Undersea cable breaches

TsrJoe

ACCESS: Top Secret
Senior Member
Joined
2 January 2006
Messages
1,179
Reaction score
2,352
Website
www.facebook.com
Deliberate damage ?




 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_20221020-132448_Samsung Internet.jpg
    Screenshot_20221020-132448_Samsung Internet.jpg
    183.5 KB · Views: 18
Deliberate damage ?




Could be, or someone dragging an anchor across the cable - similar to what happened off California last year.
 
Could be, or someone dragging an anchor across the cable - similar to what happened off California last year.

Accidental breaks aren't that rare, but Shetland is in a particularly precarious position.

Could just be a trawler. Cutting off the Shetlands doesn't seem like a move with many strategic benefits.

1666270906680.png
 
Could just be a trawler. Cutting off the Shetlands doesn't seem like a move with many strategic benefits.

Playing Devil's Advocate, you could read it as a message being sent -- no immediate strategic implications, but a reminder that the capability exists and can be used on more strategic targets.

OTOH, more strategic targets tend to have a lot more redundancy in their communications routing.

Personally, I tend to believe it's an accident, but I have no inside knowledge.
 
20 October 2022 break with UK. mainland and Shetland Is. subsea data cables, concurrently repairs to another undersea cable connecting the Shetland and Faroe Is. are reportedly ongoing after it was also damaged last week.

I hadn't realised just how vulnerable such communications links are, hmm, no need for anything 'high tech' to disrupt them and easily deniable too
 
Last edited:
Could just be a trawler. Cutting off the Shetlands doesn't seem like a move with many strategic benefits.

Playing Devil's Advocate, you could read it as a message being sent -- no immediate strategic implications, but a reminder that the capability exists and can be used on more strategic targets.

Playing Devil's advocate, has anyone noticed any issues with GPS in the far north of the UK? Maybe the trawler thought he was somewhere else.
 
IIRC, Dallas / Ft. Worth has had a 30+ hr GPS outage that sent the airport back to non-GPS systems.

AFAIR, as yet, no apparent cause...
 
IIRC, Dallas / Ft. Worth has had a 30+ hr GPS outage that sent the airport back to non-GPS systems.

AFAIR, as yet, no apparent cause...

Sure, but there have been other similar incidents, like one at Newark that was traced to a truck driver jamming his employer's onboard GPS tracker. Nothing about the DFW interference yells enemy action to me.

”Zscaler has reported an internet sea cable cut, the cut is south of France and has impacted subsea cables connecting Asia, Europe, and the United States.

See, now I really want to see how frequent such cuts are when we're not all paying attention to them. There is a huge risk of perception bias/frequency illusion when looking at incidents like this.


The breaks happen surprisingly frequently. "There's a cable fault somewhere in the world twice a week," Tim Stronge, vice president of Telegeography, which creates giant undersea cable maps, tells WIRED. He says the majority of cable breaks are caused by humans and happen in fishing areas where boats and trawlers accidentally snag or rip the light-carrying cables open. Although Stronge says it is not unheard of for storms and underwater earthquakes to cause faults.
 
The geological processes known as turbidites were first identified when a series of subsea telegraph cables were cut in the area of the Grand Banks in 1929.

Don't think Shetland is known for such events, but you never know. Chercher le seismic event?

Chris
 
Last edited:
About a decade ago, IIRC, there was a big fuss in UK when truck & van drivers began using el-cheapo jammers to mung their tracking systems. Depending on proximity, any passing sat-nav would freeze or, worse, freeze then jump. Which was bad, especially at junctions / slips etc.

Discussions on several tech forums reported an easy way to nail such jammers: Motorways etc already had traffic cameras for spotting problems and flagging rogue number plates. All such needed was a 'tethered' GPS module that would trigger recording / highlight if 'reported location' suddenly vanished or otherwise changed. A moving jammer would leave a 'bread-crumb' trail of hits. And, given the 'churn' of vehicle positions in traffic, would only need a few hits to eliminate 'possibles' and identify perp...

I don't know if such 'tethered' GPS modules were installed, or were side-stepped by mobile ANPR and other police units responding to their GPS glitching, but a spate of prosecutions meant jammers became much less of a nuisance...
 
About a decade ago, IIRC, there was a big fuss in UK when truck & van drivers began using el-cheapo jammers to mung their tracking systems. Depending on proximity, any passing sat-nav would freeze or, worse, freeze then jump. Which was bad, especially at junctions / slips etc.

Discussions on several tech forums reported an easy way to nail such jammers: Motorways etc already had traffic cameras for spotting problems and flagging rogue number plates. All such needed was a 'tethered' GPS module that would trigger recording / highlight if 'reported location' suddenly vanished or otherwise changed. A moving jammer would leave a 'bread-crumb' trail of hits. And, given the 'churn' of vehicle positions in traffic, would only need a few hits to eliminate 'possibles' and identify perp...

I don't know if such 'tethered' GPS modules were installed, or were side-stepped by mobile ANPR and other police units responding to their GPS glitching, but a spate of prosecutions meant jammers became much less of a nuisance...
Total aside, but when radar gun jammers became popular, a GB businessman on a trip through NI and the RoI found himself at the business end of a fair few SA80s when he unwisely left it on when approaching the Army checkpoint in Crossmaglen…
 
The truckers used to call each a “judge” for some reason..now the term is for detectors.

A thin wire antenna between two vehicles might be less noticeable? Don’t know how workable.
 
The cables come out tangled if they are unwound backwards in the breach position.
 
MIT has a project called SURF that allows cross-medium eavesdropping on undersea cables (from phys.org)
 

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom