Russian Presence Near Undersea Cables Concerns US (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports that the presence of Russian ships near important, undersea internet cables is raising concern with U.S. military and intelligence officials. From the article: "The issue goes beyond old Cold War worries that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West's governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.
...
Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay. It was monitored constantly by American spy satellites, ships and planes. Navy officials said the Yantar and the submersible vehicles it can drop off its decks have the capability to cut cables miles down in the sea. What worries Pentagon planners most is that the Russians appear to be looking for vulnerabilities at much greater depths, where the cables are hard to monitor and breaks are hard to find and repair.

Comments

"capability to cut cables"

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone has such capability. No advanced equipment needed - just old-fashioned depth charges. If you master "underwater explosives", then you cruise along the cable and drop cheap bombs till you hit hit.

Which is what will happen in a war with a low-tech opponent. Russian equipment may be able to cut a cable on the very first try - that doesn't make them more dangerous than a fishing boat retrofitted with with a dept charge launcher. This sort of warfare is too easy.

Re:"capability to cut cables"

[Holi]

The likely hood of actually hitting a cable a mile underwater with a depth charge is pretty minimal. The various currents on the way down are going to send your explosive on a random path, and it's not going to land directly underneath you.

Re:"capability to cut cables"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even close. The function of an underwater explosive is to destroy structures susceptible to shock waves - specifically, a depth charge is designed to affect any structure with a void that can be overcome with a spike in static pressure, like a manned submarine, which has an air void for the sailors to live in. Depth charges are designed to propagate a pressure wave over a relatively large 3D space using the gas generated in the explosion as a void in the water to instigate a cyclical event that will affect the target by the rising bubble of rapidly expanding and contracting gas, and since only a relatively small pressure differential is necessary to overcome the skin of a submarine, that charge is dispersed omnidirectionally for maximum range, since the position of a submarine is not always precisely known and dropping a depth charge directly on the sub is very difficult with an unguided system such as a depth charge. An underground cable is dense, lacks a meaningful pressure void, is VERY small at 3-5 inches diameter, and runs across (and sometimes slightly under due to tidal forces) the seabed floor where any explosive would have a VERY small surface area to attack. As such, any depth charge used against an undersea cable would need to be placed with extreme precision directly over the cable at a VERY close range (we're talking meters, if not centimeters), and have a shaped charge to funnel the blast energy directly into the cable structure to cut the cable, not just bounce a pressure wave off of it. So, basically, it would need to have exactly none of the characteristics of the "cheap bombs" you speak of, other than perhaps the "underwater" part. It would be much easier just to destroy the aboveground facility where the undersea cable makes landfall.

Re:"capability to cut cables"

[bobbied]

Anyone has such capability. No advanced equipment needed - just old-fashioned depth charges. If you master "underwater explosives", then you cruise along the cable and drop cheap bombs till you hit hit.

Which is what will happen in a war with a low-tech opponent. Russian equipment may be able to cut a cable on the very first try - that doesn't make them more dangerous than a fishing boat retrofitted with with a dept charge launcher. This sort of warfare is too easy.

Dang dude... Depth charges are way too expensive and would take too long for this... All you need is to drag along the bottom across the cable using something like an anchor or grappling hook. Once you snag the cable, just shear it into two by either cutting it or pulling on it really hard across a sharp hardened steal blade. Low tech and simple wins EVERY time.

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[knightghost]

In case you missed it, the Russians aren't in "peace time" mode. Ukraine, Syria, etc.

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a money grab. It seems unlikely the Russians would risk peacetime exposure of such an act of sabotage, only to risk the full measure of the American retaliation process, unless the two nations were at war.

Scouting mission? Sure. Possibly.

But Putin's grandstanding is likely more about restoring key pieces of the old Soviet Empire and regaining a foothold in the Middle East, not in confronting the Americans head on.

I would have agreed with you maybe ten years ago, but ever since Russia started flying bombers equipped with nukes near my home here in Alaska ( http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/09/politics/russian-bombers-u-s-intercept-july-4/ ) I have to disagree. Cold War 2.0 is starting folks--the Putin regime is not joking around.

Re:Now let's talk about

[hlavac]

No Democracy, America is Oligarchy now according to experts

Re:"Grown Dependent"??

[Muad'Dave]

What I see as the big threat is that Putin makes the first move, and the West does not react.

