Internet at risk from Russian submarines..

[Spinflight]

news.sky.com/story/uk-to-expand-navy-in-north-atlantic-amid-growing-russian-threat-11430721

""But the very fact they are going to where we know the cables are and using vessels that are coming away from the mother ship in order to get close to the cables is a sign that they are at the very least surveying them and potentially looking to do operations more than that. Therefore we have to be able to counter that.""

It's an odd story as this is not new. The world's largest submarine was converted to tinker with undersea cables many years ago, and this thing is bigger than our older aircraft carriers.

But that was merely a conversion, they're building an even bigger one which is specifically designed from the keel up to attack undersea infrastructure. They also have quite a large fleet of smaller ones.

Which isn't just internet cables, it's oil and gas pipelines, even a lot of our electricity comes from France via undersea cables.

And it isn't as though we have only realised that this idea has potential. The Americans modified a couple of their own subs decades ago and tapped Chinese military communications cables with them.

If our own Royal Navy has anything capable of stopping this then I'm entirely ignorant of such. They can't even crew all of the escort ships they have due to budget cuts and lack of manpower. The Ministry of Defence has bungled our own submarine development and production, slow rolled the latest frigates such that they'll take almost 10 years to build and enter service and doesn't have any ships to spare on new Nato operational areas.

Naval bod I know says they practise their seabed ops under the ice cap in the arctic where we can't track them... Even if one of our six submarines was available.

I think being awake at 3am is getting you a little delusional to be honest...

Agree Happy
Spin Etiquette dictates we keep it simple in the wee hours.
Go and browse the fridge like the rest of us.

You two don't think that a threat to the undersea cables which enable the internet is credible? do you mean you think it is physically impossible or that the Russian Navy isn't capable of doing it?

Either way the Royal Navy seems to disagree.

Don't take it from me, listen to the First Sea Lord. It is very rare for someone in that position to give interviews on any such thing.

I think Russia just really couldn’t care less about your internet connection. It’s just some showing off if anything. They’re not some scary commies, it’s silly to keep up this silly hysteria.

I’m sure this was an episode of spooks...

"They’re not some scary commies, it’s silly to keep up this silly hysteria."

On most of the Russian hysteria I completely agree.

Half of the internet seems to be fond of accusing the other half of being Russian trolls... Though if you boil this down to it's basics and even assume their observations are unquestionably true what does it amount to?

Personally I think people from different cultures expressing free speech is unquestionably a good thing. Why Russians should be denied such, or why the fear and panic over a Westerner talking to Russian exists is pretty nakedly xenophobic or worse.

My interest in this particular story, and I think it's relevance, is that you'd have to go back to the Cold War and the threat of nuclear armageddon to find a scenario which could actually affect the common man on the ground directly.

I assume we all support our Armed Forces and the valuable work they do, though I think we also assume that our boffins have every base covered. Though they clearly explicitly don't in this regard.

The first sea lord didn't have his begging bowl out for more money, though I suspect that he should have had.

You can take my Freedom.... just make sure you leave me Mumsnet and facebook scrabble*! Effectively.

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