Anchor? What Anchor?
nice data infrastructure you have there. shame if something happened to it
There is so much news since the elections a month ago, that some of the more interesting news in the maritime arena can easily get lost in the mix.
Let’s go back to one of our favorite topics, the Undersea Lines of Communication (USLOC) <did I just coin that? I think I did. Must credit Salamander…>, their importance and vulnerability.
Via WSJ on 29NOV2024:
A Chinese commercial vessel that has been surrounded by European warships in international waters for a week is central to an investigation of suspected sabotage that threatens to test the limits of maritime law—and heighten tensions between Beijing and European capitals.
Investigators suspect that the crew of the Yi Peng 3 bulk carrier—225 meters long, 32 meters wide and loaded with Russian fertilizer—deliberately severed two critical data cables last week as its anchor was dragged along the Baltic seabed for over 100 miles.
Their probe now centers on whether the captain of the Chinese-owned ship, which departed the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, was induced by Russian intelligence to carry out the sabotage. It would be the latest in a series of attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure that law-enforcement and intelligence officials say have been orchestrated by Russia.
She is not a small ship.
I checked last night…and we still don’t know much.
Security sources say the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, which left the Russian port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, was responsible for severing the two undersea cables in Swedish economic waters between Nov. 17 and 18 by dragging its anchor on the seabed.
As of Monday, it was stationary in Danish economic waters, being watched by NATO members' naval ships, having been urged by Sweden to return to be investigated. Some politicians had accused it of sabotage, but no authority had shown evidence that its actions were deliberate.
From that article, I like the shout out to the US Navy’s history of innovation.
If any of the recent incidents are proven to be sabotage by another country, it would mark a return of a type of warfare not seen for decades.
"You should go back to World War One or the Spanish-American War to find a state-sponsored sabotage of a submarine cable," said Paul Brodsky, a senior researcher at TeleGeography.
As we discussed back in February, an attractive target will not get ignored, especially if it is relatively unguarded and fragile.
Steps are being taken. Baby steps, but a good start.
To counter this potential threat, NATO in May opened its Maritime Centre for Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI) in London, which wants to map all critical infrastructure in NATO-controlled waters and identify weak spots.
In Rostock, on Germany's Baltic coast, a multinational naval headquarters opened in October to protect NATO members' interests in the sea.
"What I think we can achieve is to place the responsibility after an incident," CUI's Branch Head, Commander Pal Bratbak, said onboard the Weilheim, stressing the growing power of technology.
NATO's Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation in Italy is launching software that will combine private and military data and imagery from hydrophones, radars, satellites, vessels' Automatic Identification System (AIS) and fibres with Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), which private telecom companies use to localise cuts in their cables.
"If we have a good picture of what's going on, then we can deploy units to verify what the system tells us," Bratbak said.
German Lieutenant-General Hans-Werner Wiermann, who led an undersea infrastructure coordination cell at NATO Headquarters until March, said no pipeline or cable can be guarded all the time.
"The right response to such hybrid attacks is resilience," he said, adding that companies were already laying cables to add "redundancies" - spare routings that will allow critical pieces of infrastructure to keep working if one cable is cut.
A Chinese flagged ship with what some reports have as a Russian crew taking out some critical NATO nations’ infrastructure.
What do we call this? Sabotage? E-commerce raiding (can you classify her as a commerce raider/auxiliary cruiser)? Vandalism? Is there a better term?
Don’t know, but it has been with us for over a century and a quarter…and never before has the world’s economy been more reliant on data systems.
Just look at the below as the globe spins around. If you wanted to knock back a nation without directly killing a lot of people, starting a war, or doing something as escalatory as an EMP … it is hard to find a better target set.
h/t Klara.
Our everyday lives depend on an incredibly brittle infrastructure of power and data. Once again, TheSmartestPeopleInTheRoom have failed to understand that bad people/countries do bad things, like break all of your toys - especially when it gives them greater power over you and yours. Some days you just want to slap some people upside the head to get their attention. Sigh.
So, what is the best response? Perhaps arresting this specific Chinese ship for starters. Then, require all Chinese and Russian ships to have a NATO country pilot onboard whenever the ship is within a NATO country’s EEZ. Just to prevent any further accidents, of course. Would that affect Chinese exports? Oh, so sad. Actions should have consequences.
You might call it an act of war. Or you might call it terrorism. Or just plain criminal mischief in international waters. In any case, what you do about it is what gives it its name. For as Mao said all authority comes from the muzzle of a gun. Or something like that. Currently the victims and their related parties in interest seem hesitant to do anything. Thus the point in principle is made. And it provides a poor example in so far as European leadership is concerned.
If a Maersk ship left a Chinese port without paying its bill, does anyone here think that the PLAN would hesitate to arrest it, anywhere within its control ?? There is state action here. This is a blunt provocation. And the purpose is to assert Chinese power, everywhere, but principally where it can be, in the SCS. For seizure of this ship will gain degrees of freedom for the PLAN there.
Swedish and allied leaders are overthinking this. Arrest the ship, the captain and the crew. Take them to a Swedish port. Let the victims file claims against the vessel. Charge the captain and responsible officers with a lifetime of charges. As for evidence, what is there other than the fact that the vessel dragged its anchor for 100 miles and was caught moving with it down.