Western countries are facing an “unprecedented volume” of possibly deadly attacks believed to be perpetrated by Russia that don’t meet the threshold for armed conflict, and governments are rapidly trying to increase their readiness in the face of these threats, according to experts testifying to Congress.
European countries have accused Russia of repeatedly carrying out “hybrid” or “gray zone” attacks, which can include jamming communication systems, cyberattacks, sabotage such as arson and the cutting of undersea cables, and more. And these attacks appear to be becoming more frequent.
There is currently an “unprecedented volume and frequency of potentially lethal attacks,” Laura Cooper, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia under the Biden administration, said on Tuesday.
Cooper, now an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University, appeared in front of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe on Tuesday morning. The hearing also focused on China’s actions in these in-between, not-quite-armed conflict operations.
“Across Europe, governments are facing newfound threats that were once considered unimaginable, blatant violations of airspace, weaponized migration, intricate sabotage of infrastructure, crippling cyber intrusions, and more,” Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), the chairman of the subcommittee, said during his opening remarks. “Taken together, these actions point to a simple reality: we are at war, even if it is not declared in the traditional sense. The mad concept of mutual assured destruction does not apply in this gray zone conflict, and we don’t know where the line of kinetic conflict lies between the great powers.”
Since 2022, Russia has been linked to more than a hundred kinetic incidents in Europe, according to a September report from GLOBSEC and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, which also noted that the tally is likely “significantly higher, as intelligence services do not always disclose such information publicly.”
Part of Russia’s broad strategy as it relates to these attacks across Europe is to reduce its support for Ukraine during its war there, Cooper told lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe.
“Russia’s strategic calculus on hybrid war in Europe is enmeshed in its objectives for its conventional war against Ukraine. The Kremlin’s immediate goal is to drive down European and American support for Ukraine by trying to create a sense of insecurity and fear,” she said. “The larger, long-standing Russian goal is to exploit fractures within the NATO alliance, including those not of its making, and undermine NATO’s effectiveness, including its ability to deter Russian aggression in the broader region.”
The level of lethality varies in these less-than-all-out war operations.
Last year, the U.S. and German governments prevented multiple Russian assassination plans targeting defense industry executives who were supporting Ukraine’s defense. At the time the plots were uncovered and stopped, the most mature plan targeted Armin Papperger, the head of Rheinmetall, which is the largest German manufacturer of the vital 155mm artillery shells.
Security officials in Lithuania announced in September that last year they had intercepted parcels carried by delivery services DHL and DPD in Europe that carried explosive devices with the goal of detonating them on cargo flights heading to the United States.
In recent months, these operations have largely come in the form of aerial incursions.
Since the beginning of September, Russian drones have entered Polish and Romanian airspace, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonian airspace, a Russian jet flew over a German navy frigate in the Baltic Sea, and airports in Denmark and Norway had to shut down temporarily due to unknown drone activity.
The drone incursion into Polish airspace led to the first instance of NATO forces shooting down possible threats in allied airspace. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that his country was not in a state of war but was closer to a conflict than at any other time since the end of World War II.
The alliance is trying to improve its defenses against the threat Russia poses by bringing additional air defenses to the eastern flank, as well as utilizing new emerging technologies.
Last month, NATO conducted its largest research and testing event, the Digital Backbone Experiment, for defense technologies at Ādaži Military Base in Latvia. The broad NATO initiative is meant to improve interoperability through advanced and reliable communications between units in the field and their command centers.
One of the companies involved in the exercise, Astrolight, successfully demonstrated its POLARIS terminals, which use lasers to establish connections with one another on naval vessels to transfer significant amounts of data.
US CLAIMS 90% OF OBSTACLES TO RUSSIA-UKRAINE AGREEMENT SOLVED IN GERMANY TALKS
“We envision that as a kind of supplementary system to existing systems. Like any good battle system, you have to have redundancies, and you have to have contingencies for all kinds of scenarios. So what the system gives you is very high data rates, inability for the enemy to jam it, and also a kind of stealth. And that enables new opportunities, new kinds of concepts of operation,” Dalius Petrulionis, the company’s CTO, told the Washington Examiner.
Petrulionis said the Black Sea is a “priority” for where the company wants its terminals to be used, but noted his belief that the technology could be applied to the Indo-Pacific.
