NATO is stepping up surveillance of submarines after the defense alliance warned that Russia could damage critical European Union and US underwater facilities.
This was stated by NATO submarine commander Stephen Mack, quoted by Bloomberg.
NATO members have spent much of the past 12 days combing the seas off the coasts of Norway and Iceland for a mock enemy submarine. These exercises are aimed at honing the skills of countering Russian submarines.
"The asymmetric threat of a submarine is its stealth, the fact that other countries generally don't know where they are operating," Mack said.
According to him, it is important for NATO to teach its members how to understand the environment that submarines will try to use to remain undetected.
In an exercise called Dynamic Mongoose, which began on April 24 and will end on Friday, 12 NATO nations, including the United States, Canada, Spain and Portugal, have combined their maritime patrol aircraft, surface ships and friendly submarines to search for supposedly hostile submarine.
The training took place in a strategic area for the alliance, the so-called Greenland-Iceland-Great Britain corridor, through which Russian ships must pass to enter the Atlantic Ocean.
Once there, Russian forces could potentially disrupt commercial shipping or cut US military supply lines. Sabotage of undersea transatlantic data cables can cause significant damage.
