By Nat South for the Saker Blog
“The hype that some dastardly Russian special operation could sever a number of critical underwater telecommunications cables in one go, is plain scaremongering”. I wrote this back in 2017 [1] and it is still valid now. The article was written following a series of sensational articles in the
MSM and reports by think tanks, warning of a Russian threat to subsea cables.
This article offered an overview between the hype portrayed and the reality of underwater cable disruption and breakages, which invariably is mundane and quite boring in nature, yet extremely expensive for operators.
The whole topic has been rattling around for several years now, often centered on several Russian deep-sea naval capabilities. From time to time, it gets airing, just to maintain the hype at a certain level. Now, it has resurfaced once more, this time in connection to Russian Navy exercises in the North Atlantic, off Ireland,[2].
Image 1: January 2022 Headline from Irish Times
When you consider the multi-vectorial dimension of the incessant propaganda campaign against numerous facets of Russian politics, society, governance and military, this topic is literally a drop in the ocean. Nevertheless, it may be of interest to take stock of the hype and present some different context that is omitted from the MSM and Russian expert punditry narrative.
Washington and Whitehall work on a ‘deflection’ policy, whatever has been done and is being done by U.S., UK governments and NATO, is flipped and transformed into ‘sinister’ Russian activities. The deep-sea domain is not exception to this state of mind. Hence the hype and clickbait headlines that circulate. The latest batch includes:
Undersea Cable Connecting Norway With Arctic Satellite Station Has Been Mysteriously Severed. The Drive – January 2022
Russia Could Threaten Internet Cables in Underwater Attacks—Navy Chief. Newsweek, January 2022
Russian spy ship monitored off coast of Donegal
The Times, August 2021
So, without further ado, let’s dive deeper into the topic. First an outline of the main points:
- The greatest destroyer of subsea cables since the 19th century: a ship’s anchor, followed by fishing gear entanglement.
- Subsea cables are monitored 24hrs all year round, with specialist cable ships on standby to repair them with often difficulty and lengthy time schedules.
- In most areas of the world, there is sufficient network redundancy to limit the effect of a cable being cut or seriously damaged.
- Covert military eavesdropping of communications (telecoms) onshore and shoreside cables is easier than cutting them.
- Mother nature is also a great destroyer of underwater cables.
Part 1 – Weaving between the hype and the reality
- Subsea cable networks
It is widely quoted that 97% of global communications relies on subsea cables, hence the concern over subsea security being a valid one. Subsea telecom cables are critical for trade, communications but also governmental communications worldwide, as well military data transmissions. Moreover, the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook are also increasing becoming players in this sector.
An aspect that needs also to be considered is the fact practically all of the installation, operations, repairs and maintenance of subsea cables are in the hands of a dozen private companies. The U.S. and other Western government are increasingly seeking to play a bigger role in the security of this sector, especially in relation to the transatlantic network.
In most instances, system redundancy is of paramount importance, to continue telecoms transmissions in the event of a loss of connectivity. However, it can take from one week to a couple of months to repair and fix a breakage or damaged cable, at an eye watering cost running into around 1 million USD for a telecom subsea cable repair [3].
Every year, new subsea cables are added to a vast network of cable routes worldwide. Additional redundancy in most of the network enables traffic to be re-routed to via another cable. This is not always the case in other parts of the world.
An aspect never mentioned is that if subsea cables systems are disrupted or damaged to such an extent globally, Russia also will be affected by subsequent communication outages.
“Cutting submarine cables is as hard as cutting off all air traffic to New York,” Blum says. “To cut off New York, you’d have to cut at least 10 cables.[4]
To prove the point, here is an extract from a nautical chart of part of the Western Approaches, showing the numerous subsea telecom cables:
Image 2 source: i-boating nautical chart. 2022
As can be seen in the above image, is the acronym for a subsea cable, CBLSUB. So, it would a tremendously herculean effort to cut enough underwater telecom cables to significantly disrupt global communication and trade, (8 to 16 in the North transatlantic area alone), without coming under scrutiny. Subsea power cables are also important in the transmission of electricity [5]. However, the main vulnerability that provokes the most concern is related to telecoms fibre optic cables.
b. Breakages and damage
Setting aside the topic of deliberate cutting of cables: what constitutes ‘damage’ and breakage”? There can be total or partial loss of transmission as a consequence of damage, or a cable being severed. The key feature is that operators constantly monitor their network 24 hours all year round and can determine where the breakage is, however, getting to the location, repairing it in a timely manner is different matter. Even if there is a slight loss of power, since the cable is energised, or data transmission loss, it is detectable, and this sets off alarms. The location of the fault can also be located.
