German media has reported that the Russian controlled ‘Navi-Sailor 4100’ has been installed on at least 100 vessels operated by Germany’s military, including the submarine fleet

Bild reports here that in 2005, under Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, around one hundred vehicles, including aval platforms, were equipped with new navigation systems from Russian company Transas.

“Even later, the government decided in favor of Transas and, according to BILD am SONNTAG information, installed the ‘Navi Sailor 4100’ (navigation device for position, speed, route) in modern German submarines”, said the report.

The report adds that in the summer of 2020, the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution warned that maritime navigation systems would open up “attack vectors for espionage and sabotage by foreign states”.

“Transas was founded in St. Petersburg in 1990 and is active in both the civil and military sectors: Transas equipped the Russian fleet with combat simulators and received an award from the Chief of the Russian General Staff, General Nikolai Makarov.In 2018 the company was bought by the Finnish company Wartsila, but the armaments division remained in Russian hands. 

Former Transas engineers are now developing combat drones for the Russian military. Because of its close ties to the Russian security apparatus, this part of Transas is in the focus of Western intelligence services, according to security experts.”

In the event of a cyber attack, navigation data could be tapped and manipulated, “in the worst case up to the complete loss of functionality” of the ship.

You can read more here.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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43 COMMENTS

  1. You couldn’t make it up, not that it makes any real difference, the Germans don’t have faintest intention of ever fighting anyone….

    • Except the UK it seems…..we’re evil….because of a democratic Brexit vote…..and because we wrote a good vaccine contract….

      • So true, the EU tried to strong arm the vaccine producing companies once the vaccine was proved to be viable. They did not invest early and take that financial risk that the UK did, and they are now trying to take control.

      • UK should never have gotten into the EU in the first place. At least they woke up and got out. America is going in the opposite direction with the election of China Joe and Socialist Harris. Ugh

    • I don’t think that will be the main point of concern. What if one of these subs was working with another NATO sub in a hostile environment?

    • I had to read this several times to make sure that my morning coffee was working.

      Unbelievable doesn’t cover it. Parody maybe?

      It is like something out of a Bond film sendup (maybe an amalgam of Tomorrow Never Dies and The Spy Who Loved Me?) so I can only quote the late, great Sir Sean ‘shocking: absolutely shocking’…

      You might as well leave the civvy navigation transponders on when going to war or just email your plans straight to @Kremlin.

      Who is going to want a German ship or sub anywhere near them now when that lack of basic digital hygiene has been exposed?

      • I’m reminded of that Danish politician in the 1970’s who reckoned that the best way to save on the defence budget was to buy a very large radio transmitter which would broadcast “we surrender” in Russian as soon as hostilities started. Other than the operators everyone else could be made redundant!

    • This is being blown out of all proportion, almost the entire German navy is sitting alongside in port so the Russian’s having access to their navigation systems make no difference at all.

  3. Decisions like this, alongside continued German state reliance on Russian oil and gas imports and German reluctance to spend anything but the bare minimum on defence do strike me as a bit odd. I mean I was under the impression Russia was still a threat to Central European states. Isn’t that why NATO spends so much on preparing for a possible conflict there. Isn’t that one of the reasons Russia is under sanctions ? You could almost believe that Germany has no intention of going as far as open conflict with the Russian Federation under any circumstances.

    • Very true, I have grave doubts the Germans will engage any aggressor to NATO, unless they face a direct threat to Germany.

      Unreliable partners….

    • Germany is an increasingly reluctant partner of NATO. 1st due to Germans history there is a strong anti military sentiment within the country, 2nd NATO can be seen as a opponent of Germany’s idea for a United Europe specifically interms of defence and 3rd dont forget during much of its existence NATO was the “bad guy” for half of Germany.

  5. The article states 2005 but not clear this oversight has been rectified othewise brainfart!
    Do other TKMS epxport subs suffer same issue or just German navy’s? This thing could turn out to be a can of warms
    If German defense is so braindead that they cannot do basic due diligence, one has to wonder what other trojans are out there in their other services, and products they export

  6. Good film this. Russian agents fit secret spy system on German U boats to sabotage NATO . Will Matt discover the truth in time?….Except they were bought on the open market from a commercial company. Bizarre.

