Britain and Ireland will conduct live exercises to check their readiness for incidents involving undersea cables, the 2 countries’ leaders said in a joint statement setting out enhanced maritime cooperation on Friday.
Citing “a more contested environment” and increased hostile state activity, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Irish counterpart Micheal Martin said the exercises would begin in September 2026.
Subsea security has turn out to be an increasing concern amongst European nations following a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages within the Baltic Sea region since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The brand new agreement would “enable information sharing and coordinated response mechanisms for addressing major subsea communication cable incidents that will affect our countries,” the statement said.
Ireland has applied to hitch a 2024 agreement on subsea security covering the North Sea region, joining Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Britain and Denmark.
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Ireland said last month it planned to spice up radar and subsea surveillance capabilities and increase cooperation with NATO members amid growing hybrid threats within the North Atlantic
Ireland, which is neutral and has the European Union’s lowest level of defence spending, has been criticised for its lack of capability to watch and defend territorial waters.