Navy seabed drones to protect gas pipelines

New ship approved by UK to monitor underwater pipes and cables after alleged sabotage attacks

A NEW ship that can launch drones to monitor the seabed for threats to underwater cables and pipelines is to be purchased for the Royal Navy immediately, after Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said: “I need it now.”

The “seabed warfare ship” will be modified to counter the increased threat from Russia in the wake of a suspected sabotage attack on the Nordstream gas pipeline to Germany.

Mr Wallace stopped short of blaming Russia for the attack in an interview with The Daily Telegraph but said it was clear that it was a “deliberate act”.

It comes as a Ukrainian official suggested that the sabotage may have been pre-planned, with explosive devices potentially planted on the pipelines during the construction phase.

The new British ship will be able to launch drones and other undersea technology in a bid to better protect critical national infrastructure.

Design work on a second, bespoke vessel will start in 2023.

On Monday night, the Royal Navy moved a Type-23 frigate to the North Sea to work with Norwegian counterparts, providing security to workers on gas pipeline infrastructure. HMS Enterprise, an Echo-class survey vessel, is already patrolling the area following concerns about Russian naval activity.

The Defence Secretary said the reason for buying and modifying an existing vessel from the open market was that “I need it now”.

“We often see suspicious activity by Russian spy ships and Russian vessels doing things in the region of our cables and pipelines,” Mr Wallace said.

He said it was “no secret” the Russian navy’s special-mission submarine programme was targeting critical national infrastructure in the North Atlantic. The programme is run by the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research, also known as GUGI, and is based on the Kola Peninsula on the Barents Sea.

Investigations are still ongoing into the blasts on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines on Sept 26, which were totally unexpected by the West, Mr Wallace said. “We didn’t have any direct warning that this was going to happen, I don’t think anyone did.”

But according to the former head of Ukraine’s state energy company, Russia may have packed explosives on to the Nord Stream pipelines while construction was being finalised last year.

Gazprom brought in its own construction ships to complete work on a final section of the pipeline around the Danish island of Bornholm after US sanctions forced a Swiss contractor to pull out. Last week’s blasts, which ripped holes into at least three of the four pipelines that make up the two projects, occurred near where this construction work took place.

The suggestion was that Russia had sabotaged it in recent days. But Andriy Kobolyev, who was chief executive of Naftogaz up until 2021, told The Daily Telegraph it could have been the result of explosive devices planted well in advance as a sort-of insurance measure.

He said that it was common practice in Soviet times to build explosives into key infrastructure in case it was captured in war. “Knowing that many of these guys are EX-KGB, we shouldn’t be surprised,” said Mr Kobolyev, 44. He said that all gas and oil pipelines are equipped with highly advanced sensors that would normally detect any interference with the line.

“Even in Ukraine, we have such sensors. Gazprom, with all its money, will have installed more sensitive ones on Nord Stream 2,” he said, adding that such equipment is “sensitive enough to answer the questions we are asking”.

But the noise of final construction work could have given the company the cover to place explosives on both Nord Stream 2 and the already operational Nord Stream 1, he believes. However, he does not believe that Russia would have planted explosives on any other infrastructure key to Western Europe, as the consequences would be “too painful”.