In June 2023, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, raised the prospect via the messaging app Telegram of ‘destroying our enemies’ ocean-floor communications cables’, citing alleged free and open nations’ involvement in the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions. In September 2026, Reuters reported that British, Norwegian, and American forces had interrupted a Russian rehearsal for disabling undersea cables near Svalbard earlier that spring. These threats pose a serious question for the United Kingdom (UK): if several cables are cut, who will put them back into service?
Britain’s cable security depends on what happens after the first cut. A vessel must reach the fault – being equipped and crewed to repair it – while essential services keep operating. The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy’s (JCNSS) September 2025 report on undersea telecommunications cables recommended a new sovereign repair ship by 2030.
While His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s Defence Investment Plan commits £330 million over four years to protecting critical undersea infrastructure, including enhancements to Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Proteus, ministers should explain how this investment and the proposed sovereign repair capability will together secure the vessels, crews, and deployment arrangements needed to restore connectivity in a crisis.
The limits of routine resilience
The JCNSS report deserves credit for distinguishing routine resilience from crisis preparedness. The UK has multiple cable routes and established commercial maintenance arrangements. Accidents and negligence remain the most common causes of disruption, meaning the case for investment need not depend on treating every dragged anchor as sabotage. Rather, it rests on whether arrangements designed for ordinary faults can withstand simultaneous damage and a contested environment in which repairs become dangerous.
The Committee heard that a mid-Atlantic repair could involve seven days’ transit followed by ten days’ work, with bad weather extending the timeframe for the operation to a month. It is also important to remember that these timings assume an adversary is not attempting to disrupt repair efforts. Each vessel can only attend to one break at a time. A government facing several failures could therefore find its recovery timetable determined by a commercial repair queue, as other countries need the same ships.
In Britain, policy has moved since September 2025. HM Government’s December 2025 response announced an Undersea Infrastructure Security (UIS) Oversight Board and accepted the need to plan for coordinated sabotage. In May 2026, Liz Lloyd, then Minister for Digital Economy, promised a decision on retaining a UK-based and UK-flagged sovereign repair capability by the end of the year. Building upon this, ministers should make crisis availability a condition of any public support, specifying vessel access, crew readiness, and deployment arrangements.
Historical analysis shows that governments and cable companies have long valued redundancy for different reasons. Commercial operators must justify redundancy costs against business needs, and governments also need communications to survive strategic emergencies. Expecting firms to finance every national contingency leaves that difference unresolved. Public money should purchase the additional readiness that national security requires, while operators retain responsibility for routine maintenance.
Making repair capacity dependable
The Cabinet Office, through the UIS Oversight Board, should ask each relevant department to identify the essential services and connectivity that must survive different disruption scenarios, with telecoms officials and operators assessing the technical requirements. The JCNSS warned that theoretical cable capacity exceeds what is immediately available to carry traffic. Exercises should therefore test both rerouting and repair, including failures affecting European connections and infrastructure ashore.
Targets should distinguish ship mobilisation, arrival, and restoration of service, as weather and damage severity make a single universal repair deadline misleading. The Oversight Board should use the results to identify where funding would shorten disruption most, comparing extra repair capacity with alternative routes and improvements at landing stations.
Governmental procurement can then follow those requirements. Long-term agreements with commercial providers could fund specified vessel availability, spare equipment, and additional trained personnel, with clear government activation rights. Ministers should compare this with owning a vessel and contracting its operation. The decisive test is whether either arrangement keeps repair ships and crews available when several countries need them at once. Buying preferential access to an already overstretched fleet may simply move Britain ahead of an ally in the queue.
Crews make this more than a shipbuilding decision. Alasdair Wilkie, chair of the Atlantic Cable Maintenance and Repair Agreement (ACMA), warned that training experienced personnel could take about ten years, while building a repair vessel would take about three. The JCNSS’ proposed reserve cadre should therefore involve continuing work and training alongside commercial specialists. It should expand the pool of qualified people, as mobilising the same engineers away from another repair vessel would create little additional capability. Retention and regular practice deserve funding alongside hardware.
Deployment also depends on conditions at sea. A study from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) records industry concerns about obtaining insurance for repair ships in the Red Sea. The UK should settle arrangements for war-risk cover and potential government indemnities before a crisis, alongside joint exercises involving repair operators and naval escorts. These should test realistic protection requirements and competing naval commitments. A commercial contract by itself cannot make an unsafe deployment feasible.
International cooperation should make that capability more dependable. The March 2026 UK-Ireland framework provides for coordinated responses and live exercises. The European Union’s 2025 cable security action plan proposed additional repair capacity, with a call for €40 million (£34.3 million) following in June 2026. Britain should use these openings to agree reciprocal access and repair priorities with partners, checking that national plans do not all assume that the same vessel is available. Indeed, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) Critical Undersea Infrastructure Network already brings together civilian, military, and industry representatives. The alliance should use this forum to test competing national repair assumptions and coordinate exercises, while governments and operators negotiate access to vessels.
Recovery should also extend beyond the seabed, given limited connections and distance from repair hubs compound the vulnerability of small islands. National capacity figures can conceal severe local outages. Exercises should include outlying islands, landing stations, and their power supplies, with operators demonstrating how essential services would continue while physical repairs proceed. The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research likewise places repair within a wider system of preparedness, regulation, and recovery.
Conclusion
Parliament identified a strategic requirement that commercial efficiency alone cannot satisfy. By the end of 2026, ministers should publish a funded delivery timetable and explain how readiness will be exercised and scrutinised, keeping sensitive operational details protected. The UK’s repair capability will be credible when the people expected to restore its connections have the resources, authority, and protection to do so.
Lyle Bryant is an MSt candidate in International Relations at the University of Cambridge. His interests include British national security policy, critical infrastructure, energy, and climate change. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.
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