PARIS — The U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a military partnership of 10 northern European countries, has activated an AI-powered system to track potential threats to undersea infrastructure and monitor the so-called Russian shadow fleet, consisting of hundreds of often poorly maintained vessels used to circumvent sanctions and possibly for spying and sabotage.
The operation, dubbed Nordic Warden, was activated last week, the U.K. said in a statement on Monday. The expeditionary force will uses artificial intelligence and data from sources including the Automatic Identification System used for ship positioning to calculate the risk of every vessel entering “areas of interest,” according to the government.
Finland last month seized a Russia-linked vessel called Eagle S suspected of having dragged its anchor for nearly 100 kilometers in the Baltic Sea, rupturing the Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia. That follows damage to two fiber-optic cables in the Baltic in November, potentially linked to anchor dragging by a Chinese-flagged vessel, a similar incident in 2023, and underwater explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline in 2022.
“Russian aggression is not simply confined to Ukraine,” U.K. Secretary of State for Defence John Healey told parliament in response to questions on Monday. “We’re deeply concerned about the damage and sabotage to undersea cables.”
Some military analysts, such as Anders Puck Nielsen at the Royal Danish Defence College, have suggested Russia may step up sabotage efforts and hybrid warfare as it faces growing losses and difficulties on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Vessels identified as being part of Russia’s shadow fleet have been registered into the system so they can be closely monitored when approaching key areas of interest, the U.K. said. If the system determines a potential risk, the expeditionary force will monitor a suspicious vessel in real time and send out warnings to JEF partner countries and NATO allies.
The JEF is monitoring 22 areas of interest including parts of the English Channel, the North Sea, the Kattegat and the Baltic Sea from its operational headquarters in Northwood in northwest London, the government said.
Nordic Warden will help protect against “both deliberate acts of sabotage as well as cases of extreme negligence which we have seen cause damage to underwater cables,” Healey said in the statement. He said Nordic Warden, which was first trialed during the summer of 2024, allows for monitoring of large sea areas with a comparatively small number of resources.
The shadow fleet was estimated to include about 591 tankers operating in the Russian oil trade, according to data compiled by S&P Global in April, up 33% from a March 2023 estimate.
The U.K. has sanctioned 93 oil tankers used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to “soften the blow of sanctions and bankroll his illegal war in Ukraine,” the government said. The U.K., Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Finland and Estonia last month agreed to request proof of insurance from suspected shadow vessels traveling the Baltic route.
The JEF is a high-readiness force that was established in 2014 and which today has 10 members, including all five Nordic countries, the three Baltic States, as well as the Netherlands and the U.K.
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
