National and international maritime situational awareness model examples and the effects of North Stream Pipelines sabotage

Abstract

While many countries and international organizations with maritime security interests and rights at sea have developed new security strategies or policies in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America, they have accordingly changed or created new maritime security strategies or doctrines with appropriate Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA) models as well. Maritime deterioration, climate change, cyberattacks, serious and organized crime, epidemics, and state-made threats are just some of the new and growing concerns affecting maritime security. The sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea has given maritime security doctrines and frameworks a new dimension. In this article, the current maritime security approaches and maritime domain or situational awareness (MDA/MSA) model examples of some countries and international organizations from different geographic regions and also the ones that are located in the maritime choke point regions where global maritime trade routes are located and also the effects of the Nord Stream Pipelines sabotages on these are examined in light of the new threats and risks. The principle result reached in this study is that countries and international structures should have a cross governmental maritime security strategy, or at least a doctrine, in order to guide their own maritime situational awareness models and identify information sharing architectures. The most important result of the sabotages on Nord Stream Pipelines for MSA models in this study is that the fastest and most cost-effective method for protecting critical infrastructure under the seas is the concept of systems such as Mothership controlled autonomous and unmanned underwater vehicles, extra large unmanned undersea vehicles and Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites.