5 ms·

Would European nations having big fleets of submarines patrolling the waters reduce the chances of such sabotages?

by FirmwareBurner 2y ago

hulitu 2y ago
No, because a submarine is pretty useless against an excavator.
- Gravityloss 2y ago
  excavators don't typically operate in international waters though...
  - Polizeiposaune 2y ago
    I think this was intended as snark about how one of the recent Baltic submarine cable outages was eventually attributed to on-shore damage from an excavator.
HenryBemis 2y ago
Nope. Also you don't want one of these anchors be anywhere near a submarine. We cannot prevent it, we can only detect it and (try to) identify who did it. The planet (some special interest areas) are constantly being monitored (satellites, surveillance drones) and when large ships are not being 'naughty' (switch of transponders) it's relatively easy to put two and two together. As a side-note, Russia's playbook it to cause small and frequent sabotage(s). Small enough to not cause massive retaliation (i.e. it forces someone to destroy their railroad infra by causing thousands of derailments within one hour), and frequent enough to cause actual damage.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >We cannot prevent it Then why don't these sabotages happen in US waters if it's so easy to get away with it?
  - HenryBemis 2y ago
    If you want to piss someone off do you go for the black belt dude carrying a shotgun or (for the same amount of damage) a 5yo kid?
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      So then why am I wrong when I suggest if EU's navies were stronger then sabotages would go down?
      - willvarfar 2y ago
        its not about hard power necessarily, but soft power. If the EU united politically and made these harassment attacks consequential then they would stop. E.g. perhaps something along the lines of prison for captains who were 'derelict in duty', rewards to crews who grass and seizing ships that, by dragging anchors 'by accident', have proven themselves unseaworthy etc.
        benterix 2y ago
        I believe something like this will happen, sooner or later. For now, it's not easily to organize as the crew can always use the excuse "oh, this was unintentional" but charging them with the cost of repair plus additional penalty could be a good starting point.
        mschuster91 2y ago
        > but charging them with the cost of repair plus additional penalty could be a good starting point. Good luck enforcing that. The "shadow fleet" ships all operate under flags of convenience and ownership is hidden behind layers upon layers of shell companies.
        willvarfar 2y ago
        If the fines and damages are not paid then perhaps the ship and its cargo are liquidated?
- theshrike79 2y ago
  Basically Russia's tactic is to spread FUD, but in the real world. Small sabotage attempts at water towers, power plants etc. Nothing actually happens but it gets in the news and people think something COULD have happened. It keeps people stressed a bit all the time and they start wanting things to go back to "normal" at any cost - even by letting Russia keep the bits of Ukraine they assaulted.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > Nothing actually happens but it gets in the news and people think something COULD have happened. Most likely, they prop it as a huge win domestically, so that the public keeps thinking they are winning and become easier to placate.
- Telemakhos 2y ago
  I wonder if any EU nation has put together a maritime warning system based on multiple inputs like transponder signals and satellite/UAV imagery. Except for imagery interpretation it wouldn’t even need AI, just check for anomalies like a ship off course or turning off its transponder.
lithos 2y ago
How would that work. You're not going to sink the ship without an environmental disaster.
ratg13 2y ago
I would think offering rewards for information could be a good deterrent. It takes a decent amount of coordination, equipment, and crew to pull off these missions. I imagine many people on these ships aren’t getting paid that great. By offering levels of rewards for information about what organizations are being used to funnel money and equipment into this, it might help bring some level of prosecution, as well as make the missions more difficult to operate as there will be a lot less trust.
- tucnak 2y ago
  > It takes a decent amount of coordination, equipment, and crew to pull off these missions. They're dragging anchors on the marine floor; all coordination, equipment and crew are already there as a medium-sized fishing vessel is perfectly sufficient for this job.
zabzonk 2y ago
Do you know how long these cables are? How many subs do you think you would need? Actually, surface ships would probably be more effective, but you would still need infeasible numbers of them.
- croisillon 2y ago
  good thinking, which doesn't refrain the cops to driving rounds every 5 minutes in every pedestrian zones of the city
  - ethersteeds 2y ago
    Good thinking, which doesn't make the size of the Baltic Sea comparable to the size of a city, nor the costs of a fleet of cars with a single driver comparable to the costs of a fleet of ships with full crews. It's tempting to say "if it's such a problem why don't they just monitor better?", but the ocean is vast.
  - zabzonk 2y ago
    i don't know about your city, but doesn't happen in any in the uk.
    - croisillon 2y ago
      lucky you, i have read the UK police is mostly well behaved
      - zabzonk 2y ago
        and so, where are you? and how many cops does your city have?
        croisillon 2y ago
        Vienna, Austria, cops everywhere
someothherguyy 2y ago
and look for what? ships with lines out? then do what? they already track ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Many ships intentionally turn off AIS, partially because there is barely any enforcement.
  - someothherguyy 2y ago
    https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/learning-more-about-dark-fishing-vessels-activities-sea https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/learning-more-a...
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      Yep that is exactly what I meant, thanks for providing a background source.
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    I refuse to believe that AIS is the only way ships are being tracked. I think it's probably more likely that nobody is using their military intelligence to track fishing boats.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      There's over 100k merchant sea vessels, and that does not include ships that nominally aren't supposed to be on high seas either. It's simply infeasible to do so, unless you're stacking high definition cameras with high precision accuracy control onto Starlink satellites.
      - someothherguyy 2y ago
escapecharacter 2y ago
I'm still praying for the future of trained whale-on-whale submarine cable offense/defense action.
- epoxy_sauce 2y ago
  Dolphins maybe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal
  - escapecharacter 2y ago
    I'm aware of the dolphins. It's become an in-joke among friends that the Crimean invasion started to get the military dolphins back for the cable attacks. However, dolphins don't have as much depth capacity as other whales. I'd choose sperm whales for this, if they were trainable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology_of_underwater_diving#Range_of_performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology_of_underwater_divin...
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Maybe, but the Gulf of Finland alone (where the incidents with the Eagle 2 occurred) is 30.000 square kilometers; the amount of ships (or planes etc) and coverage you need and the associated cost is huge. I mean putting an officer / escort on board of each ship to make sure they're not doing anything weird would be an option, but I'm fairly sure that's against international law or anything. The issue is also that these are international waters - the Eagle went right through a narrow corridor of international waters - where it's a bit of the wild west.
- Polizeiposaune 2y ago
  There's a long-standing requirement at major ports that a local harbor pilot be on board to guide ships on their way in or out of a harbor. Requiring an observer on board when transiting areas with a concentration of critical underwater infrastructure seems at least conceptually similar -- though the logistics of making it happen would be very different.
ohgr 2y ago
No. They just need to capture or sink one caught pulling cables up. This is only effective because there are no real consequences for it.
openasocket 2y ago
Submarines aren't really well suited for this. You want something that can search and monitor over a wide area, and then the ability to intercept and potentially search/seize a suspicious vessel. The primary attribute of submarines is stealth, which is not relevant here. What you want is a combination of maritime patrol aircraft and offshore patrol craft. Maritime patrol aircraft (helicopter, fixed wing aircraft, UAVs) are equipped with surface search radar and other sensors that enable them to monitor a wide area. The patrol craft are also fitted with radars and sensors, and can also move to intercept a suspicious ship. A helicopter could also potentially be used for intercept