Recently, there has been articles about two incidents of telecom and data subsea cable damage off Norway, which has invariably led to the usual round of giving prominence to the Russian naval assets deemed to be capable of cutting subsea cables, (more on this later).
In true form, Russia Navy activities are outlined, but once in a blue moon, a disclaimer of sorts is included, usually buried in the article. The Drive article placed it right at the end:
“Just as was the case with the LoVe Ocean Observatory cables, there could be a more innocuous explanation as to the damage to the Svalbard cable, perhaps an accidental entanglement with a vessel or as the result of deep-sea dredging during natural resources exploration.” [6]
Yet, the article asserts : “As for the likelihood of deliberate sabotage on the Svalbard Undersea Cable System, this remains a possibility, as in the case of the LoVe Ocean Observatory cables.” This section came after mentioning that a degree of susception fell on Russia, due to the overlapping geopolitical interests in the region. In another article on the LoVe cables, right in the first paragraph: “This has raised suspicions about deliberate sabotage, possibly carried out by the Russian government...”
Interestingly, regarding the Svalbard breakage, there was system redundancy since connectivity services continued to be transmitted through the other subsea cable in the area.
As one The Drive article mentioned, there are more “innocuous explanations” for damage to subsea cables, which account for the majority of subsea cable incidents. According to the UltraMAP website, “around 70% of all cable faults are caused by fishing and anchoring activities (man-made) and around 14% are caused by natural hazards (current abrasion or earthquakes).” [5]
The roll call includes anchors being snagged, snagging of fishing gear, (with some tragic instances of sinking of vessels and loss of life), volcanic eruptions, (Tonga is one example recently), dredging operations, shark attacks, tsunamis, earthquakes, seabed movement, underwater landslides and one case involving an iceberg.
Take one interesting example of how nature can wreak havoc on telecoms. In January 2020, a major breakage occurred to the West Africa Cable System (WACS), which led in certain quarters to some speculative finger pointing to Russian deep sea covert capabilities. In fact, the breakage was due to an underwater sediment ‘avalanche’ in an underwater canyon, originating from the mouth of the Congo river, [7]
PART 2
- Naval ships, submarines, submersibles and ROVs
Judging by the stack of related articles since 2015, the US is particularly sensitive to the activities of Russian naval ships and submarines near to submarine cables. Each year, Washington and London get very prickly about this, but sometimes it is a straightforward call for more resource to counter these emerging threats, part of a kind of whack a mole approach so beloved by the U.S. and NATO.
To state as the NYT did back in 2015 that there is Russian submarine activity near undersea cables is well documented, [8] is simply disingenuous and incredibly vague. The circumstances and parameters for establishing the criteria of a. ‘activity’ and b. ‘near’ is missing. Crucially, there is no information on type of activities or numbers involved, other than mentioning observing ‘aggressive’ Russian submarine activities in territorial waters and in proximity to cable routes. That’s it, folks. To jumble up the situation further, the MSM seem to cover all types of submarine activities and not just those “covert submarines” that the Russians operate. Anyway, I digress, and this particular aspect could be a whole article in itself.
Yet, the U.S. Navy has itself a long experience of tapping underwater communications cables in in the Cold War, as most famously demonstrated by the 1970’S “Ivy Bells” missions that tapped Soviet Navy analogue subsea cables [9], conducted by the USS ‘Halibut’. Nowadays, the US Navy operates the USS ‘Jimmy Carter’ [10] for ultra-secret covert missions.
The Russian Navy
Image 3: Sample of social media – totally disproportionate perception driven based on MSM reporting
Russia has its own specialist ship,(that gets frequently mentioned as a threat), the ‘Yantar’, as well as specialist submarines and submersibles. The ‘Yantar’ regularly gets cited by the West MSM as posing a risk to submarine cables [11], with little or no actual credible evidence to support any of these claims. Though, it makes for impressive stories of internet cable outages when they happen in certain areas of the world. Certainly, some of the batches of lurid and rambling sensational articles were no exception to the rule, yet the journalists fail to notice that the outage times didn’t always match with the timing of the alleged cable ‘hacking’ taking place, or even notice that the ‘Yantar’ was under maintenance in a Baltic shipyard for a while.
