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Comment by biofox | Hacker News Reader

There have been several incidents of underwater sabotage in recent years, and I can't recall any previous action being taken, so this is a welcome change.

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The UK just used a nuclear-powered sub to escort a Russian spy ship out of its waters and away from undersea infrastructure:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqjv7qgpw28o

UK QRA forces have to deal with a lot of Russian aircraft, e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/raf-jets-intercept-21-rus... (2023)

I spent some time in Lossiemouth as an engineering officer in the RAF. There was a period during the start of the Crimea War (2014/15~) when Russian fighter aircraft were circling the edges of our airspace almost every day for months on end - it's been going on for over a decade now if not longer. Russia and the UK have a much deeper adversarial relationship than any other European nation outside of the ex-Soviet states. This is in part due to the complex relationship between Russian oligarchs and London (it's often considered a haven for them from the Putin regime), and the active resistance the UK intelligence service puts up to Russian interference in the West. We're seeing that play out again in the substantial support that's been provided by the UK since the start of the full invasion of Ukraine.

Hey, see this spy ship loaded to the brim with sensors? I want you to surface Nuclear Sub real close and let them take some good readings.

> this spy ship loaded to the brim with sensors?

And yet they still didn't see them. I suspect HM Naval Service knows what it's upto and what its limits are.

Is this just a case where they can string along and claim lack of proof or do they claim it was just an accident etc?

Which government is failing to uphold their property rights basically?

The ships owner / crew will of course claim it was an accident, but Sweden is investigating it as a crime. That investigation hasn't run its course yet.

It could be both? If I am driving my car, and I hit a person due to not paying attention, isn't that both an accident and a crime.

I am not saying that it is an accident; personally I very much doubt it. But they're not exclusive. You don't have to rule out "accident" before you investigate "crime".

This is the fourth incident in a short period of time, so it being a deliberate act of sabotage is very likely. However it may have been done by a small number of crew, maybe just one guy, paid to do it while the rest were oblivious.

> so it being a deliberate act of sabotage is very likely.

I agree, that's why I very much doubt that they're really accidents. Isn't the captain responsible for the ship regardless of what they intended or what they personally knew?

More or less, yeah. The ship itself could be forfeit even though the owners probably knew nothing of this.

In the most recent incident the ship was also detained, forgot which country it was.

Finland, in December

> Russia-linked dark fleet tanker Eagle S, seized by Finland on December 25 2024

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42524174

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42516864

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42520563

Finland seized the Eagle S in late December.

But I suspect you cannot win this war like that, because fixing a cable is more expensive than sacrificing a vessel.

I'd love some references to back this claim up. I have no idea what it costs to fix an undersea cable, but ships can go for many millions.

It's a different class of vessel than I expect is used in these types of incidents, but I recently read an article about the Coast Guard's purchase of a $125m icebreaker[1].

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/aiviq-icebreaker-military...

I suppose you'd use __old__ vessels for this purpose. Ones you'd bring to the ship-scrapyard anyway.

Still hurts. They are not owned by the state, this is not how it works. Someone was granted to buy and operate them, and possibly promised to keep the vessels later. Even for scraping. So, still a loss.

Edited: grammar.

> estimated costs ranging from $7 to $12 million per cable https://www.perplexity.ai/page/baltic-sea-cable-sabotage-ZPH...

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