Would European nations having big fleets of submarines patrolling the waters reduce the chances of such sabotages?

hulitu 2y ago

No, because a submarine is pretty useless against an excavator.

Gravityloss 2y ago
excavators don't typically operate in international waters though...
- Polizeiposaune 2y ago
  I think this was intended as snark about how one of the recent Baltic submarine cable outages was eventually attributed to on-shore damage from an excavator.

HenryBemis 2y ago

Nope. Also you don't want one of these anchors be anywhere near a submarine. We cannot prevent it, we can only detect it and (try to) identify who did it. The planet (some special interest areas) are constantly being monitored (satellites, surveillance drones) and when large ships are not being 'naughty' (switch of transponders) it's relatively easy to put two and two together. As a side-note, Russia's playbook it to cause small and frequent sabotage(s). Small enough to not cause massive retaliation (i.e. it forces someone to destroy their railroad infra by causing thousands of derailments within one hour), and frequent enough to cause actual damage.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
>We cannot prevent it Then why don't these sabotages happen in US waters if it's so easy to get away with it?
- HenryBemis 2y ago
  If you want to piss someone off do you go for the black belt dude carrying a shotgun or (for the same amount of damage) a 5yo kid?
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    So then why am I wrong when I suggest if EU's navies were stronger then sabotages would go down?
    - willvarfar 2y ago
      its not about hard power necessarily, but soft power. If the EU united politically and made these harassment attacks consequential then they would stop. E.g. perhaps something along the lines of prison for captains who were 'derelict in duty', rewards to crews who grass and seizing ships that, by dragging anchors 'by accident', have proven themselves unseaworthy etc.
      - benterix 2y ago
        I believe something like this will happen, sooner or later. For now, it's not easily to organize as the crew can always use the excuse "oh, this was unintentional" but charging them with the cost of repair plus additional penalty could be a good starting point.
        mschuster91 2y ago
        > but charging them with the cost of repair plus additional penalty could be a good starting point. Good luck enforcing that. The "shadow fleet" ships all operate under flags of convenience and ownership is hidden behind layers upon layers of shell companies.
        willvarfar 2y ago
        If the fines and damages are not paid then perhaps the ship and its cargo are liquidated?
theshrike79 2y ago
Basically Russia's tactic is to spread FUD, but in the real world. Small sabotage attempts at water towers, power plants etc. Nothing actually happens but it gets in the news and people think something COULD have happened. It keeps people stressed a bit all the time and they start wanting things to go back to "normal" at any cost - even by letting Russia keep the bits of Ukraine they assaulted.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > Nothing actually happens but it gets in the news and people think something COULD have happened. Most likely, they prop it as a huge win domestically, so that the public keeps thinking they are winning and become easier to placate.
Telemakhos 2y ago
I wonder if any EU nation has put together a maritime warning system based on multiple inputs like transponder signals and satellite/UAV imagery. Except for imagery interpretation it wouldn’t even need AI, just check for anomalies like a ship off course or turning off its transponder.

