s warship,” the minister said, speaking at the navy’s International Sea Power conference held on the Prince of Wales aircraft carrier in Oslo.
Sailing the warship to Norway was “a really important deterrent signal that we stand ready to defend every single inch of NATO territory”, Pollard said.
What is the new plan?
The Northern Navies Initiative agreement will be a new network of autonomous systems equipped with advanced sensors that will create a unified surveillance capability to improve the detection and monitoring of submarine activity.
The 10-country alliance combines the UK’s Royal Navy with those of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) nations, a UK-led military partnership for crisis management in the High North, the North Atlantic, and the Baltic Sea regions. The JEF countries include Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
The agreement aims to support maritime deterrence and defence for the citizens of the JEF countries, allowing them to “act early, combine quickly and transition seamlessly into NATO command should the Alliance need to mobilise at scale,” the British Royal Navy said in a statement.
“In practice, greater interoperability means a Royal Navy frigate could transfer operational responsibility to another JEF member without losing momentum,” it added.
“One nation’s task group could direct allied sensors and uncrewed vessels, while a warship could repair, refuel and resupply in an allied port rather than returning home,” it said.
Future autonomous platforms will be able to plug in and out of each other’s command and control systems, “creating one large maritime force instead of 10 separate ones”, it added.
Analyst Wolff, of the Bruegel think tank, said greater interoperability was essential for better deterrence on the continent.
“Deepening interoperability among national navies, strengthening joint manoeuvres, ensuring clear command structures in case of crises is absolutely critical for credible deterrence,” he said.
“The deepening of cooperation is also necessary to [successfully] avert hybrid attacks, including against infrastructure such as deep-sea cables or renewable energy.”
While NATO provides the foundation for collective defence, the JEF initiative is aimed at bringing together “a smaller group of closely aligned navies together so they can work more closely, more routinely and at a higher state of readiness,” the Royal Navy said.
How significant are Russia’s maritime threats in the North Atlantic?
Western officials have warned that Russia has increased activity around subsea infrastructure.
In its statement about the new initiative, the Royal Navy said it was responding to “the growing threat posed by hostile activity below the threshold of armed conflict”, which includes “risks to critical undersea infrastructure, malicious seabed activity and other forms of hybrid aggression”.
In April, Britain said it had deployed military vessels to deter Russian submarines, which it said had spent more than a month in and around British waters, warning Moscow that any attempt to damage cables or pipelines would have “serious consequences”.
Pollard claimed that Russian spy ships, such as the Yantar, have been trying to obtain “an increased picture of our critical national infrastructure”, as well as “mapping our undersea cables”.
Russian frigates have been spotted escorting oil tankers and other trade vessels in UK waters, and in June, one fired shots at a yacht south of the Isle of Wight, The Guardian reported. A Russia-linked tanker, the Smyrtos, was seized following the incident.
As a result, oil tankers linked to Russia remain active but have been “sailing around the UK” to avoid coming through the English Channel, Pollard said.
Last month, UK officials called attention to the dwindling number of British frigates, which is expected to drop from 12 in 2021 to three by 2030, The Guardian said, and which could explain why the initiative was launched.
Pollard, the defence minister, blamed the opposition Conservatives for these shortfalls. “Now, because of the decisions taken 10, 15 years ago, we have fewer ships and fewer submarines than I would like available,” the minister said.
How has Russia responded to European accusations?
Russia has largely denied claims that it is posing a maritime threat to European countries.
Concerns about threats to undersea cables have particularly grown since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, Russia has repeatedly denied targeting them.
Most recently in April, the Russian embassy in London rejected the British government’s claims that its submarines posed a threat to undersea cables, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported.
Last year, the same embassy accused the British government of being “Russophobic” and “whipping up militaristic hysteria” after the UK accused it of directing lasers at British pilots sent to monitor the spy ship Yantar, in its waters.
“We are not interested in British underwater communications,” the Russian embassy said.
Moscow has accused the UK of carrying out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, for which Russia was initially blamed. Later German prosecutors alleged that Kyiv ordered the attack, which came months after Russian invasion of Ukraine. Two Ukrainian nationals have been arrested in connection with the sabotage. Their trial is under way.
Russia has also on occasion accused NATO of using fabricated threats to increase its military presence in the Baltic. Moscow has accused the US and its European allies of encircling it militarily through the expansion of NATO. It has opposed NATO membership for Ukraine as one of the conditions to end the nearly five years of war – Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
