Company insight Defence in depth
With the danger posed toward critical underwater infrastructure (CUI) greater than ever, there has also been a commensurate need to ensure CUI is adequately defended and secured against threats from all hostile entities. TNO is working with its partners to develop a scenario-driven approach to understanding – and mitigating – threats to CUI in the North Sea.
ecent incidents to critical underwater infrastructure (CUI) have shown that seabed warfare is not just a hypothetical scenario. The depths of the sea provide the time and cover to conduct sabotage operations with little risk of attribution. The attacks on critical infrastructure may have disruptive effects on our welfare and societal stability, affecting national politics and international relations. One of the reasons adversaries’ hostile operations still are at little risk of being attributed is that nations have not developed their CUI from a security perspective. For most western nations it is, or at least until recently it was, unclear which ministries have responsibility for security of CUI, who should be investing in the means to create situational awareness and understanding of possible threats, who is responsible for creating and monitoring a common operational picture and who is to respond in case of a suspected sabotage operation.
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By using a scenario-driven approach, decision-makers can make plans for the most likely risks they will face.
Applied Research (TNO) has taken the first steps in substantiating a scenario- driven, geo-referenced risk-based approach, by first acknowledging that many threat scenarios are conceivable. However, for each given threat scenario,
“The attacks on critical infrastructure may have disruptive effects on our welfare and societal stability, affecting national politics and international relations.”
A new approach
As most nations are in the process of developing responsibilities at the proper ministries, government and enforcement organisations, it is becoming clear that having awareness of possible threats everywhere and at all times is impossible. Let alone having a timely and 24/7 response capability to create a credible deterrence. The Netherlands are therefore pursuing a risk-based approach to security in order to be at the right place, at the right time.
The Netherlands Organization for 18
one must think of the factors that determine the possibility of executing a sabotage mission and form a threat to the operation that can be attributed. Knowing those factors is crucial to formulating a risk-based approach to countering the adversary’s most likely courses of action. To give an example: in a scenario where divers position an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on a pipeline, and are supported by a small yacht, some first order limiting operational factors are: ■ Tidal currents: There are strong currents between high and low tide in
the North Sea. A diver will not be able to swim against the current, except for twice a day around neap and spring.
■ Weather: Heavy sea states will limit the possibilities for safe deployment and recovery of divers. In the North Sea, the autumn and winter seasons generally have worse sea states than the spring and summer seasons.
■ Bathymetry: Most divers can operate in shallow waters. Deeper waters demand specialist training, thus narrowing the population of potential divers or precluding diver operations altogether.
Factors increasing the risk of attribution, and thus limiting the likelihood of adversary operations are: ■ The risk of being observed and reported by other marine traffic: The dense traffic in shipping lanes just off the Netherlands’ coastline, and in the approaches to the ports of Vlissingen, Rotterdam and Amsterdam may be a mitigating factor.
■ Maritime surface ISR: This could be from AIS, satellite images and radar
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
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