Russia Planted Sensors to Spy on Britain’s Underwater Cables and Nuclear Submarines: Report

A ‘new Cold War’ is raging in the Atlantic Ocean with a threat to national security detected after allegedly Russian spy devices were discovered on the sea floor and washed up on the coast, a report claimed.

“Several” sensing devices have been found after they washed ashore, and more have been discovered by the British Royal Navy’s mine hunting and underwater surveillance efforts, an exposé by The Times of London asserted.

The devices and other such undersea espionage efforts, which are believed to be of Russian origin, are said to be intended to spy on Britain’s fleet of nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed deterrence submarines and NATO’s underwater critical infrastructure.

Much of Western civilization relies on energy and data transported and transmitted undersea by pipelines and cables. Access to this infrastructure gives would-be hostiles many opportunities for espionage and sabotage, for instance, through data harvesting, the planting of explosives, or simply accurately mapping locations of key sites for later action.

In one instance cited by the report, Russian autonomous submarines were discovered around deep-sea data cables, but no mothership or support vessel was seen nearby, suggesting the vehicles had travelled a great distance to access the location clandestinely.

The claims are severe if they imply Russia has successfully gathered useful intelligence on the British deterrent force of nuclear submarines. The guaranteed retaliatory strike is facilitated by the submarines remaining submerged and undetected for months at a time, making a pre-emptive strike theoretically impossible.

However, the Royal Navy has reportedly insisted that its at-sea deterrent remains undetected. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence cited by the report said that action was being taken to enhance “the security of critical offshore infrastructure… we are strengthening our response to ensure that Russian ships and aircraft cannot operate in secrecy near the UK or near NATO territory”.

Nevertheless, critics say more must be done. Hawkish former defence minister Tobias Elwood responded to the Times’ claims by asserting that they prove the UK and Russia are already locked in a “grey zone war” and demanding more defence capabilities to counter Moscow.

He told The Guardian that Russia operated “remote seabed platforms” to recharge “dozens of mini-submarines” to “map our undersea cable networks”.

“Ninety per cent of our data comes from the sea and 60 per cent of gas comes from Norway by one line, so you can see how vulnerable we are… The scale of damage [they could do] is enormous and it’s deniable and it’s cheap to do. That’s the worrying dimension of all of this.”

As long reported at Breitbart London, the era of the Ukraine War has seen a steady drumbeat of incidents — accidents or sabotage, depending on perspective — involving European critical infrastructure. While the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines is most famous and still officially unsolved, in other cases, fibre optic and other data cables have been repeatedly cut in the Baltic, with Russia invariably blamed.

In one instance recorded in 2024, a Russian ship — a member of that nation’s ‘dark fleet’ of sanctions-busting tankers keeping Moscow oil exports going in the teeth of Western opposition — suspected of having cut a Baltic cable, is thought to have been moonlighting as a signals intelligence ship too. The Eagle S said a previous inspection of the ship found its bridge stuffed with cases of equipment, including computers for intercepting and recording intelligence.

Apparently, the amount of extra equipment embarked for this purpose was so great and so power-hungry that it caused blackouts aboard.