The Royal Navy has not had a good few weeks in reputational terms. It was nothing short of humiliating that it took three weeks to get the destroyer HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean after RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was attacked by Iranian drones on 1 March. The ship was the only one of six Type 45 destroyers available for operations (and has now had to put into port at an undisclosed location because of a water supply issue).

Then it emerged that a frigate of the Russian Navy had escorted two shadow fleet tankers through the English Channel this week. Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s tough talk about boarding parties and ‘starving Putin’s war machine of the dirty profits that fund his barbaric campaign in Ukraine’, the ships were unmolested. Only a tanker from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, RFA Tideforce, was available to monitor them.

It may not be entirely coincidental, then, that the Defence Secretary, John Healey, chose yesterday for a press conference in which he gave details of a weeks-long and, crucially, apparently successful operation to expose, monitor and ultimately confound Russian interference with undersea data cables. It certainly feels like morale would benefit from a fillip.

This is the latest in a succession of forays by Russia into British coastal waters and beyond

This is the latest in a succession of forays by Russia into British coastal waters and beyond

In short, what happened was as follows. A Russian Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine –one of the last new designs to enter service with the Soviet Navy, K-284 Akula joining the Pacific Fleet at the end of 1984 – was detected entering international waters in the High North several weeks ago. It........

© The Spectator