An increased presence of Russian
submarines near American territorial waters appears to correspond to the
location of undersea Internet cables used for commercial and military
communications, according to officials.
Citing “more than half a dozen” American and European officials, including naval commanders and intelligence professionals,
The New York Times
said on Sunday that the United States Department of Defense was paying
close attention to what it described as “significantly increased Russian
activity” along known routes of the cables. The paper was referring to
Russian underwater vessels, which Washington believes are equipped with
technology designed to tap into the cables, or even to sabotage them, by
severing them.
According to The Times,
officials at the Pentagon believe that Moscow is less interested in
tapping into the cables and more interested in mapping their location so
that it can attack them during a hypothetical clash with the US.
Superficially, the paper said that, according to US officials, the
Russian Navy appeared to be seeking to locate the precise coordinates of
the fiber-optic cables. The ultimate goal was to sever them “at some of
their hardest-to-access locations” if Russia ever needed to disrupt the
flow of communication to and from the US. The Russian submarines seem
to be seeking some of the deeper locations of the undersea cable
networks, which would make it harder for repair crews to locate and
repair severed fiber-optic cables.
The New York Times said that,
alongside commercial Internet cable networks, Russian submarines were
looking for military networks, whose location is usually classified. The
paper quoted a European diplomat, who said anonymously that Russian
submarine patrols in American territorial waters had increased by nearly
50% since 2014. The level of activity of Russian submarines was now
“comparable to what we saw in the Cold War”, said the diplomat.
http://intelnews.org/2015/10/26/01-1799/
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