NATO is testing new sea drones that can use artificial intelligence to detect suspicious activity near underwater infrastructure. Fourteen members of the NATO alliance, along with Sweden, have teamed up for multiple exercises over 12 days off the coast of Portugal to test underwater sea drones that have real-time ability to send “a deterrence signal to the enemy, be it Russia or somebody else,” said Lt. Gen. Hans-Werner Wiermann, head of NATO’s cell for protecting undersea infrastructure, according to a report from Bloomberg. The exercises, dubbed Dynamic Messenger 23 and Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS 23), will bring together over 2,000 civilians amid military personnel with a focus on integrating maritime unmanned systems into the alliance’s operations and test new technologies that are currently under development. The exercises come almost exactly a year after the intentional bombings of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea, which highlighted NATO’s difficulty in deterring attacks and monitoring suspicious activity around critical underwater infrastructure. While many members of the alliance have suspected Russian involvement in the attack, NATO has yet to formally assign responsibility to any nation or organization.
Full story : NATO testing underwater drones off the coast of Europe to deter Russia.