lithos 2y ago

How would that work. You're not going to sink the ship without an environmental disaster.

ratg13 2y ago

I would think offering rewards for information could be a good deterrent. It takes a decent amount of coordination, equipment, and crew to pull off these missions. I imagine many people on these ships aren’t getting paid that great. By offering levels of rewards for information about what organizations are being used to funnel money and equipment into this, it might help bring some level of prosecution, as well as make the missions more difficult to operate as there will be a lot less trust.

tucnak 2y ago
> It takes a decent amount of coordination, equipment, and crew to pull off these missions. They're dragging anchors on the marine floor; all coordination, equipment and crew are already there as a medium-sized fishing vessel is perfectly sufficient for this job.

zabzonk 2y ago

Do you know how long these cables are? How many subs do you think you would need? Actually, surface ships would probably be more effective, but you would still need infeasible numbers of them.

croisillon 2y ago
good thinking, which doesn't refrain the cops to driving rounds every 5 minutes in every pedestrian zones of the city
- ethersteeds 2y ago
  Good thinking, which doesn't make the size of the Baltic Sea comparable to the size of a city, nor the costs of a fleet of cars with a single driver comparable to the costs of a fleet of ships with full crews. It's tempting to say "if it's such a problem why don't they just monitor better?", but the ocean is vast.
- zabzonk 2y ago
  i don't know about your city, but doesn't happen in any in the uk.
  - croisillon 2y ago
    lucky you, i have read the UK police is mostly well behaved
    - zabzonk 2y ago
      and so, where are you? and how many cops does your city have?
      - croisillon 2y ago
        Vienna, Austria, cops everywhere

someothherguyy 2y ago

and look for what? ships with lines out? then do what? they already track ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...

mschuster91 2y ago
Many ships intentionally turn off AIS, partially because there is barely any enforcement.
- someothherguyy 2y ago
  https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/learning-more-about-dark-fishing-vessels-activities-sea https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/learning-more-a...
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Yep that is exactly what I meant, thanks for providing a background source.
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  I refuse to believe that AIS is the only way ships are being tracked. I think it's probably more likely that nobody is using their military intelligence to track fishing boats.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    There's over 100k merchant sea vessels, and that does not include ships that nominally aren't supposed to be on high seas either. It's simply infeasible to do so, unless you're stacking high definition cameras with high precision accuracy control onto Starlink satellites.
    - someothherguyy 2y ago

escapecharacter 2y ago

I'm still praying for the future of trained whale-on-whale submarine cable offense/defense action.

epoxy_sauce 2y ago
Dolphins maybe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal
- escapecharacter 2y ago
  I'm aware of the dolphins. It's become an in-joke among friends that the Crimean invasion started to get the military dolphins back for the cable attacks. However, dolphins don't have as much depth capacity as other whales. I'd choose sperm whales for this, if they were trainable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology_of_underwater_diving#Range_of_performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology_of_underwater_divin...

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Maybe, but the Gulf of Finland alone (where the incidents with the Eagle 2 occurred) is 30.000 square kilometers; the amount of ships (or planes etc) and coverage you need and the associated cost is huge. I mean putting an officer / escort on board of each ship to make sure they're not doing anything weird would be an option, but I'm fairly sure that's against international law or anything. The issue is also that these are international waters - the Eagle went right through a narrow corridor of international waters - where it's a bit of the wild west.

Polizeiposaune 2y ago
There's a long-standing requirement at major ports that a local harbor pilot be on board to guide ships on their way in or out of a harbor. Requiring an observer on board when transiting areas with a concentration of critical underwater infrastructure seems at least conceptually similar -- though the logistics of making it happen would be very different.

ohgr 2y ago

No. They just need to capture or sink one caught pulling cables up. This is only effective because there are no real consequences for it.

openasocket 2y ago

Submarines aren't really well suited for this. You want something that can search and monitor over a wide area, and then the ability to intercept and potentially search/seize a suspicious vessel. The primary attribute of submarines is stealth, which is not relevant here. What you want is a combination of maritime patrol aircraft and offshore patrol craft. Maritime patrol aircraft (helicopter, fixed wing aircraft, UAVs) are equipped with surface search radar and other sensors that enable them to monitor a wide area. The patrol craft are also fitted with radars and sensors, and can also move to intercept a suspicious ship. A helicopter could also potentially be used for intercept