Finland tested a new system to help detect threats to subsea cables before incidents happen, after scores of breaches in the past years crippled critical underwater infrastructure.
The system is based on distributed acoustic sensing where a fiber-optic submarine cable observes and measures seabed vibrations, according to statements by the Border Guard and telecommunications company Elisa Oyj on Friday. The parties ran successful field tests on the early warning system this week, they said.
Baltic Sea undersea telecommunications cables, power connections and gas pipelines have been damaged in several incidents since Russia¡¯s full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022. Many have involved ships dragging their anchors on the seabed.
Some experts working in the Baltic Sea region have implicated Russia that¡¯s waging a so-called hybrid war, though national authorities haven¡¯t publicly disclosed whether they¡¯ve found the damage to be sabotage or negligence.
Elisa and the Border Guard worked on the project with Finland¡¯s transmission system operator Fingrid Oyj, gas pipeline owner Gasgrid Finland Oy, the Geological Survey of Finland, the Naval Academy and the University of Helsinki¡¯s Institute of Seismology. Recent tests included naval vessels, divers and an underwater robot simulating faults and threats to subsea infrastructure.
The plan is for the system to automatically alert authorities and owners of critical infrastructure owners if it detects something suspicious, such as anchor dragging near subsea assets.
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