Sea Control - Sea Control 470 - Europe's Underwater Environment with Elio Calcagno and Michelangelo Freyrie

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Link:"The Underwater Environment and European Defence and Security," edited by Elio Calcagno and Alessandro Marrone, Istituto Affari Internazionali, June 13, 2023. 

Hey folks, it's Jared Elio Calcagno and Michelangelo Freire. Join me today and we're going to discuss Europe's underwater environment, maritime security and defense. This episode was edited and produced by Johan Porisch. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime peace and security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics.

I think the headliner right now is our Notes to the New CNO series. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for CIMSEC tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. With that, Kimber's meant. Aloha shipmates and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guests today are Elio Calcagno and Michelangelo Freire. And we're going to be discussing a report, Elio edited with co-editor Alessandro Marrone for Istituto Affari Internazionale, and that's

the maximum Italian I'm going to attempt today. The Underwater Environment and European Defense and Security. So Elio Michelangelo, welcome. Elio, why don't you start by telling the listeners a little bit more about your background, please? So I work as a researcher in the Institute's defense program. I write and work a lot generally on naval issues, maritime security as well. although our work also extends to NATO, EU defense, the European defense market, and of course, Italian defense. I've worked previously for the International Crisis Group in Brussels, and I've since moved to Rome to work here.

Michelangelo, welcome to you as well. Could you tell the listeners a little bit more about your background? You also contributed two of the chapters here, so if you don't mind, explain which two chapters you had. Exactly. Thank you for having me. I'm a junior researcher here at the Defense and Security Programs of the Institute. I mainly focus on European industrial policies applied to the defense sector, but also German military politics in general. So I've contributed with the chapter on a general overview on the European context and the development of UUVs and technological developments on that.

And I actually also wrote the chapter on the German policy regarding underwater warfare. So we're largely going to focus on two segments of the report, UUV opportunities and challenges European context, and then we'll go a little bit deeper on the Italian perspective. You two are kind of the two first guests that we've had. You're not the first two Italian guests that we've had, but you're the first two who are going to talk very specifically about that perspective. I strongly recommend the whole report, however, because there are also sections, as Michelangelo indicated here, specific to Germany's capabilities, and it goes into the Indo-Pacific as well. So, Michelangelo, first question, you start with the assertion Europe

is lagging behind in the field of seabed warfare, who are they behind and what capabilities exist in Europe? Yeah, so of course, the European context is a very dynamic one. You know, European countries, like both nations with nuclear-powered submarines and with very strong conventional submarine capabilities, have always been in the forefront of the development of underwater warfare the addition and the availability now of instruments for example underwater unmanned vehicles that actually also allow to access a whole series and a whole array of infrastructure that was first considered in a way secure by geography in a way so for example pipelines undersea cables etc that are critical of course to a nation's well-being but that

until the early 2000s, I would say, were considered inaccessible to enemies, have become more and more vulnerable. This, of course, has become evident after the sabotage actions against the North Stream pipelines, but also due to Russian activity, for example, in the Mediterranean and mapping out undersea cables and seabed cables. So I would say that on one hand, yeah, Europe has a good starting position, of course, because of its very good position on conventional and nuclear submarines but on the other hand there's this whole new technological prairie in a way that is opening up and that makes europe one of the actors that is lagging behind compared to for example russian capability offensive capabilities so you have countries like france for example

that are now have now launched seabed warfare strategy knowing that most of its underwater and seabed infrastructure will need to be surveilled protected and have yeah just be a part of the broader underwater warfare capability set in a way but other smaller nations or also countries like italy or germany are still in a way scrambling for a response although of course there has been some development both on the technological side and on the doctrinal end that is bringing forward some elements or some responses to especially the Russian threat. Of course, other countries like the United Kingdom, for example, or again, France, also have the nuclear element in the equation.

So there is the whole idea that, of course, underwater unmanned vehicles, for example, could play a role in either protecting or interdicting to a certain degree the nuclear deterrent at sea and based on submarines, that's something that is more out there in a way, like most research or most analysis that we read, for example, for our study, agreed that it's still something that is very much sci-fi. So we won't have one researcher put it as the oceans being turned transparent in a way by the virtue of using, for example, underwater drones for ISR purposes or like for finding out where the nuclear deterrent of those nations actually is in the world.