Designated as an oceanographic research ship, the ‘Yantar’ is operated by the GUGI, part of the Russian Navy’s deep sea naval research facilities known as the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research. It is equipped with Remotely Operated Vehicles, (ROVs) and a deep-sea submersible.
Similarly, to the secretive USS ‘Jimmy Carter’, Russia also operates specialist nuclear-powered submarines, converted for covert undersea operations. These are like the ‘Yantar’, have the role of a mothership for deep-sea equipment and crewed submersibles equipped with grabbers and manipulators.
The most famous of these submersibles, for tragic reasons, is the ‘Losharik’. Out of service since a deadly fire in July 2019, the nuclear powered ‘Losharik’ has a titanium hull construction and uses a modified Delta-class submarine, such as the ‘Podmoskovie’ submarine as a mothership. It is estimated that these long endurance submersibles can operate down to around 1,000 meters deep or more, much deeper than the mothership submarines, (likely to be around 600-800m).
Before this summer is out, another Russian specialist covert operations submarine, will enter service, the ‘Belgorod’, [12] which will add more torment to the US and NATO military.
Untethered Russian rescue submersibles (DSRV) such as the upgraded Project 18270 “Bester”, [13] are considered to have dual use. These are considered as part of covert operations, and these are said to operate to a depth of around 800m, but probably a bit deeper than that stated figure.
Lastly, there are Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, (AUVs) that could also be earmarked as potential deep-sea intelligence gathering vehicles. One such example is the Vitaz-D, [14], which I wrote about in 2020 when it dived down into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world.
On a slight tangent, to note that the deep-sea technology can have a dual civilian and military use, as shown back in the 1980’s with the discovery of Titanic. More on this later in this article in the footnotes. Submersibles and ROV’s are principally the key elements to understanding the basics for the whole scaremongering narrative in the first place
Cable ships repairing subsea cables use ROVs to locate and get the cable if the depth permits it. Tethered ROVs have grabbers, (a kind of claw) and manipulator arms to aid in getting a cable or device. Otherwise, a low-tech solution in the form of a grappling hook is used to fetch the cable from the extreme depths of the oceans. Conversely, the same equipment could also be used to retrieve or tamper with cables. Sterile areas, known as jointing rooms, are the places in which cables are repaired, each segment spliced together.
It is not readily known if any of the Russian submersibles or the motherships have the exact capability to tap subsea fibre-optic cables, in the way as the USS ‘Halibut’ did with analogue cables or USS ‘Jimmy Carter’ is also reported to have, i.e., with a dedicated dry chamber, a place where cables can be spliced. “It’s a submarine capable of bringing a length of cable inside a special chamber, where the men then do the work,” [15]
Another thing, the subsea cables are energised, so any tap of a live subsea cable would need to by-pass the electrical high-voltage direct current needed for the repeaters that amplify the signal along the cable.
- Futile scaremongering – snip or tamper?
The claims stated by so called experts and MSM, that the Russian Navy poses a great risk to subsea cables is simply hyped overblown nonsense, when compared with other types of vulnerabilities.
Onshore outages caused by IT activities, as the recent attack on the Belarussian train network clearly show the magnitude of such vulnerabilities. A cyber-attack on the subsea cables control systems on land, at special stations linking terrestrial systems with the subsea cable system, would have a significantly more critical impact on communications than cutting one or two subsea cables.
Thirdly, why cut cables when again intercepting or tapping into the control systems would be substantially less dramatic and at the same time more valuable. A much easier method is where data can be extracted via digital ‘backdoor’ methods. These are inserted early on during the cable manufacturing or during the installation process or a discreet tap device. Yet, none of this is mentioned in reports or articles.
There is still hardly any outrage when it was revealed that both the U.S.’s NSA and the UK’s GCHQ have been tapping into the subsea networks for decades, at the point where the subsea cables make landfall, [16].
