Name: Norway: The floating NATO listening post
Uploaded: 2025-11-06T14:15:13.319Z
Duration: 3 min 51 s
Description: NATO is using a special ship to find those responsible for sabotaging data cables in the Baltic Sea. Its officials suspect Vladimir Putin’s Russian shadow fleet is behind the disruptions.

NATO is using a special ship to find those responsible for sabotaging data cables in the Baltic Sea. Its officials suspect Vladimir Putin’s Russian shadow fleet is behind the disruptions.

Oslo

The NRV Alliance, a NATO research vessel, is at the forefront of efforts to protect undersea cables and pipelines from sabotage in northern European waters. Scientists from NATO's Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) have developed an early warning system that uses seabed sensors to detect the sound of anchors being dropped, enabling rapid response to potential threats.

This initiative comes amid concerns about oil tankers with links to Moscow dragging anchors across critical infrastructure. The vessel also plays a key role in detecting foreign submarines, with acoustics experts adapting technology and algorithms to address these evolving challenges. Recently, the NRV Alliance was visibly branded with the NATO name to deter adversaries as it returns to the Mediterranean.

Norway: The floating NATO listening post

This doesn't look like a battleship. And acoustics expert Gautier Real and his colleagues aboard the NRV Alliance don't look or sound like typical soldiers. I've always been focused on going on the field, collect data, and so it's a thrill every time, and discovering new ambient noise, new ambient sounds. But the field this Italian acoustician researches, how sound travels deep underwater, is increasingly part of the battlefield. In the Baltic Sea, for example, what they've learned there can help combat Russia's hybrid war against NATO countries. We're trying to react with new way, with what we know, knowledge on fundamental science and how sound propagates both in the water, on the seafloor, and how to adapt our behavior to this new kind of malevolent action. The new kind of malevolent action Real mentions is the growing number of oil tankers with ties to Moscow, which have been dropping their anchors and dragging them across critical undersea cables and pipelines connecting NATO countries. These scientists from NATO's Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation, or CMRE, based in La Spezia, Italy, have now established an early warning system so they can hear the anchors drop before they drag. It's the core of asymmetrical warfare. It's extremely low tech, even embarrassingly low tech, but can do a lot of damage. And so you have to think how to adapt to this kind of new threats. The strategy is that if an anchor lands on the seabed, sensors installed there will relay an alert to command centers on land, which can then dispatch NATO ships or helicopters to intercept a suspicious vessel before it can get away. That's a time advantage that hasn't existed before, as NATO grapples with how to deal with this emerging threat in the waters of its latest members, Finland and Sweden. The problem space is quite new to us, the acts of sabotage. And it helps us to understand the way we could put into use the technology that we have already developed. So it's an act of innovation, if you wish, trying to modify and add algorithms that help dealing with this problem space in a better way. That's how fast sand travels in the water column. So what does an anchor sound like when it hits the ocean floor? We asked the CMRE scientists to share their new discovery with DW, but we were told that has to stay secret. We cannot give you the sound that we recorded of the anchor because it also includes the sound of our own vessel, which means that our signature would be given away and others would be able to track us. That's particularly important because one of the NRV Alliance's other tasks is to detect foreign submarines trying to sneak into NATO waters. Again, Gautier-Real points out, acousticians are on the front line. Submarines are a difficult object to detect and are usually quieter than the noise itself that you measure underwater. The environment is a big piece of the puzzle. And so if you master that, if you understand how sound propagates from you to a target and vice versa, then you did a good job at trying to detect something. However, CMRE decided over the summer not to keep the floating laboratory itself quite so undercover. After 37 years of existence, NRV Alliance finally has NATO painted on its side. CMRE said it hoped the new branding would help keep adversaries at bay as the ship headed back to its home waters in the Mediterranean.

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