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Defence chiefs have war-gamed a massive cyber-strike to black out Moscow if Vladimir Putin launches a military attack on the West, after concluding that the only other way of hitting back would be to use nuclear weapons. Senior security sources have told The Sunday Times they are concerned that Britain has a capability gap that has left commanders with too few weapons to meet Kremlin aggression short of firing a Trident nuclear missile. Planning exercises on the threat posed by Ru*sia have left officials “ashen-faced” at the speed with which confrontation with Moscow could escalate.
Whitehall officials have vowed to step up offensive cyber-capability, including the ability to “turn out the lights” in the Kremlin. That would give Britain more options if Putin ordered Ru*sian forces to:
Seize small islands belonging to Estonia to test whether Nato is serious about its article 5 clause stating an attack on one is an attack on all
● Intervene in Libya to gain control of oil reserves and unleash a new migration crisis in Europe
● Use irregular forces to launch an attack on British troops or threaten Britain’s new aircraft carrier.
This weekend 5,500 British troops took part in their biggest military exercise for a decade and engaged in war games to improve readiness for any confrontation with Ru*sian tanks or hybrid forces such as those deployed by Putin in Crimea. The £100m exercise in the Omani desert involves 200 armoured vehicles, six naval ships and eight Typhoon warplanes. In a series of mock battles, the Household Cavalry played the role of an enemy using Ru*sian T-72 tanks. The preparations come after British and Dutch spies last week exposed an operation by the GRU, Ru*sian military intelligence, to disrupt an investigation of the assassination plot against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.
Highly classified planning meetings, held once a week in Whitehall, have concluded that cyber-weapons give Britain the best chance of deterring Ru*sia because the West no longer has small battlefield nuclear weapons. The chief of the defence staff, General Sir Nick Carter, warned in August that “a spiral of escalation that ends up in miscalculation” with Ru*sia is “the greatest threat to us at the moment”. One senior source said: “Ru*sia will continue to try to undermine our western democracy. They won’t probably go to conventional war, but there are islands off Estonia they could take to test Nato’s commitment to article 5.
“If they sank our aircraft carrier with a nuclear-tipped torpedo, what is our response? There’s nothing between sinking their submarine and dropping a nuclear weapon on northern Kamchatka. “This is why cyber is so important; you can go on the offensive and turn off the lights in Moscow to tell them that they are not doing the right things.” Officials say no plans have been drawn up to bomb Siberia.
Ru*sia knocked out the computer systems of the Estonian parliament, banks and broadcasters in 2007 and launched malware attacks on the Kiev underground system and Odessa airport in 2017.
This morning, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove warned that assassination was part of “Ru*sian political DNA”. Sir Richard, appearing on Sky News, said: “Russian espionage, Soviet espionage, has never stopped. “It’s deeply embedded in Ru*sia’s DNA to use the capabilities that it has to disrupt our nations, to pursue their own national interest, to, as it were, reinforce Putin in power. “The attack in the UK fits a historical pattern. Ru*sia has always used assassination as a weapon. It’s a rather terrible thing to say but it’s a violent country and they tend to kill each other.”