A historical precedent often mentioned is the Soviet Navy subsea cables off Kamchatka that were tapped into for years by the U.S. Navy. However, there is a big difference to this, as nowadays, subsea cables are highly sensitive fibre-optic bundles in an armoured protective sheath.
Moreover, very few types of ROVs or submersibles would be able operate from specialist surface naval vessels, without coming under scrutiny from adversarial naval surveillance. Yet, this specific aspect is the one that is endlessly trotted out by Western MSM. Take for instance, the way that the ‘Yantar’ gets reported in the MSM and elsewhere: “Russian spy ship monitored off coast of Donegal”, The Times, August 2021 and the NYT 2015 article, [8].
Image 4: Simplified layout of a subsea cable network. Source: UK ISCP committee
One possible reason for why this element gets disseminated so much, relates to the types of deep-sea subsea cables, (see Image 4 above) that aren’t buried into the seabed or aren’t armoured that happen to be in hardest-to-access locations. Conversely, armoured subsea cables are buried, (up to 3 metres deep) in shallower waters (less 800-1000m depth) due to the ever-persistent risks of trawlers, dredgers and dragging anchors.
Nevertheless, subsea tapping of deep-sea undersea fibre optic cables is the least practical options, given the incredible physical and complex technical difficulties involved, especially given the turbulent dark deep-sea environment.
- Another angle
Back in 2017, “Britain’s top military officer has warned that a modernized Russian Navy poses a threat to the undersea fibre-optic cable networks that carry much of the world’s communications.” [17]. I suspect that this was in fact a call for more resources, (read money) for the military and NATO in general.
A tantalising glimpse into the potential real concerns was briefly mentioned in the 2017 article, “the government should work with private communications companies to install more backup dark cables ― cables laid for use in exceptional circumstances ― and improve monitoring at sea.” The clue is “dark cables”, in other words, cables for government or military use, which would not necessarily be marked on charts. Having said that, the U.S. military and government do routinely use the commercial telecoms subsea cables. What is really at stake isn’t necessarily civilian telecoms subsea cables but the ‘dark’ uncharted classified military ones.
To my mind, most of the agitation by top officials is a cover for concerns over a possible range of Russian navy activities related to military subsea systems (telecom and surveillance such as SURTASS / IUSS sensor systems), in the same vein as the U.S. Navy “Ivy Bells” missions or the fact that the Russian Navy could be either locating and removing adversarial subsea units placed on its underwater doorstep or planting its own listening devices on the seabed to monitor NATO submarines (predominantly in the Arctic but potentially elsewhere).
‘Uncharted’ cables are a crucial clue, since this is the crux of the matter, that the Russian Navy is potentially surveying and mapping sea areas, to gather data (AKA seabed intelligence) on the location and nature of sensors and cables. With regards to the U.S., these cables are operated by the Department Of Defense Information Network (DODIN). One such network is in the Caribbean,[18]. Enter the ‘Yantar’, which in 2015, went to the East coast of the U.S. and Cuba.
More on this in the next instalment.
NB: The discovery of the Titanic and the U.S. Navy covert subsea mission: https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/us/titanic-discovery-classified-nuclear-sub/index.html
Links
[1] https://natsouth.livejournal.com/2093.html
[2] https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/01/russian-navy-live-firing-off-irish-coast-during-tensions/
[3] https://ultramapglobal.com/the-biggest-threat-to-subsea-cables/
[4] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a8773/protecting-the-submarine-cables-that-wire-our-world-15220942/
[5] https://www.escaeu.org/articles/submarine-power-cables/
[12] https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/06/russias-gigantic-submarine-belgorod-sails-for-the-first-time/
[13] https://www.aoosk.ru/en/products/bester/
[14] https://natsouth.livejournal.com/14803.html
[15] https://www.zdnet.com/article/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-cable/
[16] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/
[18] https://opticalconnectionsnews.com/2017/09/xtera-build-dod-caribbean-subsea-cable-network/
Left out…
The Brits cut the German Cable at the onset of WWI in 1914, to force them to use British Cables, or wireless.
This to make it possible to monitor German Diplomatic Traffic.
This led to an embarrasing affair involving a German proposal to bring Mexico into the war on her side.
That affair led to Wilson’s declaration of war in 1917.
