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577 points mooreds | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.48s | source
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staplung ◴[] No.42176496[source]
It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor. The Gulf of Finland is evidently quite shallow. From what I understand, cable repair ships are likely to use ROVs for parts of repair jobs but only when the water is shallow so hopefully they can figure out whether the damage looks like sabotage before they sever the cable to repair it. Of course, if you're a bad actor and want plausible deniability, maybe you'd make it look like anchor damage or, deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables.

Cable repairs are certainly annoying and for the operator of the cable, expensive. However, they are usually repaired relatively quickly. I'd be more worried if many more cables were severed at the same time. If you're only going to break one or two a year, you might as well not bother.

1: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...

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1. dheera ◴[] No.42183002[source]
> deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables

Can we not make the cables resistant to this? Like if someone drags an anchor over a cable, it instantly locates the break based on time-of-flight over the cable and instantly dispatches a drone from the nearest shoreline to spray nasty sticky shit all over the ship?

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2. Cthulhu_ ◴[] No.42183678[source]
Doesn't need to be a drone, there should be coast guard etc of all neighbouring countries nearby that can dispatch a plane.

That said, radar systems and sattelites should be active at all times too keeping track of every ship on there, especially if they don't have a transponder active.

3. holowoodman ◴[] No.42187236[source]
Cables can be buried and ploughed into the sea floor. This is usually done in the shallow last miles when approaching a landing on a coast, because there the risk for damage due to anchors, fishermen and other human activity is far higher. However, sometimes the ground can be unsuitable, and burying is expensive, so this isn't done for the whole length.