The Royal Navy has not had a good few weeks in reputational terms. It was nothing short of humiliating that it took three weeks to get the destroyer HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean after RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was attacked by Iranian drones on 1 March. The ship was the only one of six Type 45 destroyers available for operations (and has now had to put into port at an undisclosed location because of a water supply issue).
Then it emerged that a frigate of the Russian Navy had escorted two shadow fleet tankers through the English Channel this week. Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s tough talk about boarding parties and ‘starving Putin’s war machine of the dirty profits that fund his barbaric campaign in Ukraine’, the ships were unmolested. Only a tanker from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, RFA Tideforce, was available to monitor them.
It may not be entirely coincidental, then, that the Defence Secretary, John Healey, chose yesterday for a press conference in which he gave details of a weeks-long and, crucially, apparently successful operation to expose, monitor and ultimately confound Russian interference with undersea data cables. It certainly feels like morale would benefit from a fillip.
This is the latest in a succession of forays by Russia into British coastal waters and beyond
In short, what happened was as follows. A Russian Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine –one of the last new designs to enter service with the Soviet Navy, K-284 Akula joining the Pacific Fleet at the end of 1984 – was detected entering international waters in the High North several weeks ago. It was subsequently tracked by British aircraft and warships around the clock.
It was then established that the Akula-class was a decoy for two deep-sea submarines of the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research (Glavnoye upravlenie glubokovodnikh issledovanii, or GUGI), the most secretive unit of the Russian Navy. These were ‘conducting nefarious activity over critical undersea infrastructure elsewhere’. The UK and allies, including Norway, identified and monitored these vessels too.
The Royal Navy deployed HMS St Albans, a Type 23 frigate, replenishment tanker RFA Tidespring and a number of AgustaWestland Merlin HM2 helicopters, with the addition of Royal Air Force Boeing Poseidon MRA1 maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft from RAF Lossiemouth in north-east Scotland. Together, they tracked the Russian vessels, covering thousands of miles, and dropped sonobuoys so that they ‘knew that they were being monitored and were no longer covert as Putin had planned’. The Akula-class and the GUGI submarines have now returned home.
The importance of undersea data cables to the United Kingdom has been emphasised again and again over the last year or two. Around 60 cables carry 99 per cent of our data, including voice calls and internet traffic, underpinning communications, trade, banking and other sectors. We also rely on undersea pipelines for oil and, especially, gas.
It has been clear for some time that Russia has been observing and assessing the UK’s undersea connections, and in the event of tensions between the two countries escalating from the current level of hybrid, sub-threshold antagonism, they would be an obvious target for Russian attacks and a major vulnerability for Britain. John Healey tried to inject a note of minatory, swaggering defiance, but it is a tone which sits as uneasily with the affable, 66-year-old West Yorkshireman as it does with the Prime Minister:
To Putin, I say this: we see you, we see your activity over our underwater infrastructure. You should know that any attempt to damage it will not be tolerated and would have serious consequences.
He added in response to questions from reporters that the operation proved that all was well with the armed forces, despite the recent embarrassments.
The nature of the operation that I’ve set out today demonstrates that we have UK armed forces capable of detecting, capable of deterring, capable of responding if required in order to protect Britain, protect our vital undersea infrastructure.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. Putin was not deterred from deploying the submarines in the first place, and it is a classic part of his playbook to provoke and test the reactions of his opponents. It is reassuring that the vessels were monitored continuously, but this is simply the latest in a succession of forays by Russia into British coastal waters and beyond, operating near undersea cables.
When the Royal Navy confronted the Russian spy ship Yantar in January last year, Healey used the same language in the House of Commons:
I also want President Putin to hear this message: we see you, we know what you are doing, and we will not shy away from robust action to protect this country.
It is undoubtedly true that the armed forces have proved their ability to keep Russian warships and submarines under constant surveillance and perhaps frustrate their intentions by denying them secrecy. Making the case that we are deterring Vladimir Putin is more difficult. If the Yantar was in proximity to undersea cables in November 2024 and January last year, and the episode Healey described took place last month, that does not bespeak wholly effective deterrence.
The reality, as ever, is somewhere in the murky middle. The RAF and the Royal Navy can detect and monitor hostile vessels on the surface and underwater. That is good. Moreover, Russia knows they can do this, which is also broadly good. On the other hand, Putin has not stopped ordering his navy to conduct these kinds of operations, and will be ever-more-accurately registering and recording our response. Russia will also be aware of how thinly stretched our maritime resources currently are.
Healey’s was a story worth telling and gives us grounds for satisfaction. But it stopped short of complete victory. It is another episode in a story which has a long way to go.
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