Covert tracking sensors discovered in UK waters amid ‘phenomenal’ Russian activity

Russian sensors designed to spy on British nuclear submarines have been discovered in UK waters, The Times reported on Saturday.

The British military said the devices had been planted by Moscow to attempt to gather intelligence on the UK’s four nuclear-armed Vanguard submarines. Several sensors were found after they washed ashore, while others have been discovered by the British Navy in recent years, The Times said.

“There should be no doubt, there is a war raging in the Atlantic. This is a game of cat and mouse that has continued since the ending of the Cold War, and is now heating up again. We are seeing phenomenal amounts of Russian activity,” an unnamed senior British military official told The Times.

The UK Ministry of Defence believes that superyachts owned by Russian oligarchs could also be used for underwater reconnaissance, as some have “moon pools that can be used covertly to deploy and retrieve deep-sea reconnaissance and diving equipment”. According to The Times, a Russian superyacht spied on the British amphibious assault ship HMS Albion in Cyprus in 2018.

The Times also learned that Russian unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) capable of operating at great depths and covering hundreds of kilometres for days at a time were discovered on the sea bed in UK waters next to critically important British communications systems “in around 2020”. The UK authorities believe that these devices were deployed for the surveillance and sabotage of underwater cables.

In recent months there has been a wave of unexplained incidents in the Baltic Sea in which undersea power and telecommunications cables have been damaged, widely believed to be the result of Russian sabotage efforts.