Sweden Investigates New Cable Break Under Baltic Sea
168 comments
·February 21, 2025danbruc
Are there any publicly available statistics on how often undersea cables - or other infrastructure under water - get damaged in certain regions? I vaguely remember some comment claiming that there are hundreds, I think, of incidents globally per year and I essentially never heard of any of them. And if the number is actually that high, then I am still only hearing about a tiny fraction of them. I would like to know how much of an outlier the Baltic sea in the last year or so is.
materielle
This is the P in CAP theorem: partition awareness.
I used to work on distributed systems, and network partitions were a frequent enough occurrence that they weren’t considered an extraordinary event. By that, I mean that we wouldn’t page during network partitions because it was still considered normal system operation. Our design was designed from the ground up to consider network partitions as a frequent and normal operational state.
What we did do is watch SLAs. If the network partition continued for too long, then our data quality would degrade over time. So we would page based on data quality.
I don’t know the answer to the actual question you asked, I would be curious to know, too.
null
maxglute
Wonder if there's any industry reports on if there's more demand for subcable repair/servicing than typical/projected.
sumea
There is a company, TeleGeography, that collects data about telecommunications industry. I recently read their recent blog post[1] about undersea cable breaks.
To summarize the article: On average, 199 cable faults per year from 2010-2023. Two thirds of these faults are caused by external forces like fishing vessels. Most cable faults are not made public. The preliminary data from 2024 suggests slightly more publicly disclosed faults, but nothing extraordinary. It is hard to detect the physical cause of cable damage. One likely cause is inexperienced crews on poorly maintained ships.
Personally, I do not believe all the cable faults in the Baltic sea are pure accidents. Russia (and China) have found the "perfect" way to test how we react and play their games. This testing is nothing new and it has happened before in many forms. It is likely that we have not even noticed some of the testing or they are not made public.
[1] https://blog.telegeography.com/is-it-sabotage-unraveling-the...
renewiltord
Happens very often: rarer than land breaks but still on the order of multiple a year. Pay for low latency links and you’ll be exposed to this unreasonable fact. I have a hatred for Chinese fishing trawlers not for their destruction of food stock but for their propensity to ruin my day by predictably damaging the EAC-C2C system.
simion314
Yeah, happens globally but not that often in same region.
Carrok
Here is a high quality article from last year about how these cables are repaired. https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...
everfrustrated
AnimalMuppet
True, but there's more discussion on this thread.
razzio
Would it be possible to protect the cables with a 'hook line' before and after the actual cable that is anchored in the seabed (if possible)? Ship anchors would get stuck on the hook line before doing damage. Only needed below the shipping lanes.
If ship anchors are able to reach the sea bottom then it can't be too deep. Drilling fasteners in the sea bottom at shallow depths could be feasible depending on the makeup of the sea bed. No idea about the cost to install vs repair though.
null
srveale
I know nothing about this topic.
How crazy is it to cover the cables with passive sonar and detect damage threats? How much crazier is it to create a sufficient number of undersea drones that can prevent damage before it happens? Maybe manoeuvre a protective barrier over the predicted impact area if there's a dragging anchor or fishing net? Pick a fight with enemy drones?
I'm increasingly impressed and terrified with air/ground drone capabilities displayed in Ukraine. The sea floor seems like the next logical step. But maybe it's more efficient to detect damage quickly and make repairs easy.
lancebeet
Global connect (the company that owns and operates most data cables in the Baltic sea) is running tests with tamper detecting cables. They say they will be able to detect a whale at a distance of 80 kilometers. I assume the whale is just used as an example to demonstrate its sensitivity, since whales haven't been implicated in any of the previous cable breaks.
Swedish: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ljusstrale-genom-kablar-k...
someotherperson
I hope researchers get access to some of that data. Would be cool if an unintended side effect of this work ends up benefiting marine wildlife research.
patapong
How do we know that the whales have not been implicated without these sensors? Perhaps they will reveal that whales were the issue all along.
Terr_
The idea of a sabotage-whale armed with torpedoes reminds me of the book Starter Villain by John Scalzi. (It's... relatively zany.)
DannyBee
The whales already signed an international treaty on this, and it's really unlikely they are going to violate their treaty obligations by destroying fiber optic cables.
Also, you know, whales not having sharp teeth and the ability to chew small breaks into cables that look remarkably like intentionally dragging boat anchors across them and all that.
zerkten
Wouldn't it be simpler to run dummy detection lines in parallel or through certain tracks to identify negligent activity? Critical cables get hit but it's hard to investigate and take action because the vessels are flagged in the Cook Islands etc. (Lawfare had a recent podcast on this.) It's not bad luck when there is some systematic behavior detected, but that data is hard to collection. Drones are cool but there is a huge area to cover reliably and often stay undetected by the adversary.
AtlasBarfed
Submerged drone flotillas are probably the next great pursuit for armed forces, especially those lacking a large naval fleet of their own.
Ukrainian surface naval drones have proven to have superiority over naval capital ships in littoral and medium seas (which is what the Mediterranean and the Baltic Seas are like compared to the Black Sea).
Deep water naval drone superiority is probably very close, but ability to hunt, track, and kill ballistic submarines will be critical to undermining US naval dominance. Both China and EU will be heavily invested in this.
If all military naval assets can be neutered by cheap drones, then a sort of mutually assured destruction of sea trade can be somewhat enforced. Maybe.
InDubioProRubio
A mysterious motor-boat appears and slam-explodes into russian tankers. No country claims to be the owner. Drunk motorboat enthusiasts suspected - no trace of hybrid warfare..
tokai
Letters of marque could definitely do a comeback.
bluGill
Letters of marque worked when you could expect to get value from the permission it gave you. That matters wasn't just that you had a letter, but that whoever gave you the letter has the power to ensure you can use it. I could write you a letter of marque to steel cars, but the police will just ignore that letter (or arrest me for doing so - there are likely a few laws that could apply though I don't know them). If US Congress writes you a letter to steel a car, you can then take that stolen car and use/sell it in the US - the full power congress is behind you in saying you can do that (but don't drive the car to Canada or Mexico).
The important part here is I don't thing anyone can get enough value to be worth it. Often ships have negative value in a scrap yard - they are so full of toxic/hazardous things that scrap yards charge more than they are worth to cut them up.
tokai
Millions of barrels of oil or a shipment of coal is pretty valuable.
bilbo0s
Right.
Escalation just when US leadership is pulling away.
Stroke of strategic brilliance right there.
/s
EU should probably walk backward, slowly, saying “good dog”, while feeling around behind them for a stick. Ie - Take this opportunity to, quietly but significantly, scale up EU military capabilities. That would come in handy for dealing with both Russia, and the US, by the way. It’s crazy times so you don’t know what the future will hold.
InDubioProRubio
EU is armed to the teeth. All you had TODO is to pretend its corruption, throw a few parties in a rented Mückelsee villa and the disappearence of a billion in peace time is invisible for the russian sigint.
That Berlin Airport was not that expensive. Have fun slamming into a wall of robots..
bluGill
Compared to the US or Russia Europe is not well armed. In some areas they are, but in critical areas the EU is way behind: air defense is going to be critical for any potential war in the near future and the EU has nothing of their own.
knowitnone
why is Russia still connected to the internet?
mrweasel
We have far more to gain by attempting to get free, uncensored information to the Russians, compared to what we're currently risking in terms of potential cyber-attacks (Which Russia could easily orchestrate from other countries anyway).
The real question is: When are we going to require ever single Russian ship parsing through the Baltic Sea to be escorted by JEF naval vessels.
Etheryte
Whenever this concept comes up, I can't help but ask, how would you actually implement cutting them off? They're chums with China, so is the plan to cut them off as well? And then all the countries that border China? What about other countries they share a border with? Etc. The only realistically feasible option is if they choose to do it themselves.
tgsovlerkhgsel
Prohibit US ISPs from maintaining routes with anyone who maintains routes with Russia.
Etheryte
The result of that would be cutting the US off from the internet, not Russia.
codr7
Russia? We have always been at war with Eur(asia)/ope.
michaelcampbell
I can tell you for a non-critical funzies app I have facing the internet, when I country-blocked China and Russia (which I know is neither authoritative nor exactly correct) my fail2ban log entries of brute forcing ssh connect attempts dropped by over 90%.
tokai
They are working on disconnecting themselves.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/russia-is-trying-...
lawn
Weird how these accidents has started happening so often...
The European countries needs to stop being so soft.
dmos62
I find it funny how if you marginally, but consistently, offend a geopolitical entity (Europe), you can actually train it to reduce the limits of what it considers acceptable. Just like a dog, or a person, I guess.
munksbeer
The problem is, what more can Europe do? Sanctions are already in place. What is the next step? Conflict?
dmos62
Sanctions are partial, the shadow fleet is operating, support for Ukraine is partial, China and India are not experiencing notable repercussions for supplying Russia, Europe is buying Russian gas. There's a lot Europe could do to show that it's serious about security, without troops in Ukraine. Oh, troops and training personnel in Ukraine's rear is another one.
maxglute
EU is just being out greyzoned by RU in this area - greyzone because under UNCLOS subsea infra regulations, RU suppose to pay for indemnities but we know that's not going to happen unless EU returns siezed RU $$$. TBH RU still has 100B+ more worth of cables to sabatoge and other shenanigans going forward in response to EU shooting firt with greyzone seizing of RU assets. People calling for blockades / shooting ships think that's worth escalating to actual kinetic war, in which case EU will simply be the relative larger loser since a 20T EU economy vs 2T RU economy has much more to lose, i.e. would be fairly easy to just fuck up EU energy / energy import infra.
