Chinese ship casts shadow over Baltic subsea cable snipfest The Danish military has confirmed it is tracking a Chinese ship that is under investigation after two optical fiber internet cables under the Baltic Sea were damaged. The cables are widely believed to have been deliberately interfered with, a situation German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius insists was "sabotage." The two …
"The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times.
Perhaps if government ministers weren't so fast to point fingers, there'd be less risk of further reputational damage. And perhaps if governments invested in more cable vessels, any damaged cables might get repaired faster.
Or simply string mines along the cable route
Or ministers in rowboats with megaphones to shout 'Gerroff mah cable!"
They may do less damage that way. See also the UK's decision to cut the number of vessels and helicopters operated by our armed forces. What it should be doing is increasing the budgets, number of patrol vessels and cable maintenance vessels as well. Technowibble might improve coastal surveillance, but shouting at a Captain over the radio isn't going to make them stop, especially if Captain and watch officers are all asleep at the wheel. Ships are supposed to have systems to make sure they're awake, but not all of them do.
About the only argument which can be made with the recent cuts is that we don't have sufficient well-deck ships now to perform proper amphibious assaults if necessary - the type 23 frigates can't help there and the RFA capacity 1) isn't supposed to be in active combat and b) is not sufficient.
Yeah but the half wits would kill food production or something to pay the bill. It's a bit late, we should've been spending more on defense decades ago. Although, I'm keen on "defense" as opposed to attacking and pursuing commercial wars for a minority interest.
Can you imagine the outcry when a passenger boat or even private yacht gets sunk. If we started that, there'd soon be no sea travel including freight. Maybe something a little more intelligent though that can be activated - the downside is, make a mistake and start a war.
Can you imagine the outcry when a passenger boat or even private yacht gets sunk. If we started that, there'd soon be no sea travel including freight. Maybe something a little more intelligent though that can be activated - the downside is, make a mistake and start a war.
That would be going a little far, but if there's an armed patrol vessel telling a vessel to move along because they're in a restricted or sensitive area, it might focus their minds instead of warning them via radio. Surveillance systems can see vessels that might be up to no good, but they can't really do anything about it. Like in this case. TPTB might know, or have a good idea which vessel(s) were responsible, but that's all after the fact.
Damage is done, so now it's in the investigation stage. Swedish Navy might stop and arrest the vessel and Captain and order it to port for a grilling, then there might be fines or prison. Meanwhile, the repair vessel has just set sail. The delay is probably due to waiting for spares, waiting for payment info, then it might have to sail to wet stores to collect pre-conditioned cable to splice in. Those are one of the interesting elements of submarine cables. They're at various depths, depth affects the cables, so spare cables stored at those depths so it's ready to be used for repairs. But I doubt that would be used in this case due to the Baltic being pretty shallow.
But that kind of stuff lead to some fun phone calls with customers saying the Internet is down. Yep, we know, the ship is on its way, but these things take time. And no, the '4hr' MTTR on the wavelength some enthusiastic sales person might have (re)sold you is there problem, not ours. Or explaining the difference between a protected wavelength and an uprotected. Protected can usually be switched in seconds or less, unprotected, well, that's down to re-designing the circuit to a working cable, if capacity is available. If it isn't, it'll take longer.
Which can also be fun if customers have chosen to design their own protection system using diverse cable routes. If their network's running each route <50% capacity, then great, they still have capacity. But all too often they don't, so have to deal with the congestion and packet loss for days, or weeks. Which is again why cables are (or should be) critical infrastructure and given some protection.
And private yachts can still break cables because their anchors are still heavy & sharp enough to do damage. And can be extra dangerous because unless they're charter yachts, anyone rich enough can buy one, a Captains hat and set to sea. Then cause a lot of problems for assorted Maritime agencies because those 'Captains' didn't know what they were doing. Which is all part of the job. I had a fun chat once with the Captain of a Type-23 frigate that was in port. Designed for anti-submarine warfare, but day job is patrolling the seas, protecting our national interests and doing stuff like drug & smuggler interdiction, rescuing vessels in distress, keeping an eye on vessels that might be up to no good etc.
We built 16 of those, sold 3, 'retired' 5 and operate 8. UK is very much reliant on international trade so those 8 frigates have to cover an awful lot of ocean. Which is why our 'leaders' are hopefully realising our defence cuts have rather backfired. They've created an increasingly hostile environment along with increased demand and reliance for shipping bits & electrons, but aren't giving the Navy or maritime agencies the tools they need to do their jobs... Especially when it comes to things like energy. If a fibre cable is cut, YT might buffer a bit. If our power interconnector cables are cut, our lights go out because the UK is increasingly reliant on those to keep our electricity flowing. Especially given the MTTR on subsea power cables.
Hopefully all the noise around these cuts might be a wakeup call that if our 'leaders' want to protect these services, then they're going to need to spend some money so that we can.
