Britain’s Arctic blind spot: The case for trilateral underwater co-production
The Memorandum | No. 20.2026
Since the commencement of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the High North has become a primary theatre of strategic competition. This is a shift that the United Kingdom (UK) has responded to by declaring its intention to expand its regional presence, among other moves. However, Britain’s dependence on intelligence infrastructure provided by the United States (US) for its most sensitive maritime surveillance functions is a significant vulnerability that any serious Arctic strategy from His Majesty’s (HM) Government will need to address.
With the Trump administration no longer considering Russia an existential threat, and demonstrating a willingness to instrumentalise alliance relationships more specifically, continued reliance by the UK on US infrastructure means accepting a degree of American strategic discretion over British security decisions that may no longer be deemed desirable or tolerable.
A trilateral co-production partnership with Sweden and Ukraine centred on the joint development of AI-enabled autonomous underwater surveillance systems for the High North and its undersea infrastructures could begin to address that deficit while also serving broader strategic objectives beyond capability alone.
It follows then that a key missing element of the UK’s Arctic strategy is the absence of an independent intelligent autonomous underwater surveillance capability capable of operating throughout the water column across the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap and the wider High North maritime space. A trilateral co-production partnership with Sweden and Ukraine centred on the joint development of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled autonomous underwater surveillance systems for the High North and its undersea infrastructures could begin to address that deficit while also serving broader strategic objectives beyond capability alone.
The capability case for this specific combination rests on three complementary and documented strengths. Sweden’s Saab Autonomous Ocean Drone (AOD) is a seven-metre long uncrewed undersea vehicle optimised for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) in the demanding, ice-affected maritime environment that the Arctic and the GIUK gap represent. Saab has designed the platform around an explicitly open autonomy stack, treating capability development ‘like applications in an app store’ with standardised interfaces that allow allied navies to develop and integrate their own classified mission software without disclosing it back to industry. This architecture makes the AOD a natural platform for multinational co-development.
Ukraine’s involvement is grounded in combat-validated expertise that most North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies currently do not possess in comparable form. The six-metre seabed-loitering Marichka exemplifies an autonomous underwater capability developed and refined under live operational conditions. The doctrinal and engineering knowledge embedded in the programme, including how autonomous underwater systems locate, position, and persist in hostile environments, fits neatly into the Arctic surveillance requirements that the proposed trilateral partnership is designed to address.
Britain’s own contribution centres on AI-enabled acoustic intelligence. Helsing’s SG-1 Fathom, manufactured in Plymouth, pairs an endurance submarine-hunter drone with the Lura maritime AI platform; a large model designed to interpret acoustic signals from sea vessels and submarines, and differentiate between individual vessels within the same class. This addresses one of NATO’s core surveillance problems in the High North, enabling the alliance not just merely to detect submarine presence, but also to attribute and track specific Russian vessels across transit routes from the Barents Sea to the Atlantic.
The proposed co-production arrangement is therefore one of integrated systems development rather than simply joint manufacturing. The Saab AOD would serve as the host platform, Ukraine’s contribution would operate at the level of mission logic and seabed deployment protocols, and Helsing’s Lura acoustic AI would supply the cognitive layer. Saab’s design philosophy – standardised interfaces allowing partners to integrate classified mission software independently – makes this division of labour technically feasible without requiring full disclosure of each partner country’s most sensitive Intellectual Property (IP).
Although Ukraine’s situation is categorically different from both the Finnish and Swedish experiences, co-production would institutionalise its role as a security producer within the European order, with direct consequences for its longer-term trajectory within the continental security architecture.
The Ukraine dimension, moreover, adds another crucial layer of strategic logic at a time when formal NATO accession remains politically frozen. The good news, however, is that alliance integration has never been reducible to a single joining event. Sweden and Finland’s accession processes demonstrate that membership is built through accumulated industrial interdependence, shared doctrine, and interoperable systems developed well ahead of formal entry.
Although Ukraine’s situation is categorically different from both the Finnish and Swedish experiences, co-production would institutionalise its role as a security producer within the European order, with direct consequences for its longer-term trajectory within the continental security architecture. For the UK, anchoring Ukraine’s defence industrial base within a NATO architecture is both a strategic investment and a statement about what kind of European security order it intends to help build.
Notwithstanding the coherence of the strategic case, the frictions involved in pursuing such an initiative are significant. First and foremost is the potential American reaction, which may simply not welcome a British-led effort aimed at reducing Washington’s privileged position in the Arctic’s surveillance architecture. Technology transfer and classification constraints constitute another major hurdle that requires careful deliberation. Navigating the protocols governing acoustic intelligence and submarine-tracking data with Ukraine as a non-NATO partner will require a dedicated legal framework that currently does not exist. Last but not least, Ukraine’s battlefield agility sits in tension with the certification, standardisation, and long procurement cycles prevalent in the UK, Sweden, and indeed NATO. Closing this gap will require institutional investment, which needs to be planned for.
Ultimately, should the challenges outlined above be mitigated, a British-Swedish-Ukrainian co-production partnership constitutes a practical response to a documented strategic capability gap in the High North. An arrangement built around the Saab AOD as host platform, Helsing’s Lura acoustic AI as the cognitive layer, and Ukrainian seabed deployment expertise could begin to address this deficit in concrete and deployable terms, while simultaneously anchoring Ukraine’s defence industrial base within both wider European and NATO defence security architecture.
Nima Khorrami is a Research Associate at The Arctic Institute – Centre for Circumpolar Security Studies. His main area of interest and research lies at the intersection of geopolitics, critical infrastructure, and emerging technologies.
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