DannyBee
If you aren't willing to move to conflict (or whatever the next step is) at some point, then you are, in fact, just bluffing, and you are being called out on that bluff.
You can choose what that point is, but it's weird not to expect enemies to continually test where your line is, and walk you right up to it.
I'm not sure what you expect to see here?
Let's assume for a second armed conflict is the "natural" next step.
Either you are willing to get into an armed conflict over it or not. If you aren't, and they are willing to accept everything other than armed conflict (sanctions, etc), why should they care at all what you think or do? They already know you won't escalate past a certain point. As long as they are willing to accept how far you are willing to escalate, ....
In the end, people monitor actions, not words.
preisschild
Investing a lot more into Ukraine's military, so Ukraine can defeat Russia for us.
Also increase Sanctions even more. We still have Banks like the Austrian Raiffeisenkasse that operate in Russia.
victorbjorklund
Sink any russian ship making a move.
beretguy
Conflict already exists. Next step is punching bully back in the face.
lawn
I'm a Swede and I'm mostly upset that my government isn't acting more forcefully.
null
powerhugs
As another swede, I'd be happy to se Kristersson show some backbone. But he's apparently made out of snail so that won't happen.
Not condemning the aggressor over and over make us look soft, indeed.
geysersam
I'd prefer they didn't act until there's actually proof what is behind it.
JasserInicide
Chamberlain all over again...
bpodgursky
Actually slow stress is how you build muscle.
Europe is a case of being crippled by assistance, like a man who uses an electric wheelchair until his leg muscles atrophy. They've leaned on US security guarantees so long that most countries have no functioning deterrent (look up the German air force sometime if you want to be sad).
watwut
Europe now knows US is supporting Russia and not a reliable ally.
FirmwareBurner
>Europe is a case of being crippled by assistance
Good times create weak people.
Weak people create hard times.
The question is if it can overcome the next phase without another Adolf or war.
Hard times create strong people.gizajob
Should European countries position military craft at 1km intervals on the surface along the route of every cable? Or do you mean they should start cutting Russian cables?
peterfirefly
We know which vessels cut the cables. Why should anybody on those vessels survive?
rixed
Dang, is it really ok to call for murder in HN?
hagbard_c
Because it is not the entire crew of those vessels which are complicit in these actions. It is far more likely that one person dropped the anchor - which does not seem to register on the bridge, no warning lights seem to be installed if I can trust what I've read and seen on this subject - so it would bounce over the bottom. The autopilot will take care of keeping the vessel at its programmed course and speed until the anchor gets stuck (which seems to have happened the last time a cable was cut somewhere off Gotland, the vessel suddenly went from 6 kts to 0 kts and staid around that speed for about 30 minutes).
That does not mean such vessels should be let off. They should be held at anchor until the responsible person(s) have been identified and the vessel's owners should be held financially responsible for the damages. Once a few owners have been made to pay up they'll make sure it becomes impossible for an individual to go out to the bow at night to drop an anchor without anyone noticing.
Trasmatta
There are many possible methods of deterrence and reciprocal action. If you do nothing, the enemy has no reason not to escalate.
logifail
> If you do nothing, the enemy has no reason not to escalate.
Identifying your actual enemy is obviously step 1, and getting this right might be harder than you'd think.
Look at Nord Stream 2...
basisword
>> There are many possible methods of deterrence and reciprocal action
What do you suggest?
TheSpiceIsLife
Reciprocal action gives the enemy plenty of reason to escalate.
ashoeafoot
internet Traffic watching automated torpedo turrets
preisschild
Non-credible: Cover the coasts with Anti-Submarine Torpedo Rockets, and the moment you detect an issue in your submarine cables / pipelines, launch at the position :D
Even more non-credible: Use the nuclear-armed version with a small nuclear warhead
backyardflock
[flagged]
llm_nerd
Undersea cable breaks have been an ongoing issue for decades. To the tune of hundreds per year. Usually it's completely accidental and sometimes just environmental (it is a pretty hostile environment).