This was engineered by the Brits, who at that point were on the verge of losing the war…
The US coming in brought necessary men and materiel, which combined with German error(s) led to the German Capitulation.
That event led to the eventual rise of Hitler and the Nazis…
INDY
1917 was a good year for the Federal Reserve. Formed only 4 Years prior in 1913, just in time to roll the dice and sow the seeds to the drums of war. Only God knows what’s lurking on its balance sheet now, the stench of which will have old man JP Morgan spinning in his grave.
“This led to an embarrasing affair involving a German proposal to bring Mexico into the war on her side”.
Reasonable, as it was then barely 70 years since the USA had stolen half of Mexico by force.
Sure I left it out because it is a waste of time to include into this article, however I did mention it in my 2017 article
FFS, you know that if the west is suggesting that Russia will sever cables that THEY will do it. Also expect damage to NS2 along with the Kerch Strait bridge. Russia, straighten these criminals out before they pull the rug out from under you.
I was in Special Projects at Mare Island, CA in the late 80’s when the Richard B. Russell and Parche was there.
How hard could be to plant remote controlled explosive devices under all cables and/or pipelines, years in advance? Than detonate them at whim with plausible deniability?
West developed new tech extremely fast, they just hadn’t time to learn how to protect its novel lifelines in case of war. Adapting to sudden loss of internet, pipelines, and many other goodies takes time. Years. Instigating war in such condition is beyond irresponsible. I am sure that many smart Westerners see this, but they learned that going against wishes of crazed Elite, still stuck in middle ages mindset, can be extremely unhealthy.
There is no rationality here, looks like self-destructive behavior. Maybe its consequence of opioid crisis or multi-generational lavish lifestyle. Not normal, for sure.
A drip drip drip of bellicose allegations into the public mind. Sounds to me like the slow run up to a big war. Like the drip drip drip of allegations about “German militarism” from 1900 to 1914, in the buildup to Britain’s attempt to destroy Germany as an industrial competitor and take over Turkey’s oil rich Middle Eastern empire. A century later, the same relentless military buildup and the same drip drip drip of poison into the public ear; but for an even bigger prize: Russian industry and the almost limitless agricultural and mineral resources of Russia’s land.
Yes, indeed, this is the end goal as always, to drip feed into the masses, the culprit is Russia, Russia is capable and imply that Russia would carry out such activities. Yet there are a few sovereign states with the capability of carrying covert undersea operations.
On topic, there was a recent slew of posts over at russiadefence.net:
https://www.russiadefence.net/t7207p400-poseidon-nuclear-armed-underwater-drone
The gist of it is that Poseidon nuclear drones might be used to attack undersea cables as a lateral means of escalation during a conflict that has already proceeded to a nuclear level.
From the Russian perspective, using ships or shipborne platforms to try and cut undersea cables seems somewhat counter-intuitive. The Russian navy is not strong enough to conduct any such operations in the North Atlantic or anywhere else where it would matter in any kind of conflict that is already in its hot phase. Western powers would already be guarding these waters and could easily intercept any such attempt. That would perhaps leave submarines but which long-range submarine could be spared for what would still be very risky operation. Belgorod? Unlikely as its far too valuable in itself.
Options that are left are planting remotely detonated mines beforehand, if that is at all a possibility, or Poseidon as a very blunt instrument.
Tapping undersea cables was an option when they were still carrying electrical signals via copper wires. In the age of fibre optics, it’s nigh impossible. You would have to dive down and perform some tampering that would be very delicate to carry out even in a fully equipped workshop at the surface. You would have to get to the optical fibres themselves to install sensors that can register pulses of light travelling inside of these fibres. Then you would have to seal up the whole thing again, and that would still leave you with the problem of how to transmit any signals that you have picked up to your home base. It’s not totally impossible but very difficult indeed.
Lastly, cutting unsersea cables is a means of covert warfare without any wide-ranging, hot conflict already going on elsewhere would always be restricted to one or a few cables at a time. The redundancy built into the cable network would render that useless, too.
Cable Cutter,
In a Wikipedia entry titled, Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System, (now generally referred to as Poseidon) the following line appears: “ According to the Pentagon, Russia conducted the first test-launch of Poseidon on 27 November 2016, using the B-90 Sarov special purpose submarine.”
