Breaking Defense – Experts warned there’s no single government agency in charge of monitoring, defending and repairing the cables, and no effective deterrent strategy.

Telegeography – While new submarine cable systems are being built to expand global internet capacity, the maintenance of submarine cables has not seen the investment required to maintain these systems.

NBC News – Undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea disrupted internet access in parts of Asia and the Middle East, experts said Sunday, though it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the incident.

Naval News – At the IDEF 2025 exhibition in Istanbul, held from July 22 to 27, Turkish engineering firm DATUM unveiled a new mini submarine concept called “Gurnard,” designed specifically for seabed warfare operations.

Telegeography – A new report details what is needed to sustain current service levels and reduce repair delays for the undersea cables that carry global internet traffic.

National Defense – NATO is establishing a center of excellence that will seek to deter, defend and defeat the sabotage of undersea cables and pipelines, a senior alliance leader said at the IT2EC training and simulation conference, held concurrently with the undersea tech conference.

(Thanks to Alain)

Center for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy – Controlling and monitoring the undersea domain is becoming crucial for the European Union, with geopolitical and economic interests at risk in specific sea regions ranging from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.

The EU’s cable security plan puts the feasibility and security of new European underwater infrastructure at risk due to the legal, political and military implications, especially given Russia’s new assertiveness.

Instead of fixed cable sensors, Europe should prioritise investing in two alternative and combined solutions: EU-funded projects for unmanned vehicles and innovative fibre optic sensing solutions.

UN – Today, submarine fibre-optic telecommunications cable systems are the backbone of our data and communications infrastructure, essential to the general functioning and integrity of the internet and the broader information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem. While satellites and the new constellations in low Earth orbit are breaking ground, especially in terms of lowering costs and accessibility, they are still no match to the high capacity and low latency that today’s subsea cable systems provide. As more countries are connected, the security and resilience of the infrastructure becomes ever more critical.

In 2023, UNIDIR published its first report on subsea cables, entitled Wading Murky Waters: Subsea Communications Cables and Responsible State Behaviour. The initial scoping study sought to raise awareness of this essential transmission technology. Since then, a slew of new initiatives have been proposed, including at the international level, signalling both the strategic importance of the infrastructure and the need to strengthen security and resilience across all of its components.

This follow-on study sets out to understand what it means in policy and practice when governments qualify or designate subsea telecommunications cables as critical infrastructure (CI). The report draws from the CI literature to frame government approaches to security and resilience, identifying how government policy and practice interact with core CI concepts such as absorptive, restorative and adaptive resilience capacities. While subsea cable systems are generally designed and deployed with these capacities in mind, effective government action on security and resilience can contribute to strengthening them.

Defense News – Naval tech companies are sensing a new market for their equipment.

Breaking Defense – Undersea cable cut incidents will eventually spread to the Middle East, retired Vice Adm. Michael J. Connor and JINSA analyst Yoni Tobin argue in this op-ed, so the US must get ready.

BBC – Some companies are trying to monitor what’s going on in the vicinity of any cable – by using fibre optic signals to listen out for surreptitious underwater drones, or hostile vessels dragging their anchors along the seabed.

Center for Maritime Security – As U.S. policymakers seek to secure critical infrastructure, they must build resiliency in the undersea cable networks that underpin America’s national security. 

The War Zone – The deployment is part of NATO’s Baltic Sentry mission that was created after several suspected cable sabotage incidents.

BBC – How the West handles the threat of sabotage of undersea cables is just one of the many fronts on which it is attempting to deal with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

BBC – Meta has announced plans to build a 50,000km (31,000 mile) sub-sea cable across the world.

Telegeography – Cable faults were once an aspect of the industry entirely hidden from common view. Nowadays, any cable fault in the Baltic or off the coast of Taiwan is guaranteed to result in a flurry of headlines like “Another Undersea Cable Attacked in the Baltic Sea.”

Defense News – The increased frequency of underwater infrastructure damage across Europe has raised legal challenges related to the jurisdiction and ownership of undersea cables, which may limit NATO’s ability to respond.

Defense News – With its powerful camera, the French Navy surveillance plane scouring the Baltic Sea zoomed in on a cargo ship plowing the waters below — closer, closer and closer still until the camera operator could make out details on the vessel’s front deck and smoke pouring from its chimney.

Navy Lookout – The 2025 SDR is likely to give much-increased weight to UK mainland defence. The RN has a critical part to play in this defence, in some ways a return to its historical roots but also adapting to new threats and meeting the exponential growth in seabed warfare challenges.

The Guardian – A Nato flotilla likened to “the security camera of the Baltic” has assembled off the coast of Estonia as the military alliance seeks to protect European undersea cables and pipelines from sabotage.

The War Zone – At least 20 drone boats will take part in NATO’s new Baltic Sentry effort spurred by suspected sabotage of undersea cables.

Defense News – Following a series of sabotage incidents against underwater infrastructure, NATO has launched a maritime patrol mission in the Baltic Sea that will include frigates, naval drones, submarines and surveillance aircraft in a show of force against a shadowy fleet of vessels suspected of doing Moscow’s bidding.

EurAsia Daily – Another submarine cable connecting Sweden, Lithuania, Germany and Finland was damaged in the Baltic Sea. 

(Thanks to Alain)

Navy Lookout – In this article, we consider the growing challenges for NATO in countering a series of attacks on pipelines and cables in the Baltic Sea and the dangers posed by merchant ships of the Russian ‘shadow fleet’.