But that's something that is still, yeah, very much sci-fi and that is not as present as other more immediate threats as, for example, control of choke points, sabotage, and so on. Now, you wrote an entire chapter on UUVs. What are the challenges of using those to monitor and defend underwater critical infrastructure? So, of course, it's easy to think that using drones underwater would be as easy as using drones above water. There are cracks or there are issues that are common to both domains, but the underwater environment is, of course, much more difficult to navigate, literally, due to, of course, fauna, the pressure of water, etc., but also for a question of communication. So underwater radio signals and communications are much more difficult to transmit and receive and are normally much more limited than above water, which of course means that for many decades up until quite recently, it has been mostly impossible to actually communicate with underwater drones without an actual tether or a cable connecting the vehicle with some kind of home ship. Now that there is the actual capability to deploy more autonomous EUVs, so EUVs that are not necessarily tethered to a ship that can perform some kind of action and some kind of operations with preset orders, for example, or that can transmit a more limited amount of information to the mothership back home or to a base on the land, that makes it, of course, much more easier to employ them. There are still many limits to the fact that, of course, these vehicles are still not as large as submarines, of course, they probably won't be for quite some time.

There are projects to develop extra large UUVs, especially in the US and in China, although also other countries have made some forays into the topic. We are seeing that many nations are now moving past the classic use of EUVs, for example, for countermine operations or for demining of harbors towards more of permanent ISR capability at sea. So, for example, if you think about the Mediterranean, and of course, we Italians are thinking about the Mediterranean all the time, there are a lot of choke points that can actually be easily patrolled or more easily patrolled by a EUV than by other means. But that's, of course, also the case for other bodies of water. And we are moving more and more towards the idea that EUVs can actually be used in a combat role, both for mining, but also for other kind of operations and force enhancers and force multipliers of manned underwater vehicles. All right, that leads directly into kind of my next question here for Elio is how does Italy's geography contribute to how it views underwater critical infrastructure? and what infrastructure is already in place inside the Italian EEZ? Right. So, I mean, I think a good starting point, you know, sort of seeing something is the fact that Italy has a coastline that's over 8,000 kilometers long.

That's about 5,000 miles for the imperial incline. It's the second longest in the Mediterranean. And, you know, I think anyone who's looked at a map will know that Italy really stands at the center of the Mediterranean. And so while we always discuss in Italian circles how, for some reason, the country as a whole seems to have forgotten that we are, you know, sort of a maritime country in many ways. Our economy relies on exports. We have a huge manufacturing sector that relies on resources coming from outside, from overseas. So there is a bit of a process at the moment within the Navy, the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Defense, rather, and then more in general in Italian sort of academia and elites trying to really push this idea that we are at the center of the Mediterranean. As a consequence of that, there is really a push to sort of transform Italy into sort of a hub. I mean, it already is a commercial hub in terms of commercial ports and a logistical hub as well.

But with submarine cables, especially, as well as oil and gas pipelines, underwater ones, there is really a push now to, in a way, enhance their consciousness in Italy. And so the approach now, in a way, is also based on trying to turn Italy into a bit of a leading nation within NATO and the EU as well, in terms of underwater warfare and operations. this i guess this switch shifting approach is also visible by the fact that the latest government has also instituted a ministry for the sea and this ministry's basically main goal at the moment is to draft a plan for the sea that plan is quite ambitious i mean it really aims in a way to bring all the responsibilities that are related to the sea into one ministry and before it was eight and it's not like they will stop working on the sea. It's just, they're also looking for a bit of a coordinating role in that sense. So talking about underwater critical infrastructures, now Italy

is connected to the rest of the Mediterranean and the world, of course, by thousands of kilometers of internet cables. And the pipelines have, you know, really taken an extremely important role, especially since the invasion of Ukraine, because of course, Italy, like many other countries had to diversify away from Russian gas and pipelines that thankfully had been had already been built connecting Italy to North Africa Algeria especially through Tunisia and also to Azerbaijan through Albania and Greece and of course going under the Adriatic those pipelines have taken a much much more important role and it's it's funny now to think that there were quite a controversial investment at the time in some political circles and now they've been the lifeline of

