Polish Navy He's guarding wires and pipelines. That's how Operation Bay works.

Polish Navy The Polish Republic maintains constant supervision of Polish maritime areas and critical infrastructure in the Baltic. This is served by the National Operation of the Bay and the coordinated NATO operations under the code name Baltic Sentry.

Operations Command of the Armed Forces Types has published an interesting entry reminding them that there is a mission in the Baltic that is not much spoken of every day. It's not accompanied by gunshots or spectacular maneuvers. There are, however, ships going out on patrols, aircraft observing the movement of ships, and command stations, where any route likely to raise suspicion is analysed.

This is what one of the most important watches performed by the Navy of Poland looks like today.

Operation ZATOKA began after the Nord Stream explosions

In the fall of 2022, an explosion occurred at the bottom of the Baltic that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines. The event showed that infrastructure under the sea could become the target of activities carried out without declaring war and without easy means of indicating the perpetrator.

Poland responded by launching Operation ZATOKA. Since then, ships and aviation of the Polish Navy have monitored the Polish territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone. Gas pipelines, telecommunications and power cables, platforms and other facilities relevant to the State security. The activities are headed by the Centre for Maritime Operations – Command of the Marine Component in Gdynia.

However, it is not a service consisting of setting one ship over each cable. The Baltic is too large and the network of installations on its bottom is too extensive. The protection is therefore based on creating as full a picture of the marine situation as possible and capturing what deviates from ordinary ship traffic.

The ship doesn't need to see the cable to protect it.

The operation involves the forces of the 3rd Fleet of Ships, the 8th Coast Defense Fleet and the Naval Aviation Brigade. frigates, corvettes, mine destroyers, reconnaissance ships and auxiliary units may be directed to the sea. Air surveillance is carried out by patrol aircraft, which allow to check the situation in a much larger area than the crew a single vessel.

Sailors follow the ship's routes, their speed, course changes and stop time. A special attention may be paid to a unit that slows down for no apparent reason, circulates near the cable, disables the AIS system transmitter or performs manoeuvres that do not match the declared destination.

The signal itself does not prejudge an attempt to sabotage. It may be due to a fault, weather, crew error or a simple need to make a maneuver. However, it is a reason to take a closer look at the ship and, if necessary, direct the ship or aircraft near it.

This is the everyday life of the ZATOKA operation: separating ordinary shipping from behaviour that cannot be ignored.

One anchor can do great damage.

Caution is not based solely on military scenarios. In recent years, further damage has occurred in the Baltic telecommunications cables, power connections and pipelines. In some cases, suspicions fell on ships that were to drag anchors down the seabed or perform unusual manoeuvres near infrastructure.

Not every incident has been considered intentional. Some investigations have considered crew error or shipping accident. However, the problem is that the effects do not depend on the intent of the perpetrator. The cable is broken the same, whether the anchor was left accidentally or with full awareness of the consequences.

Operation ZATOKA includes increased patrols and monitoring of infrastructure located in Polish waters and in the exclusive economic zone. Although it remains a separate national operation, its objectives coincide with NATO's tasks in the Baltic waters.

NATO launched Baltic Sentry

A series of incidents made the region's countries stop treating the damage to offshore installations only as a problem for cable operators and shipowners. January 2025 NATO It launched Baltic Sentry activity, increasing military presence in the Baltic and the Alliance's ability to respond to destabilizing activities.

Warships, patrol aircraft and unmanned systems are assigned to the task. They monitor the most important shipping routes and locations of offshore infrastructure. The presence of NATO forces is intended to discourage potential perpetrators, and if an incident occurs – increase the chance of its rapid detection and identification, which ships were nearby.

Operation Bay is not formally part of Baltic Sentry. However, both activities have similar objectives and require the exchange of information. Poland is primarily responsible for its own marine areas, and NATO complements these activities with its presence on the main communication routes of the entire Baltic.

So it is not about two independent operations conducted side by side. Data collected by Polish ships and aviation complement an allied picture of the situation in the Baltic.

Wind farms will change the map of protected facilities

The scale of these tasks will increase. On the Polish part of the Baltic Sea, wind farms are being created, and with them further power stations, transmission lines and communication and control systems. This is an infrastructure that will depend on an increasing share of energy supply in the future.

For in the Polish Navy This means other places to be observed. However, the protection of farms must not rely on the permanent presence of the ship at each turbine. A common system is needed using radars, shore observation, operator data, aircraft, unmanned aircraft and sensors mounted on the infrastructure itself.

Cooperation between the military, Border Guard, maritime administration, farm operators and state security services will also be crucial. The ship may approach a suspicious ship, but before receiving such a task, someone must notice unusual behaviour, assess the risk and decide to react.

A watch that continues continuously

Operation NETHERLANDs does not start when media reports another damaged cable. Its meaning is that it also lasts when nothing seems to happen in the Baltic.

Not every incident can be prevented. However, continuous observation increases the chance of rapid detection of unusual maneuvers, targeting a ship or aircraft and determining what happened at sea.

Therefore, the entry of the Operations Command reminds us of something that most often cannot be seen: security Baltic depends on the watch you take every day.