subsea infrastructure vulnerability

[Moxi]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/no ... 20affd32ef

Moxi

[Joeboy]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/no ... 20affd32ef

Moxi

I was a part of that job. Shallow enough that air divers could have hit it if on the right gas. Heliox or similar. Could do it off the back of a zodiac. All this pish about submarines is just that, pish.

Hell, they could do it from within the pipe it's got enough of a bore and it's been shutdown for maintenance for long enough....

Although there were a vast amount of post WW1& 2 munitions dumps that we went past laying it. Unlikely though as it was pre surveyed and a corridor cleared.

[Oldgreybeard]

Not at all difficult for divers to exit from one of the specialist sabotage submarines that the Russian Navy has been operating for years. I remember them being caught sabotaging the SOSUS array in the 1970's, using a specialist sub, and they were caught again trying to tap into an undersea cable not that long ago.

This was almost certainly people from the Russian dirty tricks team that have sabotaged both pipelines. Both pipelines have been damaged in international waters, so it isn't officially an act of aggression, although that is obviously how Russia wants it to be seen, yet without them officially getting the blame.

The risk is that Russia has the capability to sabotage just about any bit of underwater infrastructure. The specialised submarine they developed for undersea cable tapping could very easily be used to cripple the communication cables that almost all of the internet relies on. As I'm typing this there is a fairly good chance that some of the content on the post that appears here will have come down one of the hundreds of undersea cables that span the globe.

I rather suspect Russia is just showing that they can really screw with our lives, big time, and without outright war, if they so wish.

This site has more info on the "GUGI" submarines and their capabilities: https://lynceans.org/all-posts/you-need ... arch-gugi/

[nowty]

I thought this was a very under reported story yesterday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63057966

[Oldgreybeard]

This quote from that site linked earlier about Russian undersea capabilities lists what they can do (my added highlight on the last key capability):

The GUGI fleet provides deep ocean and Arctic operating capabilities that greatly exceed those of any other nation. Potential missions include:

• Conducting subsea surveys, mapping and sampling (i.e., to help validate Russia’s extended continental shelf claims in the Arctic; to map potential future targets such as seafloor cables)

• Placing and/or retrieving items on the sea floor (i.e., retrieving military hardware, placing subsea power sources, power distribution systems and sonar arrays)

• Maintaining military subsea equipment and systems

• Conducting covert surveillance

• Developing an operational capability to deploy the Poseidon strategic nuclear torpedo.

• In time of war, attacking the subsea infrastructure of other nations in the open ocean or in the Arctic (i.e., cutting subsea internet cables, power cables or oil / gas pipelines)

Analysts at the firm Policy Exchange reported that the world’s undersea cable network comprises about 213 independent cable systems and 545,018 miles (877,121 km) of fiber-optic cable. These undersea cable networks carry an estimated 97% of global communications and $10 trillion in daily financial transactions are transmitted by cables under the ocean.

My guess is that Russia used one of the GUGI assets to cut both pipelines. Easy for them to just sail around from their base in the Barents Sea to the Baltic, do the deed (possibly with timed demolition charges) and then bugger off and claim they had nothing to do with it.

[Joeboy]

Indeed, yet my point is that you don't need a submarine to hit these lines. In fact you don't even need a ship.or diver. You could knock a hole in one for under 20 grand.

[nowty]

This site has more info on the "GUGI" submarines and their capabilities: https://lynceans.org/all-posts/you-need ... arch-gugi/

Reminds me about midget submarines used in WW2 with their,
The weapons on the "X-Craft" were two side-cargoes – explosive charges held on opposite sides of the hull with two tons of amatol in each.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-class_submarine

In comparison, the reporting is only talking about 100kg of explosives with these alleged gas pipeline attacks.

[Oldgreybeard]

I once took down a tree with just two wraps of cordtex around it, so just a few tens of grammes of explosive. Doesn't take much to cut through round tubes with a carefully placed charge.

The great thing about the Russian undersea sabotage capability is that their submarines give them plausible deniability. With no tracked surface traffic, and the Baltic being a sub-hunting nightmare because of the very high undersea noise levels, they can do as they wish there. North Sea is the same, it's so very noisy that tracking submarines is exceptionally challenging.

[Stinsy]

I once took down a tree with just two wraps of cordtex around it, so just a few tens of grammes of explosive. Doesn't take much to cut through round tubes with a carefully placed charge.

The great thing about the Russian undersea sabotage capability is that their submarines give them plausible deniability. With no tracked surface traffic, and the Baltic being a sub-hunting nightmare because of the very high undersea noise levels, they can do as they wish there. North Sea is the same, it's so very noisy that tracking submarines is exceptionally challenging.

Works even better underwater...

[Tinbum]

You can bet that the authorities here know exactly who did it, say no more!