In an exclusive interview, Captain Adrian Pierce (retired), naval adviser for the upcoming Undersea Defence Technology (UDT) conference, spoke to Naval Technology about the themes and contexts informing the event in Oslo, Norway this week.
The underwater space is a complicated environment to operate in, and it is one that can sometimes be overlooked. Yet, as adversaries use sabotage tactics to disrupt critical undersea infrastructure (CUI), nations must be ready to protect their livelihoods and become resilient in the so-called ‘gray zone’.
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Pierce draws on 35-and-a-half years spent serving as a commissioned officer in the UK Royal Navy, during which he held many positions of leadership.
John Hill (JH): UDT is coming after the suspected Russian sabotage of Estlink in the Baltic in December 2024. Gray zone sabotage has happened before: the Nord Stream sabotage back in 2022. Will all this inform the discussions we shall have this week?
Adrian Pierce (AP): One of the interesting things that has come out from the recent interference with underwater infrastructure is what governments did in response; the public calling out is a real change in policy and stance by Western governments.
The response in the Baltic, the UK leading the JEF in their response, and then Nato following up quickly with Baltic Sentry. All stating – we can see you and what you are up to in the underwater domain.
The protection of CUI was already planned to be part of the conversation. After Nordstream, when UDT was held at Rostock [in Germany], we had sessions about protection of CUI, including trying to educate a defence and security based audience some of the issues around planning, laying, recovering, maintaining underwater infrastructure, whether that’s data cables or pipelines. You need to know something about what you are attempting to secure and the knowledge while improving is still not where it could be in much of the defence sector.
We will force that, introducing that whole debate and informing the thinking around what is going on in the underwater domain.
JH: With the emergence of UUVs, AI, etc. we have all these new technologies. What would you say are the most disruptive capabilities to keep an eye on at UDT this year?
AP: Top technologies to keep an eye on in the underwater space are quantum computing, continued progress in AI, and what that means for data processing.
We have been able to gain information in the underwater battlespace for years. In the past, you’ve had to focus on small bits of it because you didn’t have the ability to process beyond that. In the digitised battlespace you are talking about petabytes [a unit of data storage that represents quadrillion bytes] of information coming back from advanced sonar systems. The human brain can’t cope with it.
Advances in computing will mean that these vast machines can shrink down and we can use it at the edge, at the front, which means that the transmission of data becomes far less [to process].
I hesitate when I see your question, the ‘disruptive’ [focus]. I don’t think that is disruptive. I think that’s a natural progression in the move towards more autonomous weapons. It’s not a change, it’s what we’ve always done – continually removing the man further from the action, while continuing the attempt to control a battlespace. The disruption was when we invented the torpedo. All we’re talking about now is making the torpedoes more intelligent, the ability for them to contribute to and have better targeting solution.
JH: War gaming is another point to cover at UDT, could you explore that?
AP: It’s slightly different for people doing it in the underwater environment. It’s not just gray, it happens over the horizon but it’s also underwater, which you can’t even see. So it’s really difficult.
So it’s quite exciting to see this, and you’ll see the partners that we’ve got, Matrix Pro Sims and Fight Club. This will really educate people on the way submarines, UUVs, and other platforms and systems in, on, above the water and ashore could interact in the future as well, particularly if we do get further with how things communicate underwater, understanding the physics and the limitations that gives us.
There are companies out there, some whom are coming to UDT, and some in Norway, who are working quite hard in that space (underwater comunications) to try and get further.
JH: From your Royal Navy career, you have experience in strategic planning and liaising across government departments to deliver naval assets. How will UDT facilitate the strengthening of ties across government, SMEs, primes and forces?
AP: It comes down to improved situational awareness; the integrated battlespace must include the underwater space, with better understanding of what is known and what is not known.
Recent events have demonstrated the need for that including around what’s becoming known as ‘critical underwater infrastructure’. Once you know the battlespace then you can start working out how to compete, control and maybe dominate the space.
UDT will bring people together: from a variety of backgrounds including commercial organisations, some of which are not looking at it from a defence point of view. Maritime Security including in the underwater domain is interconnected with a large range of National Agencies, Commercial organisations and indeed non-governmental ones – what the International Maritime Organisation, calls its “whole-of-government approach to maritime security”. You will see these broad approaches and need to cross and hopefully remove boundaries in a range of national maritime security strategies.
We are a technical conference. We do not just talk about the esoteric strategic planning. We also talk about physics, the difficult bits about actually making it happen. We bring people in who are engineers and scientists and who actually can try and think about how we’re going to solve the difficult bits.
So we bring a different audience, and we can bring those people together to have those conversations and in the maritime world. That’s really important, because there are less people who have that tech, that knowledge, and that experience in the maritime world.
Undersea Defence Technology is Europe’s leading show dedicated to subsurface defence operations. For more, visit the show website here.
