Military exercises Who cuts the cables? Norway and Ireland are concerned when Russia brings the anti-submarine drill close

About the Irish the fishermen became heroes of their time when Russia agreed to postpone its military exercise. Fishermen reported last week losing up to a million tonnes of catch as the Russian fleet infiltrates their fishing waters to practice.

Director of the Western and Southern Irish Fish Producers Association Patrick Murphy stated To the Irish Broadcasting Corporationthat fishermen plan to go fishing on February 1 wherever before. This is despite the fact that the Russian navy was about to arrive around the same on February 3 for the exercises.

The defiance of the Russian navy was daring, but surprisingly effective. Russia canceled on Saturday. Russian Ambassador to Ireland published Minister of Defense Sergei Shhoigun greetings: the exercise will be relocated outside the Irish EEZ in international waters.

The exercise starts on Wednesday and continues until February 8th.

The Russian Armed Forces ‘own media will take part in the next few days’ naval exercises According to Zvezda a total of 140 ships, 60 planes and helicopters and 10,000 soldiers. Exercises are organized According to Reuters also in the Mediterranean, the Ohotan Sea and the Pacific. There are about 30 warships, 20 aircraft and 1,200 soldiers in the Arctic.

Ireland, which is not a member of NATO, is still concerned. The concern comes at least in part from Norway.

The Russian armed forces are practiced Submarine combat in the Norwegian Sea, and the same vessels are now en route to the Irish coast.

At least the ships Marshal Ustinov, Admiral Kasatonov, Vice Admiral Kulakov and the Vyazma and Kama tankers are on the move.

In Ireland maintained The Journal about a third of the data for the whole of the European Union. There are 54 data centers, and 19 different submarine communication cables from Ireland connect Europe, Britain and the United States.

Although Russia changed the location of its exercise, the new location is also likely to be in the vicinity of the cables.

Submarine communication cables carry more than 95 percent of the world’s communications. Russia has been interested in these cables for a long time.

Already six years ago, U.S. intelligence sources warned especially Russia’s activity in the vicinity of telecommunication cables in the North Sea.

Cables can be spy or destroyed.

Espionage is an old ploy: the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did the same on a cable that ran through the Soviet Ocean in the Soviet Union as early as 1971. Operation Ivy Bells was not revealed until 1981, when an indebted signal intelligence NSA employee sold his information to the Soviet Union.

When Russia took over Crimea, it’s ashes Telecommunication connections between Ukraine and Crimea. Thus, Ukraine’s access to information about the conquest was slowed down.

December and January have been a time of intensified geopolitical situation in Europe and, in some places, the threat of outright war.

At the same time, in early January, a telecommunications cable from northern Norway to Svalbard broke down. At the top of the mountains is a satellite station owned by the defense equipment company Kongsberg. Clients include the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Norwegian Border Guard.

The double cable between the peaks and the Norwegian mainland is owned by the Norwegian state-owned company Space Norway. There are two cables for safety. If one is interrupted, the other can resume operation.

The fault was tentatively located a hundred or two hundred kilometers from Svalbard to the mainland. In the area, the seabed falls from a level of three hundred meters to a depth of almost three kilometers at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

In mid-January Space Norway informedthat the cable connection had been restored, but the location of the fault and the search for the cause continued.

Norwegians panicked. It had only been a couple of months since it was reported in Norway that the research cable of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research near the Lofoten had disappeared.

When operating, IMR’s research equipment records the sounds of whales, for example. The project has published recordings on Youtube.

The cable had apparently broken and disappeared as early as spring. It was found months later, eleven miles from where the research institute IMR had installed it.

Russians or the sea current, wrote Norwegian broadcaster NRK estimates surrounding the case. Norwegian security service PST confirmed that Russia is developing its underwater capabilities.

Major however, much of the damage to submarine cables is due to more mundane reasons than many of Russia’s nuclear-powered submarine-specialized submarines. The bottom currents rub against those rocks, and the anchors of the ships hit them.

For example year 2009 TDC’s telecommunications cable between Finland and Sweden broke when Viking Line’s cruise ship knocked on its anchor. Internet connections slowed down throughout Finland for many days.

In warmer waters, marine animals chew on telecommunication cables, for example, a sharkt.

Although sharks also occur in Norwegian waters, both Norway and Britain know that the sea area between them and Iceland is of strategic importance, especially for submarines. The area is known as the GIUK waterway (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) and acts as a gateway between the North Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea.

The Cold War During the 19th century, Britain and the United States installed an extensive underwater listening system in the region to ensure that Soviet submarines could not pass north from this route toward the United States. At the same time, the Soviet Union did not want to reach their northern shores from the west along the GIUK waterway.

There are now at least three Russian warships passing through Ireland and back through the GIUK, which can be equipped with torpedoes to destroy submarines.

There do not appear to be a feared Northern Navy reconnaissance ship, the Yantar, among the training vessels operating near Ireland. The Yantar can accommodate two underwater self-steering mini-submarines and has been repeatedly spotted suspiciously close to various telecommunication cables.

Yantar was close to Ireland already in August 2021. It then moved along a communication cable between Ireland and Norway and then switched to a cable route between Ireland and the United States.