Wikipedia states further: “On 2 February 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced completion of the key stage of trials of Poseidon.[17]
On 20 February 2019, the Russian Defence Ministry released a video, showing a Poseidon being test-launched by a B-90 Sarov special purpose submarine.”
My question is, do you know if the Russian Poseidon system is now operational? Many of us have family and friends/colleagues living on the Shesha East Coast.
In the wikipedia bibliography is this link which details the kind of damage the Poseidon system is meant to deliver:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a19160734/how-russias-new-doomsday-torpedo-works/
Thank you
Did Russians demonstrate it on 01/15/22….??????
The very large volcanic undersea eruption of one of the unpopulated island of Tonga. The reaction of NZ Australian governments, and controlled media reporting this huge (Krakatoa size?) eruption is curious in the extreme and I would like to raise it on the radar of “enquiring minds”.
Something very odd happened there.
For one, the undersea cable to Tonga that was said to be “cut” was some distance from the eruption. Explanation of how the eruption cut or decommissioned the cable is sought by some “enquiring minds”.
Also.
American Samoa..in the neighbourhood. But offered no assistance.
Places of disrepute on the internet catalogued what services were “closed” there until January 20.
Again. Curious. Watching this space, as they say.
Hi NatSouth,
thanks, and your briefs are always appreciated.
You mentioned the underwater volcano eruption near Tonga.
You know the rumors, undoubtedly some of them disinfo.
What is your opinion?
Where there’s smoke, sometime there’s fire.
Can we connect dots, along with Chagos, Diego Garcia, being so near a Zionist bolt-hole of New Zealand, recent US Seawolf “underwater mountain collision,” etc…
This talk of submarine cables fits with the key arena for SLOCs and the last remaining strongpoint of US military – submarine warfare..
Is the fight being taken to them, along with messages?
I recall “The Hunt for Red October,” the greatest hit of the greatest US strategist since Alfred Thayer Mahan, the studious insurance agent Tom Clancy of Maryland.
Perhaps former hunters are now the hunted?
—
WW,
That entire Tongan incident is bizarre,
and quickly wrapped up as a media topic.
Maybe we have entered the era of showing big sticks.
It was near American Samoa and not too far from a traditional US nuclear testing area, called the Pacific Proving Grounds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Proving_Grounds
The US did 105 official nuclear tests there, with 80% (!) total yield of all nuke tests in US history.
So a double whammy, if it really was what we suspect?
To “demonstrate” AT your enemy’s “backyard?”
It was an insolent gesture, the equivalent of the US conducting an unauthorized launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome or testing at a similar Russian stronghold..
I think undersea tests result in far less fallout, although we wouldn’t want to fish, swim or reproduce thereabouts.
Nope, contrary to tin foil speculations, it was an volcanic eruption, no mystery what so ever. The volcano is almost 2 kilometres high and more than 20 kilometres across and features what’s known as a caldera at the top. So it was an underwater eruption. The mechanisms of these highly explosive are largely unstudied. The type of eruption was the result of what’s known as a phreatomagmatic eruption. Another factor could be a flank collapse, a landslide, (like St Helens in the US but on a bigger scale).
Calderas are a tell-tell sign of volcanoes with huge eruptive capabilities, highly destructive and thankfully extremely rare. Tambora in 1815 was incredibly huge. Take a look at the examples Volcanic Explosivity Index http://www.usgs.gov/media/images/volcanic-explosivity-index-vei-a-numeric-scale-measures-t
If you imagine, a bit like throwing water into a pan full of oil, the reaction is violent.
So, no, not nuclear whatsoever, natural sciences is absolutely fascinating and much to research.
The press do not understand volcanoes, stop. Hence the curious response. Literally AWE…
As for American Samoa, they are very poor nation, exploited.
A submarine cable can be broken many miles away, as I outlined in the article, landslides, tsunamis… The subsea point at which it was broken was exposed. Anyway about that subsea cable, here’s a good article to read https://graphics.reuters.com/TONGA-VOLCANO/znpnejbjovl/index.html
Thank you for your explanation!
This was reassuring.
I wondered how it could be a Poseidon-like test – it would be criminal on vast scale, to add to irradiation of that area and affect an innocent third party.. not a Russian MO at all, unlike those using DU and Agent Orange etc.
Couldn’t weather modification tools such HAARP put pressure on them though?
