After several suspected cable sabotage incidents, NATO's Secretary General Mark Rutte had enough and launched Baltic Sentry, an operation aimed at protecting critical infrastructure on the seabed.
On Tuesday, HMS Carlskrona set sail from Örlogshamnen in Karlskrona to participate in the operation, and thus became the second Swedish vessel ever to sail under the NATO flag.
My main task will be to contribute to a good situational awareness, but also to deter in the areas I am assigned to. The goal is to be on site and react faster, says Swedish naval captain Thomas Zimmerman.
Monitoring from Space
On deck, crew members are using binoculars to scan the Baltic Sea. This contributes to NATO's situational awareness in the area, explains Arjen Warnaar, head of one of NATO's standing naval forces, which includes HMS Carlskrona.
— We don't just have sensor systems for monitoring on ships at sea, but also underwater and from space. Are the systems sufficiently interconnected for optimal information gathering, he asks rhetorically and answers:
Not yet. Sweden has not been a member of the alliance for very long, but I can guarantee one thing, and that is that we will improve it.
Praising Sweden's Action
But there are successes.
The best example is probably the discovery of Vezhen, which only took a few minutes, says Arjen Warnaar, referring to the vessel that Swedish authorities seized after a cable break between Sweden and Finland at the end of January.
He believes that it was right for Swedish authorities to act when suspicion of gross sabotage arose, even though a prosecutor later dropped the suspicion and concluded that it was an accident.
Finding the Smoking Gun
In two other cases, prosecutor-led investigations into gross sabotage are still ongoing, one in Sweden and one in Finland.
I've been at sea for many years and never met a captain who believes that you drag an anchor across the seabed by mistake, says Arjen Warnaar, who also doesn't believe it's a coincidence that both vessels sailed from a Russian port.
The best would have been if we could find the smoking gun and bring someone to justice. From NATO's side, we are worried.
