UK to deploy AI against Russian submarine threat

The UK will use AI to “track and deter” Russian submarines as part of a new multi-million-pound hi-tech force to protect Britain’s undersea cables and pipelines.

- MILLIE COOKE POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

The hybrid naval force, named Atlantic Bastion, will combine autonomous vehicles and AI with warships and aircraft to identify threats to underwater structures and to defend them from interference.

Announcing the plans, the defence secretary John Healey said it would be a “highly advanced hybrid fighting force to detect, deter and defeat those who threaten us”.

The move comes after cables in the Baltic Sea were reported to have been damaged recently and UK defence intelligence has identified that Russia is modernising its fleet to target undersea cables and pipelines.

Last month, the defence secretary was forced to issue a stark warning to Vladimir Putin after a Russian spy ship operating on the edge of UK waters directed lasers at RAF pilots.

Meanwhile, the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, this week warned that Putin represents “an active threat to Britain’s citizens, our security and our prosperity” after a major inquiry into the Salisbury novichok poisonings concluded that the Russian president ordered the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal as a “public demonstration of Russian power”.

Subsea infrastructure is the lifeblood of the UK’s connectivity, carrying 99 per cent of international telecommunications data and vital energy supplies such as electricity, oil and gas.