Increase interaction between magma and water or internal gas pressures, leading to these eruptions.
HAARP is in use for well over over a half century, with a UN treaty in 1970s between large powers.
It is known they can cause earthquakes and tsunamis, could they not cause volcanoes to erupt too, through indirect mechanisms which cause magma and water to come in contact and then explode?
Belgorod is going to be the first submarine carrying the Poseidon. The sub is actually going to be even more unusual than that since, besides carrying Poseidons, it is also going to piggy-back smaller submarines that will be able to do deep dives. Belgorod recently started undergoing sea trials. The Russian navy shall receive it later in 2022. Its Poseidon complement will be six of these nuclear-powered torpedoes, yet it’s not known when these Poseidons will be put onto the vessel. If it will start its operational life with Poseidons on board then, yes, your place will start to be within reach of operationally deployed Poseidons later this year.
Besides Belgorod, Russia says it wants to build additional, dedicated Poseidon carriers (without the deep-sea capability) for a deployment of at least 30 Poseidons in total.
Many thanks!
Thank you for detailing it,
“Then you would have to seal up the whole thing again, and that would still leave you with the problem of how to transmit any signals that you have picked up to your home base. It’s not totally impossible but very difficult indeed.”
=
USS ‘Jimmy Carter’ is also reported to have, i.e., with a dedicated dry chamber, a place where cables can be spliced. “It’s a submarine capable of bringing a length of cable inside a special chamber, where the men then do the work,” [15]
Not really that difficult to conceive that the U.S. has zillions in the budget to have the equipment, people and expertise at hand. Looking back to the extent of money, resources and know-how to carry out Project Azorian.
That is useful when you have your humint at the adversary monitoring station, such that you have a way to ensure any “blips” will be ignored.
In other words. Very useful for eavesdropping on the Germans, the French et. al. Of if the adversary is some undeveloped country where the monitoring is outsourced to a supplier you control but where you do not control the cable terminations so cannot install your kit in there.
There, you could actually place a device which will replicate the signal to another fibre in the same cable which you rented so the same cable will do the eavesdropping for you etc.
Such capability can be useful to “control the flock” for the V eyes during peacetime, but is not a wartime tool.
So completely useless for Russia against the West and, for the most part, for the West against Russia.
“…an eye watering cost running into around 1 million USD for a telecom subsea cable repair…”
$1 million is barely lunch money in the scale of government spending. Many individual private citizens have that much cash.
A single jet fighter costs about $100 million; an Abrams tank nearly $10 million; a Virginia-class submarine about $3 billion.
From memory, the USA spent about $50 billion just for air-conditioning in Afghanistan.
@Tom Welsh: “From memory, the USA spent about $50 billion just for air-conditioning in Afghanistan.”
Reminds me of the early 60s when I was brashly advising U$ visitors not to invade Afghanistan because the natives could endure hardships unbearable by civilized Ussies. In those early days very tenth division of the U$ Army was rumoured to be an ice cream division; turned out to be whipped ice cream, and melted in the heat.
“From memory, the USA spent about $50 billion just for air-conditioning in Afghanistan.”
That is remarkably obscene, given that many Afghani people don’t even have air-conditioning.
You have to wonder how much money the USA spent on keeping the troops fed with McDonald’s, Burger King, or Pizza Hut…..
Poseidon nuclear AUVs aren’t designed to cut or tamper subsea cables, the reason I didn’t mention it in the article.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Losharik
for Russian deep diving subs (capabilities).
The author apparently does not understand the telecom business.
“Dark Fiber” is teminus technicus used for a fiber layed byt a Telecom company which is not “lighted/used” but the owning company but is instead put in place to be available for rent by 3rd parties who will rent the fiber but use their own equipment.
Any optical fibre cable which is expected to be rented, immediately or in the future, is “dark fiber”.
Nothing to do with the fiber purpose. Whatever it may be.
“dark cables” or “dark fibres”? I am not a SME on the optics side.
I understand what dark fibres are, since I have an interest in Earth Sciences, research involving dark fibres subsea networks is being done in seismology. but I’m referring to the quotation, ” dark cable”. I am looking at it as a network, that isn’t chartered, not some unused strands. One such ‘dark’ cable is being put into place in the Indian Ocean as I write this.
