Source · Select Committees · National Security Strategy (Joint Committee)
Recommendation 12
12
Not Addressed
The Royal Navy should establish a cadre of reservists and serving personnel to learn cable...
Recommendation
The Royal Navy should establish a cadre of reservists and serving personnel to learn cable repair skills on commercial repair vessels. These could be called on in periods of heightened tension. (Recommendation, Paragraph 75) Moderate and catastrophic impacts
Government Response Summary
The government states it agrees with the recommendation, but the subsequent text discusses sensor and monitoring technologies and their integration with the Royal Navy, completely failing to address the call for training personnel in cable repair skills.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
The Government agrees with this recommendation. We recognise that the deployment of sensor and monitoring technologies presents both opportunities to enhance the resilience of subsea cable infrastructure as well as risks that must be carefully managed. cable monitoring technologies. Cross-government cooperation is already underway, including the development of commercial relationships to support cable monitoring. This work is being conducted in partnership with the Royal Navy’s Maritime Domain Awareness team, which has the technical expertise to integrate monitoring data with other data sources. This will improve threat identification and reporting, enabling timely action and refinement of incident response plans. We recognise that vessels that switch off their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) may be more likely to take part in activities that increase the risk of cable damage, and we will explore how existing measures and data sources can be better used to identify and deter such behaviour. However, it should be noted that many high-profile cable breaks also involved vessels with AIS switched on. DSIT, MoD, DESNZ, Defra and the Department for Transport (DfT) are working closely together to ensure that any expansion of underwater monitoring capabilities does not compromise defence operations or maritime safety. We will continue to engage with industry to manage the risks of such compromise. We will also consider whether new legislation might be necessary in relation to the use of such monitoring capabilities as part of our subsea cables legislation review.