spy

The Yantar, a notorious Russian spy ship, directed lasers at the crews of U.K. Royal Air Force aircraft in waters off the north of Scotland, the British government said today. While the Yantar has been a worrying presence around critical undersea infrastructure for years now, this development represents a concerning new trend, and one that could be very hazardous.

The alleged incident took place after a U.K. Royal Navy Type 23 frigate and Royal Air Force aircraft, including P-8A Poseidon MRA1 maritime patrol aircraft, were sent to monitor and track the vessel. Publicly available flight-tracking data suggests that Royal Air Force Typhoon fighters, supported by Voyager tankers, may also have been involved.

It’s not clear what kind of laser was used by the Yantar, but these encompass a wide range of systems, some of which can have significant power, at least enough to be a major concern. Depending on their output, lasers have the potential to temporarily obscure optics and the vision of personnel or cause permanent damage to both. More powerful laser weapons can burn holes in craft, damaging or destroying them, but are highly unlikely to have been installed on this vessel.

It is worth noting that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has regularly been accused of using shipborne lasers to harass military aircraft, as you can read about here.

As for the Yantar, this vessel has been active off the coast of the United Kingdom for the last few weeks, according to the U.K. defense secretary, John Healey, who disclosed details of its activities today.

“This is a vessel designed for gathering intelligence and mapping our undersea cables,” Healey said.

Referring to the laser incident, the defense secretary described the Russian ship’s action as “deeply dangerous,” noting that this is the second time this year that the Yantar has deployed to British waters.

Healey continued: “My message to Russia and to Putin is this: we see you, we know what you’re doing, and if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready.”

The Yantar is part of the Russian Defense Ministry fleet, being operated by the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, a secretive branch that works on behalf of the Russian Navy and other agencies. The ship is around 112 feet long and, among other duties, operates as a mothership for uncrewed underwater vessels (UUVs), which can be used to investigate the seabed and potentially undertake sabotage and other activities, including manipulating objects on the seafloor.

As we have discussed in the past, the Yantar is officially classified as a Project 22010 “oceanographic research vessel,” but its specialized equipment can reportedly tap or cut submarine cables and investigate and retrieve objects from depths of up to 18,000 feet. The vessel is also likely to be able to place devices on the seabed that could cut cables long after the ship has moved on.

Russia has repeatedly claimed that the vessel is used for legitimate maritime “research” or “survey,” but it has an established pattern of operating around critical undersea infrastructure. In particular, it is assessed that the Yantar is used for surveilling the U.K.’s crucial network of undersea cables, around 60 of which branch out into the sea from the British Isles.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense has long considered the Yantar a spy ship and tracks it closely, leading to several run-ins with the vessel in the past.

In September, the U.K.’s National Security Strategy Committee stated that the government was being “too timid” in its approach to protecting British undersea cables, some of which also have a military role.

Meanwhile, another British government oversight body, the Defense Select Committee, recently concluded more broadly that the United Kingdom “must be willing to grasp the nettle and prioritize homeland defense and resilience.”

At the beginning of this year, the United Kingdom confirmed that one of its Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarines surfaced close to the Yantar, to make it clear it was being observed. The Yantar was sailing in British waters in November last year, when that incident occurred. Specifically, the Russian ship was said to be “detected loitering over U.K. critical undersea infrastructure.”

At one point, one of the Royal Navy’s Astute class attack submarines surfaced close to the Yantar “to make clear that we had been covertly monitoring its every move,” Healey said.

Tracking the Yantar is not necessarily a difficult job, since its position is typically broadcast at regular intervals using the automatic identification system (AIS), an automatic tracking system that uses transceivers on ships. This data is then also published by online ship tracking services. However, commercial tracking can be manipulated and spoofed, or it can just go dark, making the vessel harder to pinpoint.

At the same time, it should be noted that the vessel has been operating within the U.K.’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) but in international waters, which is entirely legal.

Earlier this year, the Yantar was reported in the Mediterranean. On this occasion, it was assumed to be involved in searching and potentially salvaging the wreck of the Russian cargo vessel MV Ursa Major, which sank after an apparent explosion in its engine room in late December.

🚨📸 Overview in the 🌊Alboran Sea on 16 January: the 🇷🇺Russian research vessel Yantar with the 🇺🇸American DDGH Paul Ignatius, then the 🇺🇸Ignatius with the 🇪🇸Spanish PSO Tornado.
With #NATO forces in the 🌊Mediterranean, the 🇷🇺Yantar passing Gibraltar illustrates that the… pic.twitter.com/h6fC64rKkB

— Russian Forces Spotter (@TiaFarris10) January 20, 2025

Back in 2018, the U.K. Royal Navy also escorted the Yantar through the English Channel as it headed into the North Sea. At this time, it was carrying a Saab SeaEye Tiger deep-sea robot on its deck. Russia acquired this underwater drone after the Kursk submarine disaster. It can reach depths of 3,280 feet.

