Britain is dangerously exposed in the North Sea, and shadow fleets know it

The root cause remains inconclusive. But what we do know is that shadow fleets – consisting of hundreds of tankers operating under opaque registrations, with their tracking systems frequently disabled – transit the Baltic and North Seas routinely. What they do along the way is not fully understood.

And the UK’s capacity to monitor that traffic continuously, detect anomalous behaviour in real time, and act before damage occurs is not yet where it needs to be.

The suspected method of choice in the Baltics is deliberately unsophisticated: dragging an anchor across a known cable route for tens or hundreds of kilometres. It requires no specialist equipment, leaves ambiguous physical evidence, and confounds the legal frameworks needed to act.

It appears, in other words, a remarkably effective form of sabotage for a remarkably low investment. The North Sea seabed, carrying the fibre-optic cables, gas pipelines, and interconnectors that underpin our energy security, presents a similar, and arguably more consequential, target.

Addressing this is not a straightforward question of deploying more naval vessels, though that would help. The ocean is large, the infrastructure dispersed, and no single platform generates a persistent, granular picture for effective protection.

What is needed is an overlapping system of underwater acoustic sensors, autonomous vehicles, satellite monitoring, and AI-enabled vessel tracking, which collectively builds a substantial enough surveillance picture.

Several capabilities exist in nascent form, developed by smaller British and allied companies with genuine technical depth and, in some cases, considerable promise.

The problem is that the path from promising prototype to MoD-procured capability can be long, expensive, and uncertain for a company debating whether to scale. These companies need clearer demand signals, longer planning horizons, and a willingness from defence to trial emerging technology at pace rather than wait for a fully matured solution.

Without that, many will struggle to survive long enough to deliver what the UK increasingly cannot do without.

The ocean is big enough, and the problem complex enough, that there is room for multiple providers to contribute meaningfully to intelligence.

This is not a winner-takes-all procurement contest, and the breadth of available technologies creates an opportunity for a diverse and competitive supply ecosystem.

NavyX, part of the Royal Navy’s Develop Directorate, provides a compelling model to emulate here, as it tests and trials new technologies with the specific aim of getting new capabilities to the fleet faster than traditional routes.

NATO’s Baltic Sentry operation, launched last January, is a serious, welcome attempt to address coordinated seabed security in the Baltics. It focuses on improved coordination between Baltic states, clearer protocols, and making it more difficult and costly for shadow fleets to operate. The underlying logic is also directly transferable to the North Sea.

Given its geography and relationships across the Joint Expeditionary Force, the UK would be reasonably well-placed to drive that effort for NATO. Either way, the response should not just be more of the same. We need to actively create conditions to develop a viable surveillance ecosystem.

That means engaging with emerging capability earlier, providing the demand signals that allow companies to invest and scale with confidence, and accepting that not every solution will be fully mature at the point of first procurement.

This was a focus of the Undersea Technology Conference in April, Europe’s largest event on undersea defence and technology.

We already have – or are close to having – the technology to build a far clearer picture around North Sea infrastructure. The missing ingredient is not innovation, but the commissioning framework that gives innovation somewhere to go.

Getting that right is not a long-term ambition; it is essential for safeguarding the North Sea systems underlying the UK’s energy security.

This article was first published on LBC.