You mean like The Crimea? We sat by and watched Russia annex a sovereign nation's territory and didn't even whimper. We even promised to defend them and failed to do that.

So ... boo hoo then?

[gstoddart]

Is this a case of the US getting all whiny when someone else does the exact same shit they do?

The issue goes beyond old Cold War worries that the Russians would tap into the cables -- a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago

If so, you'll forgive the rest of the world for not giving a fuck.

Boo hoo, teh Russians are going to spy on us the same way we spy on everyone else. Waahh, how unfair.

Honestly, this clueless double standard is mind boggling. What the hell did you expect? Other countries to not do this stuff?

Re: Military funding to thwart this threat?

[Rei]

He's not a troll, he's a Likho. Putin would never resort to using inferior western mythological creatures!

Re: Military funding to thwart this threat?

[Anonymous Coward]

F-35?

Re:What concerns me is why US and Israel support I

[Rei]

Huh? Russia has engaged in plenty of secret wars and occupations in the past "since decades", including some really brutal slaughters (see Grozny for an example, that's how Russia puts down a rebellion). And the US and Israel "sponsored and trained ISIS" (Daesh)? The US and Israel are actively fighting Daesh (the former being among the most active entities in the world fighting them). The US has never supported Daesh - they're even giving pretty much a free pass to al-Qaeda right now (al-Nusra in Syria) because even al-Qaeda is fighting Daesh (when even al-Qaeda thinks you're too radical, you're seriously messed up). Even before the US started actively fighting Daesh they were helping the Iraqi military in their efforts to fight them.

Re:Bullshit

[mrvan]

The police are keeping you in a protected witness facility because the mob is out to get you, and you start thinking the police might not be as bad as the mobsters --- that's not really Stockhold symdrome territory yet :)

In other words, US supremacy is the worst thing that can happen to the world, apart of course from nazi german supremacy, Chinese supremacy, Putin or Stalin russian supremacy, and good lord just imagine EU supremacy. Death by a thousand red tapes, that one...

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[ShanghaiBill]

The Americans haven't been in peace time mode since 1945 unless I missed history classes.

You missed some classes. The US was at war, continuously, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, with American soldiers fighting to prop up dictators in Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, etc.

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[khallow]

I think the "crazy" part is more due to lazy journalists who can't be bothered to - or might not even be capable of - understanding the actions of someone they're hostile to. The "write off as crazy" approach is cheap and low effort.

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[smooth wombat]

Ukraine had no legal process to remove an elected president involuntarily prior to the end of his term.

Which does not apply in this case since Yanukovych ordered his Berkut security forces to open fire and murder dozens of protestors.

At that point the Ukrainian parliament abandoned him because of his criminal acts. His next step was to flee into the arms of Putin.

Since a), Yanukovych committed a crime (the order to murder civilians who were protesting his actions) and b) he fled the country, there was no need to remove him from office. He willingly removed himself by his actions.

As to the supposed undue American influence, I guess letting people know living under freedom is better than living under the boot heel of Russian oppression might, in some twisted fashion, be considered undue influence.

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[AmiMoJo]

Thing is, the US never stopped placing military assets near Russia. In the 90s Russian stopped its air patrols and cut back sea patrols due to lack of money, but the US didn't. The US has a lot of military bases near Russia too, which is has kept open.

Russian was forced to back down, but the US didn't take the opportunity to make a similar reduction. Too lucrative for the military industrial complex I guess. So don't complain when Russia starts up patrols again. The US has an opportunity to de-escalate, was invited to by Russian diplomats, and didn't. So Russian resumed its previous stance, which is remarkably restrained considering the invasions and military activity that the US has been engaged in since 2000, all on Russia's doorstep.

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[neoritter]

God, the same tired old comments from Russian trolls and those that have bought into their sophistry.

The US took almost no part in the Ukrainian uprisings. And your Mexico analogy clichéd and tired as it is, is just wrong. Ukraine was pivoting to the EU. You know that economic alliance almost literally right next door to Ukraine.

Re:Military funding to thwart this threat?

[rockout]

We absolutely were making similar reductions. There's a Wikipedia pagethat lists 214 former US installations in Germany alone - the vast majority of which were closed since 1991. We completely closed our base in Iceland, which at one point had thousands of Air Force and Navy personnel stationed there. And that's just scratching the surface with 5 seconds of googling. Surely you can do better than making a point based on a completely false premise.