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Britain’s capability gaps are widening not because we lack ambition, but because we take too long to buy, test, and field equipment. These lengthy cycles are not just driving up cost and stretching schedules, but they are also blunting our operational readiness. This puts the UK off track for the 2025 Strategic Defence Review’s aims. The key point is clear: delay is not just a problem, but a crisis that requires immediate attention to prevent further strategic exposure.

14 January 2025, NATO announced Operation Baltic Sentry in Helsinki, a standing mission to protect the thick web of power and data cables that run across the Baltic Sea. It was a direct response to the Estlink 2 cable damage on Christmas Day 2024 and the cluster of other Baltic cable incidents that followed. Investigators linked one of those events to the Eagle S, a Russia-linked “shadow fleet” tanker.

Norway doesn’t just patrol the sea; it understands the depths. As hybrid threats to subsea infrastructure intensify, from suspected Russian sabotage of Baltic Sea cables in November 2024 to covert reconnaissance in the Arctic, Norway has quietly built one of the world’s most advanced undersea defence ecosystems. With a defence budget of £7.8 billion (NOK 110 billion) in 2025, and a pledge to raise spending on defence and broader security to around 5% of GDP by the mid-2030s u

A new model for predictive deterrence in the Baltic and North Sea The Joint Expeditionary Force’s Nordic Warden  network represents a decisive shift in how Europe protects its undersea lifelines. Led by the United Kingdom, it fuses naval radar data, satellite surveillance and AI-driven risk modelling to predict and prevent cable interference before it occurs. What began as a reaction to the 2024 Estlink-2 sabotage has evolved into a permanent layer of predictive defence — and