Indian Ocean dark cable.
Hi Nat, enjoy your articles.
I’m wondering about that dark cable being laid in the Indian Ocean.
Would this be in a location surveyed by a Geoscience Australia team “searching” for MH-360?
At the time of this strange disappearance Australia had just announced a brand spanking new bathymetric vessel, which was dispatched post haste to search.
As a proud taxpaying Australian the media reassured me how lucky it was that exactly the right vessel was available at exactly the right time to undertake this humanitarian expedition. Oh and science would benefit at the same time.
Hmmm. I thought what a coincidence.
The search would be hampered, the media told me, because rescuers were unsure exactly where to look as *both* the Australian west coast surveillance systems were offline when the MH-360 went flying by.
Hmmmm. I thought.
What an unlikely unfortunate coincidence that *both* systems were down the very day they were most needed.
Then the media reassured me how the search for the plane was taking place in parts of the Indian Ocean that were so remote they’d never been surveyed at all before.
Hmmmm I thought.
A brand new bathymetric vessel, with all the exact latest state of the art equipment, dispatched to the remotest part of the ocean, that had never previously been mapped, looking for a plane that no-one was actually sure was in that location.
Could it be that this dark cable is being placed in that part of the Indian Ocean surveyed as part of the search for MH-360?
Wouldn’t that be a coincidence
Hmmmm.
https://www.ga.gov.au/about/projects/marine/mh370-data-release
Short answer: no
“I’m wondering about that dark cable being laid in the Indian Ocean.
Would this be in a location surveyed by a Geoscience Australia team “searching” for MH-360?”
Hint: Chagos… USA military stronghold.
As for bathymetric surveying down to those depths, it will be detailed, but not that detailed to pick up bits of an broken up aircraft.
Some very interesting background on the cables… “Voice Across The Sea” ( Arthur C. Clarke ).
Cables are, imho, fine targets for intelligence to read, but of course some specific cables, as Brother George pointed out, may well be cut such that better intel becomes available.
US tapped Soviet submarine cables.
US also tapped Berlin underground cables…however George Blake (if memory serves) had already let the Soviets know about that project, even before the digging began…cable intel can also be black propaganda.
When “cops” eavesdrop and you know they’re listening, then send to cops the “intel” that you want them to hear, “lies”, generally. (this obviously applies also to internet traffic, since “cops” copy everything, “cables” work in more than one way.)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2228844.Voice_Across_The_Sea#other_reviews for reviews of “Voice…”
The most common cause of fibre cuts on land is the backhoe.
Just like the “hoes” in Washington, DC doing nefarious business on their backs for money. :)
Not the same environment or the number of strands
What does The Saker think about Klaus Schwab and the WEF and his influence over Russia?
With regards to the coming Russian naval drills off the coast of Ireland, few people reconise the strategic importance of that particular location to the CIA, British MI6, and US Military (airforce and various dark outfits thereof).
Much more goes on in that part of the world than data transfer by undesea cable.
For example the US military operate a “secretive” (but not “secret”) airbase at Shannon, Ireland. This very substantial and highly contraversial base is of strategic importance to the US. At last count there were upwards of 20000 US personnel based in and around Shannon, Ireland.
Over the years the base has been used for CIA extra-rendition flights, weapons shipments to various regimes, and as a storage facility for heavy munitions such as advanced “bunker buster” bombs.
More recently the base has been used to transfer personnel and equipment from the US to Ukraine.
The locals hate the place:
https://www.shannonwatch.org/
There is also speculation (as no open source confirmation) that there is a submarine transit route / submarine patrol route off the coast of Ireland / Cornwall England passing straight under the exact location of the drills.
The location of the drills also “covers” the secretive British and US bases in Southern England.
So, the location chosen by the Russians for the drill off the coast of Ireland puts Shannon airbase at risk, and the secret bases in Southern England – in addition to the undersea cables.
The author provided the Saker community with an educational lesson about undersea communication cables backed by verifiable facts.
Thank you, Nat South!
I look forward in the future to read part II regarding the network of 6,000 plus communication and military satellites orbiting Earth and in geostationary position watching us from above the planet.
Sources:
https://in-the-sky.org/satmap_worldmap.php
https://maps.esri.com/rc/sat2/index.html
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database