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Just found this-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7cS1aVGwUE
Channel called 'What is Going on With Shipping' that covers all sorts of interesting things, and dropped this video showing more info on the Yi Peng 3. It includes a chart track of the Yi Peng, plus the charts show just how many pipelines and cables there are in the Baltic. Curious bit to me was the depth of the first break being around 170m, and presenter made the point that that's a lot of chain. I have no idea how much anchor chain a vessel like that would normally have. But the track shows the vessel was in the vicinity at the time both breaks occurred. Presenter also commented about some speed changes, so might be nice to know if those were due to weather given there were apparently fairly strong headwinds and waves at the time.
Given the ludicrous delays and overspending on any modern military hardware, perhaps we should take a lesson from the glorious days of His Majesty's Navy
Copies of HMS Victory should be easy to manufacture and have a proven record against the French. As a bonus they would be carbon neutral
A generation of crews can be realised by making the Master and Commander series of novels set texts in schools
Then there only remains the difficulty of other naval traditions, but we can find other sources of rum after Brexit.
I'm pretty sure we still have supplies of sodomy & the lash to go with the imported rum...
I think keel hauling should be brought back. We're already going back to the Age of Sail instead of Steam, so why not go all the way? Call it a hull inspection and cost saving measure because it doesn't need scuba gear. Not sure it would produce reliable inspection results on something the size of a carrier, but may be able to deduce things like barnacles by inspecting the ex-sailor. All hands, assemble on deck to watch the dope on a rope!
I guess I'm not cut out to be a Captain.
Every chance, but not for the reason you may think - cheap is the primary one, drunk the other.
The classic combo Russian/ Filipino (and close geographical variations of that theme) are very common in the shipping industry.
A generalisation certainly; but when you are daily phoning around trying to find a fresh skipper, and/ or crew, due to 'incapacitation' it does give one an insight into why there is such a high incidence of errr... incidents upon the briny wave.
The reports of the vessel sailing somewhat erratically made me snort - sure it could be sabotage, but, Hanlon, Murphy, and Occam all drink at the same bar when it comes to shipping.
tl;dr Much of the worlds shipping industry runs on cheap crew and cheaper alcohol, which stressors also have a tendency to turn shipping logistics centres to drink - literally.
Yo-ho me hearties, Yo-ho.
"Finnish and German foreign ministers said they were "deeply concerned""
And pray tell; they were expecting what after getting involved in a war? Frankly, it's pretty mild after launching missiles at the bear. They're probably testing how fast we can repair and react. I'm surprised they haven't cut more. Better hope Trump can end this before our children are sent to the trenches like the first world war.
You might want to a) revise the timeline of events here and b) remind yourself which nations have been dragging their heels re supply and/or utilisation of long-range missiles...
Because
a) the cable sabotage took place *before* western-supplied missiles were used against targets within Russia, and
b) the missiles in question weren't supplied by either of the nations highlighted here - Germany in particular has been doing its best NOT to provide Ukraine with any such capability, despite constant clamouring for them to get on board and supply Taurus to bolster the limited stocks of Storm Shadow/SCALP and ATACMS.
But this is all by the by anyway, because your mates in the Kremlin started this bloody war when they decided to invade another country. So quite frankly, anything that happens to Russia as a result of their unprovoked aggression is entirely fair game, and it's rather pathetic for Russia or any of its useful stooges like you to now be going waah waah it isn't fair, you shouldn't be attacking us, it's all your fault we're having to pre-emptively attack your infrastructure...
Think the "bear" started the missile launching first, right after the tanks started rolling in, and the planes started strafing and bombing. think if you've been invaded you have every right to take the fight to the invader. You can't start a war and say "hey, no fair" when someone punches back. No amount of "alt facts" will change that.
Vaguely unable to spell remembers
The cable repair ship will send a ROV to look at the cable and the surrounding seabed. A dragged anchor is going to show a trench and displacement of the cable, other cable chopping methods are likely to leave a mark in the mud, sand, shingle or whatever, unless it's solid rock.
Whilst politicians like to puff themselves up, point the finger and assume malice, statistically it's statistically vastly more likely to be a case of simple incompetence from the ship or ships involved.
I believe there are about 30 cable repair ships operating around the world. This is because cable damage is very common so cable repair is a "commodity" item. The fact that the cable is expected to be repaired before the end of this month demonstrates quite how routine this is.
This is because cable damage is very common so cable repair is a "commodity" item.
Not really. Problem is there are a lot more cables, so damage happens more frequently. Fewer ships, more work, longer MTTRs. Plus maintenance vessels aren't cheap to buy or maintain, plus assorted laws regading duty times etc for crews. Back when the telecomms boom turned to bust and customers kept driving down bandwidth costs, there was a point where paying cable maintenance ships became an ever increasing O&M cost. Luckily (much as I hate to say it) the wind boom happened and that generated more money for the ship owners and they didn't go bust as well.
Which is also a risk with the current security theatre. All well and good stating that cables are CNI and must be protected! But.. who's going to pay? If our 'leaders' assume that will be industry, then cable operators will have to put their prices up, Internet and general bandwidth goes up, power goes up.. Yey, more inflation!
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