Map showing location of next week's of Russian Navy exercise and it's relation to submarine communications cables

Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by Somali_Pir8
image showing Map showing location of next week's of Russian Navy exercise and it's relation to submarine communications cables

Somali_Pir8 on January 29th, 2022 at 13:38 UTC »

Below is the Initial comment by the creator, u/bbrhuft. Pretty interesting coincidence regarding an upcoming naval exercise.

Next month’s naval exercise (Feb 3rd-8th) by Russia will be held right over the world’s highest capacity submarine communications cable, Amitié.

Both AMITIE and Dunant deliver more capacity than all the other existing systems in service across the Atlantic.

This is a really odd coincidence. Out of all the places they could choose to hold a naval exercise, they chose there. Even if Russia’s naval exercise does not include hacking/sabotaging Amitié, it will nevertheless make the US and allies sweat a little. They probably won’t trust the cable, rather not send sensitive data over just in case Russia is listening in.

Here’s a great article about Russia’s submarine program that’s involved in sabotaging/hacking submarine cables:

How Russian Spy Submarines Can Interfere With Undersea Internet Cables

Seems to be partly based on this earlier article, which deserves credit.

Also, on Jan 7, at 4:10am, one of two undersea cables linking the Svalbard archipelago with mainland Norway was mysteriously cut.

The strategically important cable links the largest satellite receiving station on the Planet with mainland Norway, 100 ground stations send back terabytes of data per day, over the two cables, back to mainland Norway. They are operated by KSAT, which as far as I can determine, is 50:50 owned by Sapce Norway and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (a military company).

Svalbard is weird, an old treaty (1920) allows Russia access rights to fishing and mineral resources there. Russia still has a coal mine on Spitsbergen, I think it is idle but the Russian company, Arktikugol, maintain the facilities, at a considerable loss, it helps maintain Russia's continued foothold on the Island.

The submitted map was crated in QGIS using data from Submarine Cable Map, Marine Regions, OpenStreetMap and uses the World Hillshade from ESRI (see here for attribution).

Roberthergas on January 29th, 2022 at 15:38 UTC »

Is Russia allowed to conduct naval exercises within Irish sea? or do they just not care?

urawasteyutefam on January 29th, 2022 at 19:55 UTC »

What would cutting these cables achieve beyond geopolitical posturing? The cut traffic would simply be routed via other cables until the broken cables are repaired.

Of course, geopolitical posturing may very well be the point.

Edit: It should also be noted that the Amite cable is an under construction internet cable, to be completed in the first quarter of 2022.