Italy in terms of energy during the last couple of years, but of course, also Europe, because a lot of the energy that comes through Italy then makes its way to the rest of the continent as well. Really, this effort will, I think, lead to Italy trying to take a bit of a lead in this respect. Of course, the issue will be how much money will be available, you know, in terms of innovation, in terms of dedicating enough sort of human resources to this task. so i wanted to ask a couple of follow-up questions there based on your response because that was the first i'd heard of a ministry of the sea and that's a discussion that while it hasn't achieved any sort of critical mass within the united states it has at least been suggested a couple of times

by folks at kind of at lower levels that that would be one way to solve some of the issues that we have with, if you want to call it the Mahanian version of sea power, where your civilian shipbuilding capacity is just as important as your military shipbuilding capacity. So can you tell me, and you don't have to go one by one, but sort of what departments got brought up underneath this Ministry of the Sea and how that came to exist? Because that is a very interesting development. It's the first one I've really heard about. So I should specify that the ministry, I mean, its portfolio is the sea policies and sort of infrastructure. So it's, sorry, civil protection.

So it's a bit broader than just the sea. In a way, I mean, as I was saying earlier, it's a bit of a culmination of the process of really trying to push this idea that we are, we cannot escape from the fact that we are in the center of the Mediterranean and that our wealth depends on the sea and, you know, the sort of safe and secure exploitation of it, whether it be trade, whether it is fishing, tourism and many other industries. It's still a bit early. I think we'll know more once the plan is actually out,

because the plan will also outline how and in which ways all the different responsibilities of all these eight ministries that once used to deal in different ways with the sea will now try and feed into a more coherent policy towards the sea. In a way, it's a huge effort because it also means trying to define politically and strategically what Italy's position is in the Mediterranean. So it's not always easy to make ministries agree with one another, least of all in Italy. So I think we'll have to wait. In fact, the plan is supposed to come out in the summer. So we haven't seen it yet.

It will be soon. I guess we'll be looking out for that one. Maybe also another element which may be useful. Italy, for example, has yet to define its own exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean, because for many years, Italy has tried to have a more diplomatic or negotiated approach with countries surrounding it, especially in the southern part of the Mediterranean. Since this strategy didn't really pay off, in the end, likely one of the core competences of this ministry will also be that of actually declaring exclusive economic zone and then

go to the table and negotiate with the other countries what does actually mean like how to delimit it is it's bound so on a more precise way of course we have seen in the last years the mediterranean has never been like a very peaceful sea let's say but in the last i would say 10 years at least it has become much more difficult to yeah navigate like forgive my pun and having all of these issues coming up and then also having of course a war in ukraine that puts the mediterranean And once again, at the center of the southern flank of NATO vis-a-vis Russia, of course, made it in a way an obliged decision to actually catch up with the rest of the men and decide on those core issues that, as Elio said, are so decisive for our economy. Elio, just one follow up on the ministry for this year. Is it expected that the Navy would eventually fall under that ministry of this year? Is it going to remain separate over in the Ministry of Defense? Yeah, no, the Navy will stay under the Ministry of Defense.

I'd stress that this ministry, although we don't know exactly how the plan will work in practice or what it even looks like at the moment, it will in all likelihood take this coordination role. I mean, so in Italy, we have a lot of law enforcement agencies as well, I think more than most other European countries. We have, you know, finance police sort of force, which has maritime capabilities. It has boats and small ships and airplanes. It patrols our coasts as well. We have the same for our military police, which is a separate entity. We have the same for the police, which is a third entity. So you're looking at so many different actors, which are all public.

They all depend on different institutions, mostly the Ministry of Defense or others. and really the role there will be crucial in general for Italian institutions, but this ministry in particular, to try and find a common ground between all of these and direct them to a coherent approach for our coastlines, our NRC and our territorial waters in general. So then one final question before I let you two go. What sort of capabilities does Italy have and how is it altering its approach to the underwater domain in response to what we've seen in the Baltic? In terms of capabilities, I mean, in the underwater domain in general, I think like a short introduction would be until the end of the Cold War,

Italy had its own sort of independent or autonomous shipbuilding industry that was capable of building conventional submarines, you know, largely independently from foreign technology, of course, with exceptions. However, with the end of the Cold War, there was a bit of a hiatus in terms of also decision making as to what would be done next. So Italy at the time decided to go into a cooperation program with the Germans, which resulted in the U212, which I think a lot of listeners already know about. So this was a pretty revolutionary approach, I think, for the Italian shipbuilding industry and our Navy for a while. I mean, our industry is very strong. Usually they build things nationally, but it really allowed this program. It really allowed the Italian industry to kickstart some of these capabilities that have been lost in the decades since. And now Italy and Germany have split ways, have parted ways in a way.

