NATO is contemplating means to address what they perceive as the "heightened activities" of Russian submarines.
Over the last month, the navies of several bloc members, such as Belgium, Italy, Turkey, Poland, the UK, and the US, carried out military drills off the coast of Portugal in a bid to learn the surveillance techniques necessary for the detection of enemy submarines. Russia's submarine fleet was designated as "the foe" in the wargames.
More than a dozen different systems were tested during the manoeuvres. In particular, the alliance deployed the REMUS 600 drone to detect underwater vessels.
The bloc previously acknowledged that they do not possess a sufficient number of modernised ships fitted with sonar systems allowing for the detection of enemy submarines. Moreover, the existing fleet does not have the ability to control the world's oceans to predict a potential strike.
Money Well Spent?
According to experts, NATO's aspirations to detect submarines will eventually wind up being another pretext to wheedle hundreds of millions of dollars out of national budgets. They believe that even the oversized US military budget is not sufficient to purchase enough equipment to control all the oceans.
The argument that the US can come under a nuclear strike from the ocean does not hold water either, as in the event of US aggression, Russia would be able to launch missiles from its own territorial waters.