A year before that, the Yantar was involved in a high-profile operation in 2017 when it sailed off the coast of Syria to recover the wreckage of two fighter jets, a Su-33 and a MiG-29KR, that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during operations from Russia’s aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov.

While the reported use of a laser in a hostile capacity by the crew of the Yantar is a new development, its activity comes as NATO becomes increasingly concerned about apparent sabotage to undersea infrastructure carrying oil, gas, electricity, and the internet. More generally, the threat to undersea infrastructure, specifically data cables, is of growing concern internationally.

In the Baltic Sea alone, cables have been damaged on several occasions, with all of them carrying at least some of the hallmarks of sabotage. In the most notable event, on December 25 last year, an oil tanker dragging its anchor damaged a power cable running between Finland and Estonia.

The vessel responsible for that incident in the Baltic was the Russia-connected Eagle S. The oil tanker was reportedly found to be brimming with spy equipment after it was seized by authorities. Finnish authorities filed charges of aggravated sabotage and aggravated interference with telecommunications against members of its crew.

Incidents like this led to NATO launching Baltic Sentry, a mission intended to ensure the security of critical undersea infrastructure in the region. As you can read about here, the mission also involves crewed surface vessels, UUVs, and various aircraft.

The scale of the threat was apparent even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after which tensions between the Kremlin and the West heightened significantly.

“We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen,” U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Andrew Lennon, then serving as NATO’s top submarine officer, told The Washington Post back in December 2017. “Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO and NATO nations’ undersea infrastructure.”

As Russia ramps up its hybrid warfare activities, which you can read more about here, the potential risk to undersea infrastructure is put into a much sharper focus. In many cases, such activities are deniable.

While NATO has long been aware of how difficult it can be to defend this kind of infrastructure against hostile actors, the apparent use of lasers by part of Russia’s spy fleet is another serious cause for concern.

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To Russia, the Yantar is a oceanic research vessel – to others, including the UK, it’s a spy ship, and a worry for Britain’s defence chiefs.

The vessel has long been suspected of secretly mapping out Britain’s undersea cables, where more than 90% of our data, including billions of dollars of financial transactions, are transferred.

But now, a new escalation, with revelations the Yantar’s sailors targeted Royal Air Force pilots in patrol planes with lasers.

Shining lasers into a pilot’s eyes is provocative, and to use the Defence Secretary John Healey’s words, “deeply dangerous”. It’s illegal in the UK and can lead to a prison sentence.

Healey’s direct message to Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin was stark: “We see you. We know what you’re doing. And if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready.”

By that, he is implying should the Yantar cross inside Britain’s 12-mile maritime boundary there would be a military response.

This isn’t the first time the Yantar has popped up near Britain’s shores – at the start of the year a Royal Navy submarine made the highly unusual move to surface right in front of the ship as a sort of deterrent measure.

The concern is that this is part of an ongoing operation by the Kremlin to locate and map all the vital undersea cables and pipelines that connect the UK to the rest of the world.

It is also part of a wider pattern of Russian activity, as it tests Nato’s reactions, resolve and defences. We’ve seen similar moves with the recent drone incursions across Europe, and Russian warplanes flying into Nato airspace.

When three Russian fighter jets entered Estonian skies without permission in September, Italy, Finland and Sweden scrambled jets under Nato’s mission to bolster its eastern flank.

This is all interesting intel for Russia.

As an island nation, Britain is heavily reliant on its network of undersea cables that carry data. There are also vital oil and gas pipelines connecting Britain to North Sea neighbours such as Norway.

These cables and pipes are largely undefended and apparently of great interest to Russia’s research vessels.

Nato has identified deep-sea cables as part of the world’s critical infrastructure. But they are also strategic pressure points, it says, warning that adversaries could exploit them through sabotage or hybrid warfare, threatening both civilian and military communications.

Retired Royal Navy Commander Tom Sharpe made clear what the spy ship could be doing: “The most obvious one is they sit above our cables and our critical undersea infrastructure and they nose around in the cables that transfer up to $7tn worth of financial transactions every day between us and America alone”.

The Yantar may be described by Moscow as a research vessel, but it is part of Russia’s secretive Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, or GUGI, which reports directly to the defence ministry.

And while the ship bristles with hi-tech communications equipment, it’s what we can’t see that is of most concern.

It can operate remotely-piloted miniature submarines that can dive down to sea beds many thousands of metres below the surface. These are capable of mapping the locations of cables, cutting them or planting sabotage devices that could, potentially, be activated in a time of war.

The Royal Navy is experimenting with various means of combating the threat, such as a new vessel called Proteus, but critics fear much of the damage to Britain’s coastal security may already have been done.

Any foreign vessel operating in British waters must comply with UK national laws and international maritime conventions.

The cornerstone of these complex rules is the UN Convention on the Law of The Sea (UNCLOS). This allows foreign ships to navigate through coastal waters provided that their passage is “innocent” – meaning it doesn’t threaten the peace or security of a coastal nation like Britain.

President Putin was at an AI conference in Moscow on Wednesday, and gave no immediate reaction on the situation unfolding north of Scotland.

