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Inside the Pentagon and the nation's spy agencies, the assessments of Russia's growing naval activities are highly classified and not publicly discussed in detail. American officials are secretive about what they are doing both to monitor the activity and to find ways to recover quickly if cables are cut. But more than a dozen officials confirmed in broad terms that it had become the source of significant attention in the Pentagon.
"I'm worried every day about what the Russians may be doing," said Rear Adm. Frederick J. Roegge, commander of the Navy's submarine fleet in the Pacific, who would not answer questions about possible Russian plans for cutting the undersea cables.
Cmdr. William Marks, a Navy spokesman in Washington, said: "It would be a concern to hear any country was tampering with communication cables; however, due to the classified nature of submarine operations, we do not discuss specifics."
In private, however, commanders and intelligence officials are far more direct. They report that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables, which carry the lifeblood of global electronic communications and commerce.
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.
See also a BBC story here.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday November 05 2015, @06:27AM
Find a nice place to splice in where no one can reach.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday November 05 2015, @06:36AM
Find a nice place to splice in where no one can reach.
Then how would THEY reach? Let alone splice?
If anything they would be laying small remote detonation mines on the cables.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @06:46AM
possibly with something like this [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 05 2015, @04:40PM
> If anything they would be laying small remote detonation mines on the cables.
Considering how any nation with the capability probably has that in their war plan too, I hope they exchange information regularly to avoid an accident from putting the mines on top of each other.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday November 05 2015, @06:54PM
Good point, poor choice of words. Would have been better to use discover than reach.
There is no point in destroying a cable they can use. In US/Russian relations there was always that history one-upmanship. They send a satellite/station into space, we go to the moon. We get nuclear weapons, they make one 10x the yield. It would make sense that we tap cables, they would try to supersede us by doing it in a hard to reach place.
Plus bombing a US installation isn’t just bumping into a ship, it’s an act of war, and seems a little too stupid for the russians.