£1.3bn Navy rebuild as Russia maps Britain's undersea cables
The head of the Royal Navy has told a defence audience that Russia would go after Britain's transatlantic cables on the first day of any war. First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins said Moscow has been probing the country for weakness and that the threat is now at a level not seen since the Cold War.
Sir Gwyn, who is also Chief of the Naval Staff, made the remarks in a private speech on Wednesday at the Department for Naval Research Symposium, in an address titled Battle for the Atlantic. The comments were first reported by The Times. He said critical undersea infrastructure is now part of the strategic landscape and that modern societies rely on it.
He pointed to history to explain why. On the day Britain declared war on Germany, allied forces severed Germany's transatlantic telegraph cables, forcing it back on long range wireless stations. Britain had the most advanced undersea cable network in the world at the time. "I pray it does not happen, but were we to go to war again, we know our enemies will try to use the same playbook against us," he said.
The watching brief is already substantial. According to Sir Gwyn, two Royal Navy warships are being deployed every week on average to monitor Russian vessels and the so-called shadow fleet. He said Russian submarines are increasingly difficult to track and that Russia holds specialist systems built to operate deep underwater.
Days before the speech it emerged that Britain had foiled a Russian military plot to disable critical undersea cables earlier this year. Nato allies caught Russian submarines working on a secret weapon designed to knock out cable infrastructure near Svalbard, the Arctic archipelago belonging to Norway.
Sir Gwyn said the greatest threat to British security today is Russia, felt most sharply in the maritime domain, in the North Atlantic and the High North. Russia is "probing, testing and mapping" and seeks advantage in the grey zone, he said, adding that among Ukraine's western allies, Russia considers Britain one of its greatest foes.
The money is where the argument starts. At least £1.3billion has been committed to the hybrid Navy concept, a force backed by uncrewed vessels, with a strike capable drone launched from sea for the first time earlier this year. Sir Gwyn has called for a larger and more lethal fleet, and questions remain over whether the funding will stretch that far.
An order for new nuclear powered attack submarines has been pushed back by two years, despite an earlier pledge of up to 12 boats. Tom Sharpe, a former Royal Navy commander, called it a can kicking exercise that has left British defences depleted. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said the commitment to up to 12 next generation attack submarines is unchanged, that a decision on exact numbers does not need to be taken at this stage, and that there is no impact on the delivery schedule.
For ordinary households this is not a distant argument. Defence comes out of the same public budget as everything else, and the gap between what the Navy's most senior officer says he needs and what has actually been signed off will have to be closed somewhere. What Sir Gwyn describes is not a far off scenario but survey work he says is going on now, on cables that everyday life quietly depends on.