It became newsworthy and a part of the zeitgeist so every incident is heavily reported on now, making it seem like there has been a big uptick when this stuff has always been happening.
As to those countries being soft, this is happening in international waters and they have been seizing ships. Not sure how much more they are supposed to do. Anti-ship missiles?
bluGill
There is an uptick on what looks strongly like intentional breaks. The question is how many of those "accidents" in the past where not, but we didn't realize it.
lawn
There's a very large uptick in these events in the Baltic sea and it's not just because of media reporting.
InDubioProRubio
<BotTemplate> Foggy first sentence of agreement Nuclear Threats for deterrence Political divisive topics </BotTemplate>
ssijak
What do you suggest?
tgsovlerkhgsel
The diplomatic option: Severe penalties for such damage and requiring insurance/bonds for it could be one option. Let the insurance companies figure it out. Insurance companies might decide that ships with a Russian crew or going to/from Russian harbors are uninsurable or very expensive.
The "language that Russia understand" option: "If you do this one more time, ships going to/from your harbors won't be allowed through the straits anymore, IDGAF what international law says". Should it happen again, inform any such ship that they're not allowed passage and will be fired upon if they try. If they try, follow through.
lawn
Obviously I don't have all the answers.
But just a few weeks ago us Swedes released a ship that was pretty obviously acting with malicious intent because of limited research or due to incompetence.
I'd like that to stop.
pergadad
While I agree in principle, we can't throw the rule of law overboard just because others don't respect it. It was a commercial vessel with Maltese/Bulgarian links and russian crew if I'm not mistaken. While I'd hope that such vessels stop serving russian ports and would get rid of any involved crew there would be a need to prove intent do directly penalise and impound the vessel/owner.
Trasmatta
I quite like the idea of a united EU army. It's something that's been floated quite a bit recently.
wolvesechoes
"I quite like the idea of a united EU army."
Won't happen, at least not in any meaningful form.
Baltics or Poland are existentially threatened by Russia, Spain or even Germany are not, even if Russia can do a limited damage to them. What is supposed to create "unity" in that regard? What would force Spain to contribute as much as, let's say, Finland? We can see even now, with all these US threats, not every NATO country was willing to increase its spending on military. And even more importantly, who is going to command such EU army? Commission?
trinix912
I, on the other hand (as an EU citizen), would like to not be drafted to fight in a conflict by two random governments of countries I don't live in and share nothing ideologically with. Sure, we can all do taxes together, share the currency, etc. I know that NATO already is that way, but the EU is not a military alliance and should never be.
blitzar
I would like to see unified command and control facilities, interoperability agreements, combined purchasing and a within EU military industrial plan. Most of this already exists in the form of NATO and can be repurposed for near $0.
There is no need for anything more, nor are the institutions really designed for a single president / general to direct everyone in a conflict. Putting in place all the capabilities to work together in a conflict should be done however.
atoav
Zelinsky was by no means the first, I heard talks of this since the crimean annexation.
card_zero
By Zelensky, I think.
What? I'm pretty sure he said that.
Yeah, here it is: 'Army of Europe' needed to challenge Russia, says Zelensky
oldpersonintx
[dead]
gizajob
Yes, united behind a strong upright leader, or even führer.
lo_zamoyski
Any recommendations? Or is this a case of double secret probation[0], or putting the invisible locks on the door[1]?
Frankly, the EU is guilty of neglect in this respect for years. Poland, for example, had been urging things like more energy solidarity since it joined the EU, something Germany consistently shot down or waved away. Mustard after the meal in some ways.
A stronger response will require more defense investment to counter hybrid warfare.
blitzar
We should really tell the US to f' off and stop cutting our undersea cables and blowing up our undersea pipes.
andrewmutz
Did I miss something? What pointed to the US?
AnimalMuppet
blitzar's imagination (or sarcasm).
backyardflock
After you have seen the German ambassador burst out in tears at the Munich Security Conference, that's all you need to know about the state of affairs. The current generation of EU bureaucrats have no balls dealing with outside forces!
datameta
He was actually one of the presiding members (forgot their title) who was completing his term. He got emotional over the gravity of the transition. To shed tears is not a mark of weakness. It serves as that signal only for the emotionally repressed.
OKRainbowKid
Do you have a source for that? This smells like fake news.
null
Owner company confirms "modest damage" to the cable that "doesn't affect the communication links".
"Det är bolaget Cinia som äger kabeln som går mellan Tyskland och Finland. Bolaget bekräftar för SVT Nyheter lättare skador, som inte påverkar kommunikationsförbindelserna."
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/uppgifter-om-nytt-kabelbr...