How Bae Systems' robot submarines fight to keep the UK's lights on in North Sea drone battle

As Russia likely deploys autonomous submarines to map and monitor vital data cables in UK waters, the “drone war” that has developed in the skies above the battlefields of Ukraine is slowly but surely moving to the seas.

Over a two-week period last month, a steady stream of senior naval officers made their way to the English south coast for a ringside view of an epochal arms race. At stake is the ability of Britain to defend critical seabed infrastructure – and in so doing, keep the nation functioning securely in the internet age.

What the military VIPs had come to see was Herne – a cutting-edge, British-made autonomous submarine about the size of a single-decker bus. The vessel is packed with the kit necessary to monitor and protect against threats to the thousands of miles of data cables and energy lines that connect the UK to the outside world and keep institutions running, from the financial markets to the NHS.

The uncrewed craft, which made its debut in front representatives from no fewer than 10 allied navies potentially looking to acquire the technology, is at the cutting edge of an unseen but growing underwater dogfight with adversaries such as Russia and China, which use fleets of robotic craft controlled by artificial intelligence to prosecute a silent conflict off the shores of Britain and beyond.

The “drone war” that has developed in the skies above the battlefields of Ukraine is slowly but surely moving to the seas.

Intelligence sources told The i Paper that Moscow’s highly-specialised “cable sabotage” force – the Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research or GUGI – is “strongly assessed” to have deployed advanced uncrewed submarines in the Baltic and North Sea. In little-noticed remarks earlier this year, a UK government minister suggested it was likely that Russian autonomous systems built for “underwater warfare” have been active off the British coast.

Now, after longstanding criticism that Britain and Nato have been painfully slow to confront this threat, a race by the UK and its allies to field equivalent – or even superior – military technology is under way.

Once it is fully operational within the next 18 months, Herne, developed by UK defence giant BAE Systems, will have the ability to stealthily rove the North Sea for up to two months at a time, or lie dormant on the seabed for up to nine months. Using its advanced sensors it can detect incoming threats to fibre optic cables, electricity lines or gas pipe lines, and, in future, remotely destroy or disrupt whatever is responsible.

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