The UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) will track potential threats to undersea infrastructure and monitor the Russian shadow fleet after reported damage to a major undersea cable in the Baltic Sea.
The Ministry of Defence has said the operation, named Nordic Warden, was activated last week and will calculate the risk posed by each vessel entering areas of interest.
Specific vessels identified as being part of Russia’s shadow fleet have been registered into the system so they can be “closely monitored when approaching key areas of interest”.
“If a potential risk is assessed, the system will monitor the suspicious vessel in real time and immediately send out a warning, which will be shared with JEF participant nations as well as NATO allies,” the ministry added.
For context: In December, NATO enhanced its military presence in the Baltic Sea after undersea power and internet cables were cut between Estonia and Finland.
An undersea power cable and four internet cables were cut.
There have been a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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