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Built seascapes, defined here as ocean spaces shaped by the deliberate construction and management of permanent offshore installations, represent a shift from centuries of mostly transient maritime activities and resource extraction, ushering in a new era of intensified human interaction with the marine environment and its complexities. These built seascapes, exemplified by offshore wind farms and undersea cables, fundamentally redefine our relationship with the ocean, turning it from a perceived wilderness into a cultivated and actively managed space. This shift brings both unprecedented opportunities, including clean energy production, expanded sources of blue foods, new avenues for recreation, and economic development, but also a host of complex challenges related to their governance, security and sustainability.

Suspected sabotage to submarine communication cables (SCCs) across the world has raised questions about the resilience of these systems. Data communication networks typically use a network approach, which spreads the networks’ capacity across diverse routes to provide redundancy. This study takes a risk mitigation and resilience perspective by investigating the information needed to support proactive rerouting decision-making. This study reveals that appropriate situational awareness is dependent on specific, real-time information about hazards and threats to the cable in question. For an operator of an SCC, such a contribution is not possible without being interpreted as an integral stakeholder in defence.

Undersea communication cables (UCCs) are critical for global connectivity but remain vulnerable to physical and cyber threats. This paper presents insights from the NATO Science for Peace and Security Project: Hybrid Space and Submarine Architecture to Ensure Information Security of Telecommunications (HEIST) , a system designed to enhance the redundancy and resilience of UCCs. The proposed architecture aims to efficiently reroute data from submarine cables to satellite networks upon detection of threats via enhanced subsea sensing and monitoring. We discuss the components, including secure communication links, real-time situational awareness, and smart contracting for automated routing of compromised UCC communications. We demonstrate the operational capabilities of HEIST in mitigating disruptions through a simulation environment. The architecture indicates improved robustness to accidental or malicious attacks against submarine cables, reinforcing the strategic importance of hybrid multi-domain networks for resilient telecommunications. As such, the HEIST provides a blueprint for a future robust and resilient backbone for the internet.

Karina Barquet, Hans Liwång, and Torsten Linders explore how the Baltic Sea is evolving into a ‘built seascape.’ They highlight the necessity for cooperation and security strategies, alongside renewable energy and improved digital connectivity developments, to harmonize innovation with environmental protection

Using a perspective external to the Swedish Armed Forces this study examine the Swedish management of capability and technology development focusing on defence equipment. The study analyses a value chain that identifies activities from strategy definition to delivered capability in the case of Swedish management of capability and technology development. In general the study show that Swedish Armed Forces has a structured system supporting each activity in the value chain. However, challenges and potential for improvement can be found throughout the value chain. Especially an effective translator between, what Industries would call Voice of the Customer and Voice of the Engineer, could improve the effectiveness at both the Armed Forces and the Defence Industry.

This is a transcript of Panel Three of the 2023 conference “Nuclear Weapons and International Law: The Renewed Imperative in Light of the Ukraine War.” The speakers’ remarks have beenedited for readability and clarity by the Georgetown Journal of International Law Digital Committee staff as well as by the speakers themselves.

According to often described military risk management principles, risk managementshould be integrated cyclically and continuously into all phases of missions and operationsand risk decisions should be made at the appropriate level.1In such a decision perspective,military aims, tactics, technology, laws, ethics, and values need to be integrated. It is all theseaspects together that create military capability.

Development of autonomous vessels is expected to create a paradigm shift in how warfare is conducted. Therefore, there is need to explore the possibilities and limitations in developing integrated systems for defence at sea to support innovation. Fleet modelling can analyse functions and other design options such as autonomous platform’s and evaluate their added effect in naval operations. However, due to the complexity of naval operations, it is not feasible to create a tool that covers all aspects needed to mimic reality. This study, from the perspective of naval tactics, investigate the value of a tool that analyses potential fleet architectures including autonomous platforms. The study identifies that the tool creates relevant mental models for future naval fleets by identifying feasible fleet compositions. However, the proposed fleet combinations are only tested against a limited set of tactical needs and can only be seen as a starting point for development.

The file ”Data for capability development citation analysis JSnowball” is readable as a .txt file.

The file contain input to the software JSnowball, an open source software that can be downloaded at: https://github.com/dansarie/jsnowball/releases.

The file ”Data for capability development citation analysis JSnowball” contains all analyzed citations.

Based on a report made by the Swedish Higher Education Authority from 2017, which covered all of Sweden’s 47 higher education institutions, this paper examines the work with sustainable development at universities. The text also gives suggestions on how the area could be developed for those institutions in higher education that have not yet measured up to the criteria for successful sustainability work. The analysis bases its findings on the Swedish National Defense University as a case and a representative for a smaller university but identifies general lessons that are applicable to other universities. The text also identifies lessons from current pedagogical research in higher education and highlights success factors taken from three other higher education institutions that have received high ratings for their sustainability work. The universities that have been successful in this work show that integrating a sustainability approach initially in the daily operations does not have to include all aspects of sustainable development in business planning and education. On the other hand, the aim must be clearly set on a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, where education for sustainability initially creates a base from where issues that are more complex can be included, and generate education specifically aimed at promoting sustainable development.