Since the Nord Stream sabotage in September 2022 and a number of other undersea incidents in recent months, NATO has enhanced patrols near critical undersea infrastructure and has promoted technological innovation for enhanced maritime domain awareness to better detect any suspicious activity in real time. With the beginning of 2023, NATO created an Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell at strategic level to deepen ties between governments, military, industry actors, and has since established the NATO Maritime Centre for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure within NATO’s Maritime Command.

Between the 27-29 March 2024, as part NATO’s efforts to step up underwater critical infrastructure protection, a NATO Science for Peace (SPS) Programme project titled “Table-top Exercise: Defending Offshore Energy Infrastructure in the Black Sea” took place in Constanta, at the Navy Training, Simulation, Evaluation and War Games Center in Constanta, Romania. The exercise was organized by New Strategy Center (Romania) and World Experience Georgia (Georgia), attended by regional and international stakeholders. The scenario focused on a substantial set of hybrid threats and gray zone operations mapping and targeting existing and prospective critical infrastructure in the Black Sea region with the purpose of strengthening cooperation between NATO and NATO partner states.

The notable clean energy potential of the Black Sea overlaps with a highly contested security environment, tying the region’s potential to national and Allied ability to protect existing and prospective critical infrastructure. The exercise’s architecture enabled participating stakeholders to analyze and debate a contemporary set of threats, leading to the refinement of intellectual approaches to the issue of protecting critical maritime infrastructure in the face of threats which fall below the threshold of armed conflict. This exercise not only bolstered security strategies but also served as a platform for the application of advanced scientific research and technological innovation in critical infrastructure protection. The proceedings focused on the highly dynamic installation of critical infrastructure in the Black Sea, the collection and exchange of CUI data, sensor technologies and the new generation of unmanned maritime systems with a particular attention paid to data fusion in the maritime environment, integrating the lessons learned during the academic session briefings.