In September 2022, the ruptures to the Nordstream pipelines that carry gas across the Baltic Sea brought to international public attention the real security risks that threaten critical national infrastructure on the seabed. Such infrastructure includes oil and gas installations and pipelines, power and communications cables, wave power and windfarm set ups, scientific research nodes (including oceanographic and hy-drographic installations and instrumentation), and facilities for accessing critical minerals below the seabed. The importance of such infrastructure has been well known - amongst naval and commercial sub-sea communities, senior military officers in key armed forces around the world, and national and international political leaders - for some time. However, the Nordstream incidents - reported by NATO, for example, as an act of sabotage - brought the threat firmly into the public domain. The reality of the threat was enhanced by the possibility that the incident related to the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war.
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