The Ministry of Defence has indicated that plans for a second undersea cable protection ship are still under consideration, with final guidance to emerge from the upcoming Strategic Defence Review.
Responding to a question from Lord West of Spithead in the House of Lords on 4 November, Lord Coaker, Minister of State for Defence, highlighted the importance of this review in shaping the Royal Navy’s undersea cable protection strategy.
Lord West asked: “To ask His Majesty’s Government when the second undersea cable protection ship will join the Royal Navy.”
In his response, Lord Coaker stated that RFA Proteus, the first Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance (MROS) ship, is currently operational and actively protecting critical national infrastructure.
However, he noted that the Defence Review will assess how best to “deliver and augment RFA Proteus, taking advantage of the opportunity presented by new technologies.”
Lord Coaker’s comments reflect an intentional to balance current resources with emerging strategic demands, especially concerning the potential vulnerabilities of undersea cables.
These cables support crucial telecommunications and power networks, making them vital to the nation’s security and economy. Protecting this infrastructure has become an increasing priority, with heightened awareness of potential threats from both state and non-state actors.
Lord Coaker suggested that by harnessing advanced capabilities, the MOD seeks to “enhance RFA Proteus’s role in safeguarding our critical infrastructure” while maintaining flexibility to respond to emerging threats.
The future of British seapower lies in ships like RFA Proteus
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to go aboard RFA Proteus, which was docked alongside HMS Belfast in London. The ship’s modern design and advanced technology left a strong impression, especially when compared to the historic Belfast. During my tour with colleagues from other defence publications, we first visited the flight deck, which still reflects its commercial origins. While it’s primarily there for emergency evacuation, its high position atop the ship is notable.
The bridge was particularly striking, divided into two sections: one for standard navigation and the other for controlling remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) during surveillance missions. This setup, with large screens and sophisticated controls, indeed brought to mind the layout of a starship. The ROV bay was another highlight, showcasing the ship’s capabilities in underwater operations, with ample space for equipment and workshops dedicated to maintaining these critical systems.
RFA Proteus, originally built in Norway as an offshore support vessel, now serves as a specialised asset in protecting the UK’s undersea infrastructure. With her rapid procurement and advanced technology, she symbolises a forward-looking approach to maritime security amidst the growing need for resilience in this area, you can read more here.
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MoD = Idiots.
Bring back the Admiralty Board.
The money spent on the MoD would pay for a fleet of, well ….everything including new minesweeper/hunters – remote or manned; while the light blue and grunts could get their kit etc with less of the bureaucratic mess the MoD generates.
You know the Admiralty Board still exists? 😉
😀
The work this ship does is always described in terms of surveillance. But what do they do if they find anything dodgy? Are they equipped to do anything about it (or about whoever is doing it) ? This whole area of undersea warfare remains for me a bit – well – murky
As in the term “Grey Zone” so below the threshold of war, it’s a bit of a Grey area! It’s a bit of a quandary on what they are supposed to do. Sending teams of ROVs down, or Divers, James Bond style, to do battle with Russian saboteurs means combat, with all the ramifications of that with another, nuclear armed state. To me, we have this capability to monitor the network, discover any tampering and fix or stop it before too much damage is done. Likewise, I’d hope in this and other Grey Zone areas, be it Cyber, spying, sabotage,… Read more »
To my eye there’s two ways it’ll work:
Either, keeping a direct eye on potential Russian assets in a “Hey we’re watching you so don’t try anything” kind of way, because a big part of Greyzone ops is deniability.
“Yes Comrade, we had ship in area of suspicious undersea cable breach but it wasn’t us.”
“Well here’s video footage of you doing it.”
Option 2 is, not preventing Russia from damaging undersea infrastructure, but simply being in a position to quickly repair any damages that have happened.
Plus I mean…Nord Stream 2 anyone?
Morning mate.
Did you contact upstairs about profile? I cannot see anyone’s either.
Yes, apparently the comments application is eating bandwith like nobody’s buisness and they’ve disabled a lot of the functionality temporarily while they try to fix problems.
NS2? You want us to watch the US too?
Congratulations, you’ve completely missed the point I was making.
As you say though, we should definitely be returning the favour. If Russia wants to deny anything to do with those suspiciously slavic diving enthusiasts, then we can and should deny any involvement when they all somehow go missing.
When did you get a tour of a starship?
The 2nd MROSS I believe is planned to be more of a HMS Scott type vessel, so deep water survey and data gathering than just cables.
It is planned to be a new build. Is this actually necessary for Scott’s niche role or could another 2nd hand type like Proteus suffice if it saves some money?
HI Daniele, I read somewhere that some of the data that Scott used to gather e.g. water temperature in the water column, can now be gathered by long endurance research drones that have been available for sometime. We are also aware that bigger systems are also under development that can deploy scanning sonars so I think they might be considering an approach that does not require a dedicated platform as some of the drones can cover a few thousand miles so might be capable of transit – operation – transit mission profiles. The smaller drones will still need recovering but… Read more »
Morning mate.
Good points on the UUVs, I’d forgotten about those. I know the RN have already bought several smaller ones.
I see HMS Scott is still needed as just gone in for refit.
Just spotted an article on Navy Lookout. Scott has gone into A&P Falmouth to start a Ship Life Extension Program to extent her life out to 2033 so that might contribute to MoD’s thinking, especially has they struggled to get the civilian ships up to RFA standards and in to service on the original timescales…
Cheers CR
As far as I know everything Scott did can’t now be done by USV’s. Better to spend the money on frigates or other surface combatants and use commercial off the shelf vessels for everything else and just make sure the USV’s are platform agnostic.
If they bought it, would they be able to man it?
Seems plain, to keep undersea cable exposure to a minimum.
We had a spate of stories like this a couple of months back, when any minister’s response of, let’s see what the SDR comes up with, was turned into such and such capability is in danger. Tempest blew up enough and was sensitive enough to require a backtrack of the wording. This feels like just another one of those stories generated because there’s insufficient political sensitivity to require careful phrasing. It doesn’t feel like there’s an intent to balance anything. It’s just a two sentence brush-off answer.
Nothing substantive here. I can’t see any change in MOD or government position.