Swedish Submarine Rescue Ship Takes On Role Investigating Baltic Sea incidents
The Swedish navy’s submarine rescue vessel has taken on an additional role as it has been called on to investigate incidents of damage to undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.
The Belos, equipped with sonar, a helipad, divers, undersea vehicles and a positioning system that allows it to stay relatively still even in high seas, provides rescue capabilities to Sweden’s submarine fleet if needed.
On a spring day in April, the vessel sailed to a location off the coast of southern Sweden where its divers practised descending to the sea floor in a diving bell, and using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to investigate a shipwreck for training. On board, crew members monitored the divers’ progress on screens showing a feed from their underwater cameras.
Some of the skills and equipment the crew were testing to help in rescuing submarine crews can be useful in gathering images and evidence for investigators looking into damage to undersea infrastructure.
“Unfortunately we have become quite used to going out to these incidents around the Baltic Sea,” the vessel’s commander Fredrik Folbert said.
The NATO alliance, which Sweden joined in 2024, has boosted its presence in the Baltic Sea region after a series of power cable, telecom and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
In January, the Belos was called out to work with the Finnish authorities to recover the lost anchor from the seabed after the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecom cables were damaged the previous month.
One Swedish and one Finnish diver descended from the Belos to recover the anchor from an oil tanker that was suspected of causing the damage, and later released.
“It is good for the ship because it is good training, but it is not good that it happens,” said Folbert.
While some of the underwater breaches have been ruled accidental, others are still under investigation although no suspects have so far been put on trial. Moscow has denied any involvement in the cable breaches.
(Reuters)
