In early October, the Baltic Connector, a 48-mile undersea Finnish-Estonian gas pipeline, experienced a sudden drop in pressure and was subsequently shut down. A telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia also was found to be damaged. After further investigation, the Finnish government believed the damage to be “human-made,” likely caused by an external force that was mechanical in nature, but not an explosion.

This has prompted speculation about whether the occurrence was an act of seabed warfare, operations to, from and across the ocean floor. As defined by SP’s Naval Forces, seabed warfare targets infrastructure in place on the seabed such as power cables, telecom cables or natural resource extraction systems. According to The Guardian, Finland has said it could not exclude the possibility that a “state actor” was behind the damages, considering that the Nordic country’s relations with Russia have “significantly deteriorated” since Finland join