  7. Aren’t all satellite dependent navigation systems vulnerable to hacking? There have been a number of successful hacks in recent years. If you want to be 100% secure, it’s back to paper charts and dead reckoning.

  8. Whilst I agree that this is bonkers I would point out that GPS might not be so useful to a submarine once it is clear of harbour and submerged. I do not think the GPS signal will penerate the sea to any real depth and any sub that sticks it periscope or GPS antenna above the surface in a warzone may well to regret it.

    The surface fleet is another matter. What were they thinking?

    Cheers CR

    • Too true fella, that’s we once dived SMs have SINS for navigation, and check it when it goes to PD to update a GPS fix.

  9. What are the consequences of this for NATO and Germany’s membership?

    If Turkey were prevented from having the F35 because of their adoption of the S-400 then what of Germany if their navigation system can be tracked/manipulated?

  10. I don’t think this is actually a big deal. All of the Merchant ships I have worked on have used Transas Sailor systems. None of them were ever connected to the internet so do to something mischievous to the system direct physical access was required. At the end of the day it is a couple of WIndows or LInux machines running a fairly simple program that displays raster and vector charts with an input feed from GPS and gyro etc. Out of all the systems I have used this was my favorite, much better than the ancient rubbish by JRC

  11. Always remember that Germany has never shed blood fighting for freedom.

    As for now , 51% or German car production happens in ………… Chiiiiina.They are supplicant to China hence why they forced thru the EU / China trade desl against the wishes or their EU partners and the USA.

    Nord 2 makes them supplcant to Putin.

    Merkel has also wrecked the military while importing a million syrians again with zero respect for her fellow EU partners.

    Germany is not on the side of Nato they are slaves to their car manufacturing machine ( Musk just drove a panzer thru ) and will sell anyone down the river to keep the mercs and bmws rolling.

  12. Merkel is in Putin’s back pocket. If you doubt that just look at all the gas contracts Merkel made with Putin and now this crap. Ugh

  16. FFS when are the liberal democracies going to wake up and realise neoliberal “the market rules all” is just a great gaping hole that our opponents are driving great big Mercantile buses through….look we will sell you this soo much cheaper than your own workers….close that company down and order from us….
    … save a few shiny pounds and pay use. We have so many ships that need building and we promise not to us the inbuilt back door honest.

  17. Thats a really stupid thing to do, buy as Germany is effectively dependent on Russia for energy it’s really academic ( modern countries done work without energy and end up starving hungry and with utilities in short orders).

    Can I just point out that we, being the paragons of western virtue are fighting the good fight by:

    1) asking China if they would like to many be help build all our new nuclear reactors ( cuts down on China’s need for a nuclear deterrent I suppose).
    2)Asking China to build our 5G networks….it only you know…..will be running everything…..but at least China would not have needed to put our nuclear reactors into some form of meltdown to bring us to our knees.
    3)buy everything ever made from China….cus it’s cheaper and we don’t want that much of our own currency clogging up our banks. Or all those nasty sweaty industries that make stuff ( so 19th and early 20th Century) . Especially when China will make it all for us and will keep all our currency tots safe for us….Its far better than in the bands of the grubby working classes.

    from the nation that effectively ruled half the world by the firm application of making and selling stuff we really have forgotten the power of economic dominance.

  20. Been doing some background checking as, well, I did look to make sure its no April fools trick. It’s not. It is being reported in Germany that the Type 212A has the Navi-Sailor 4100 as well as surface ships. Photos were published in Germany shown the screen shot of the system onboard Brandenburg. My next question is if the Type 212A in Germany does that mean the Italian Todaro class subs also have the system as they are Italian built T 212As or for that matter the export Type 214 subs?

    If that situation is not bad enough a German Navy spokesperson has confirmed that there is a potential risk to the German Navy, the details of the risk is classified. To make it even more of a shocker it has been confirmed that the encryption used by the Transas Navi-Sailor is below the standard required by the military. There are calls for a governmental defence inquiry to understand the threat and how or why was it aloud to happen. I’m not sure about other NATO nations but the US are screaming for answers. It could be quite easy for the Russians to trick their navigation system, which apparantly they were also speaking about in Germany.

    You could not really make it up, the German Navy reliante on Russian Navigation systems, Germany reliante on Russian gas and German defence expenditure not upto par. Thank god we have enemys, friends like that we don’t need.

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