Russia’s Embassy in London says it’s not undermining UK security and it has condemned UK Defence Secretary Healey’s statement as provocative.

But all this is happening while war rages in Ukraine, a conflict Putin blames on the West and which seemingly he has no intention of stopping soon.

WASHINGTON — Dick Cheney was the public face of the George W. Bush administration’s boundary-pushing approach to surveillance and intelligence collection in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

An unabashed proponent of broad executive power in the name of national security, Cheney placed himself at the center of a polarizing public debate over detention, interrogation and spying that endures two decades later.

“I do think the security state that we have today is very much a product of our reactions to Sept. 11, and obviously Vice President Cheney was right smack-dab in the middle of how that reaction was operationalized from the White House,” said Stephen Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor.

Prominent booster of the Patriot Act

Cheney was arguably the administration’s most prominent booster of the Patriot Act, the law enacted nearly unanimously after 9/11 that granted the U.S. government sweeping surveillance powers.

He also championed a National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program aimed at intercepting international communications of suspected terrorists in the U.S., despite concerns over its legality from some administration figures.

If such an authority had been in place before Sept. 11, Cheney once asserted, it could have led the U.S. “to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon.”

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies still retain key tools to confront potential terrorists and spies that came into prominence after the attacks, including national security letters that permit the FBI to order companies to turn over information about customers.

But courts also have questioned the legal justification of the government’s surveillance apparatus, and a Republican Party that once solidly stood behind Cheney’s national security worldview has grown significantly more fractured.

The bipartisan consensus on expanded surveillance powers after Sept. 11 has given way to increased skepticism, especially among some Republicans who believe spy agencies used those powers to undermine President Trump while investigating ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign.

Congress in 2020 let expire three provisions of the Patriot Act that the FBI and Justice Department had said were essential for national security, including one that permits investigators to surveil subjects without establishing that they’re acting on behalf of an international terror organization.

A program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence, was reauthorized last year — but only after significant negotiations.

“I think for someone like Vice President Cheney, expanding those authorities wasn’t an incidental objective — it was a core objective,” Vladeck said. “And I think the Republican Party today does not view those kinds of issues — counterterrorism policy, government surveillance authorities — as anywhere near the kind of political issues that the Bush administration did.”

As an architect of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney pushed spy agencies to find evidence to justify military action.

Along with others in the administration, Cheney claimed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida. They used that to sell the war to members of Congress and the American people, though it was later debunked.

The faulty intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq is held up as a significant failure by America’s spy services and a demonstration of what can happen when leaders use intelligence for political ends.

The government’s arguments for war fueled a distrust among many Americans that still resonates with some in Trump’s administration.

“For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of the Office of National Intelligence, said in the Middle East last week.

Many lawmakers who voted to support using force in 2003 say they have come to regret it.

“It was a mistake to rely upon the Bush administration for telling the truth,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said on the invasion’s 20th anniversary.

Expanded war powers

Trump has long criticized Cheney, but he’s relying on a legal doctrine popularized during Cheney’s time in office to justify deadly strikes on alleged drug-running boats in Latin America.

The Trump administration says the U.S. is engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has declared them unlawful combatants.

“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Oct. 28 on social media. ”We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

After 9/11, the Bush-Cheney administration authorized the U.S. military to attack enemy combatants acting on behalf of terror organizations. That prompted questions about the legality of killing or detaining people without prosecution.

Cheney’s involvement in boosting executive power and surveillance and “cooking the books of the raw intelligence” has echoes in today’s strikes, said Jim Ludes, a former national security analyst who directs the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.

“You think about his legacy and some of it is very troubling. Some of it is maybe what the moment demanded,” Ludes said. “But it’s a complicated legacy.“

Vladeck noted an enduring legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration was “to blur if not entirely collapse lines between civilian reactions to threats and military ones.”

He pointed to designating foreign terrorist organizations, a tool that predated the Sept. 11 attacks but became more prevalent in the years that followed. Trump has used the label for several drug cartels.

Contemporary conflicts inside the government

Protecting the homeland from espionage, terrorism and other threats is a complicated endeavor spread across the government. When Cheney was vice president, for instance, agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, were established.

As was the case then, the division of labor can still be disputed, with a recent crack surfacing between Director Kash Patel’s FBI and the intelligence community led by Gabbard.

The FBI said in a letter to lawmakers that it “vigorously disagrees” with a legislative proposal that it said would remove the bureau as the government’s lead counterintelligence agency and replace it with a counterintelligence center under ODNI.

“The cumulative effect,” the FBI warned in the letter obtained by The Associated Press, “would be putting decision-making with employees who aren’t actively involved in CI operations, knowledgeable of the intricacies of CI threats, or positioned to develop coherent and tailored mitigation strategies.”

That would be to the detriment of national security, the FBI said.

Spokespeople for the agencies later issued a statement saying they are working together with Congress to strengthen counterintelligence efforts.

Tucker and Klepper write for the Associated Press.