The cooperation was fantastic as far as we know, pretty exemplary in that sense. But there was a contrast in requirements. So Italy just simply decided to do their own program again. A different class of capabilities, I think, here is in the type of smaller underwater vehicles that work for deliveries of special forces or other special operations. In that sense, Italy is very much a world-leading country in terms of industry, in terms of the underwater vehicles and UCI protection. Well, Italy, like many other countries, has some existing capabilities mostly related to mining operations, demining, whereas investment has been quite scarce on new concepts in terms of combat-capable UUVs, for instance. And to link back to the first questions, it's a different approach, I think, with a different point than other countries, like, for instance, in the Indo-Pacific, South Korea, where I've been reading, I wrote the chapter on the Indo-Pacific. It was extremely interesting to see how ambitious some of these concepts are in South Korea. They're not necessarily near-term approaches, but yet, at least sort of in the public,

they've already been quite clear as to where they want these capabilities to go. And a lot of these capabilities are related to combat, so especially anti-sunbury warfare capabilities as well. So before I close, I will say, if their future focus is combat capabilities, you know, you may find yourselves lacking there. But if you're telling me what they focus on at this point has been demining, I think we may see a very real need for the Italian technology here in the extremely near future, depending on what happens in the Black Sea. Have there been sort of internal discussions about where that technology may be employed in the near future here? A lot of Italy's vision or the Italian Navy's vision, I should say, about these future capabilities is contained in a document that was published a couple of years ago. it's called the Future Combat Naval System 2035. So the horizon is obviously the next decade. It's quite clear that they will want to integrate unmanned vehicles into a more of a system of

system approach that will include also, of course, crewed submarines, specifically also with a view to UCI, so underwater critical infrastructure protection. We know that a lot of these capabilities will be conceived as, in a way, as complementary to crude assets. Of course, in Italy, like other European countries, the concept of uncrude unmanned vehicles is still quite politically sensitive, and it certainly is in Italy as well. So there also probably is a need by the Navy to choose their words carefully when they write these documents. I think a lot of the investment also through, and we write about it in the report, Italy will inaugurate soon an underwater innovation hub in La Spezia, which in itself, that city already has quite

a concentration of industry and experimentation centers that revolve around underwater operations and special operations. The idea there will be to really tap into sort of the private or the civilian aspect of investment and know-how and innovation and try to, in a way, convey it or channel towards some level of military-focused innovation as well. So I think that will also be quite an interesting place to keep in mind and to keep an eye out on in the next few years.

Also considering that Las Peces also hosts the CMRE, so NATO's Experimentation Center in this domain. Well, gentlemen, unfortunately, that's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Elio Calcagno and Michelangelo Ferri. Elio, we'll start with you. Where can we find you online

and what are you working on next? You can find me on Twitter at Elio Calcagno, my name and last name. We are working on other studies on defense. You can expect the EI in the next few months to publish a lot more of these studies where we look at things from a European lens, an Italian lens,

but we also try and look at other markets and other countries and armed forces. Michael, Angela, I realize I've been waffling back and forth between the German pronunciation and the English pronunciation of your name throughout here. So perhaps you could define it for the listeners one more time so that they have the correct pronunciation and tell us where can we find you and what are you working on? Yeah, of course, you can find me on the website, Michelangelo Freire, but it's all right. Everybody gets my surname wrong.

And also on Twitter at Ed and Freire, if Twitter still exists when you're listening to this. I'm currently working mostly on industrial and land-based things, but I expect that we will go back to a lot of naval and underwater topics very soon, because it's very much at the center of current defense discourse. Well, thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © transcript Emily Beynon We'll be right back.