Sweden has proof foreign submarine entered its waters | Hacker News Reader

Sweden has proof foreign submarine entered its waters

reuters.com

99 pointsbjornsing141 comments

Before people start defending Russia too much and proclaiming NATO to be the aggressors, have a look at http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2014/11/world/russia-west... (and that's just the last 8 months, doesn't include Russia's target practicing on Stockholm with nukes for example)

There's a big propaganda war going on in Europe right now, against NATO, the West, and western ideas. Free media in Russia are being closed down. Not good signs.

The former USSR Baltic states are afraid of getting invaded, like eastern Ukraine, but Sweden is probably "safe" from a direct invasion.

Edit: also it might be good to know that the Armed Forces are very careful not to point to any specific country (they're clearly stating the facts), but we're already getting disinformation from Russian media.

"But take a look at what CNN says before proclaiming anything about NATO aggressiveness!"

okay, counsel :)

"The Left." is in a weird place. Objection within NATO countries to Afghanistan and Iraq (coalition, NATO, whatever) has led to many leftists seeing their job as critics of their own country. A part of that is trying to cut through the propaganda where your country is always innocent and other other guys are always malevolent. Getting the US/Coalition to accept culpability for its role in the collapse of Iraq. Etc.

A lot of those things are positive. Internal criticism is extremely important. But, there is a danger of going down an enemy-of-my-enemy route and turning yourself into a dumb reflection of the thing you are objecting to. In the UK, the parody hard left produced MPs actively supporting the Syrian Baathist party up until recently.

Russia does feel threatened by NATO. They have for a while. But mores, Russia's objection to NATO is a nationalistic ego thing, and shouldn't be excused. Most of the "aggression" in Eastern Europe, of countries joining NATO and encouraging NATO presence in their territory is fear based. It's based on a terrible experience of Russian dominance a generation ago and a fear of Russian invasion now. Russia's neighbors are afraid of them. They are afraid of invasion, interference, stuff like that. They want NATO presence because they are afraid of Russia.

At the same time the baseline political rhetoric in Russia is belligerent, democratic rights like free press are diminishing and human rights are receding.

You don't need to defend Russia to say that the CNN data is distorted to present a particular message. Most of these actions (flying in international airspace, military exercises) are routinely performed by NATO but never similarly criticized, or as this infographic shows, even mentioned.

So how do you know that NATO is just as reckless if it's never mentioned?

The point isn't that it happens, it's that it's been increasing a lot lately both in frequency and severity of each incident.

Facts that support a particular narrative are made prominent, those that run counter to it are diminished.

Here are two quick examples of incidents that, using the same standards as the CNN infographic, would have been classified as "high risk".

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81320

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/02/us/us-spy-plane/index.html

Finally, the rate of these incidents may have increased but I don't see any evidence of that in your link. Why do you say that they have?

Yes, the first link is actually in the CNN article and the second one is about China. What's your point? Also please note that NATO and the US are != Sweden.

The article doesn't mention that the incidents have increased, you're right. It's a lot of incidents in a short time frame though. For some Swedish sources on the increased rate of Russian activity:

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/okad-rysk-militar-aktivitet...

http://wisemanswisdoms.blogspot.se/2011/11/okad-aktivitet-ov...

According to http://wisemanswisdoms.blogspot.se/2014/07/lattande-av-incid... the QRF has taken off 50% more times this year than the previous. Which was the most intense year since the Cold War.

Other than that you won't find much statistics on the activity of the Swedish Quick Reaction Force as it's not released to the public.

The point is the events are portrayed in a way that applies different standards to enemies of the west than the west itself. When a spy plane is intercepted who is the aggressor? Answer: always the enemy, regardless of whose spy plane it is.

The China incident just shows that western forces do the same things as Russia is being criticized for.

OK; let's say there is an equal amount of aggression from NATO and Russia (and Sweden). Not that I think so. But which side would you be on? I'm with the ones that have the most democracy, freedom, life expectancy, and standard of living.

If you view the issue as choosing a side then your perspective will be distorted exactly in the way that we are discussing.

At the end of the day everyone will choose a side that gives them the most benefit and that will be dependent on where they live.

Not too much criticism over flying in intl. airspace, we are busy enough criticizing Russia over airspace violations!

I read just this weekend about a huge number of unmarked NATO tanks just rolling in to a neighboring sovereign country seemingly oblivious of borders and international law.

No, wait...

Have you forgotten the last decade of wars where "NATO" tanks rolled into a sovereign country, seemingly oblivious of borders and international law?

No, and I did not approve of a few of those (Iraq2 for example). Most importantly in those cases, those nations did it under real flag, and had to answer questions. People on the countries who helped overthrow Saddam could vote their politicians out of office. Parents of those soldiers could openly scream in free press.

The last time a NATO or EU country blatantly annexed a whole or part of another country I cannot remember.

The US routinely sends planes to the Sea of Okhotsk which is completely surrounded by Russian territory. The US and NATO probe Russia all the time...

This picture the Swedes have released is quite honestly something I don't take a face value.

"Free media in Russia are being closed down. "

Not to minimize the problems of Russia's media environment, but the last NATO Secretary General Rasmussen had to shut down a Kurdish TV station in order for Turkey to support his nomination.

> The US routinely sends planes to the Sea of Okhotsk which is completely surrounded by Russian territory

It's not completely surrounded by Russian territory. Japan has ~200 miles of the coast of Hokkaido bordering the Sea of Okhotsk.

Another round of whiskey on the rocks[1]? Russia is also conducting some pretty aggressive bomber "patrols"[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

[2] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/russias-bombers-conduct-regular-pa...

There have been some plane incursions into Swedish airspace in the recent past too, I believe. Looks like Russia doesn't really care about borders anymore, which fits right into how they treated Georgia, the Crimea and now eastern Ukraine.

"It is not possible to accept that the shelling of Tskhinvali during much of the night with GRAD multiple rocket launchers (MRLS) and heavy artillery would satisfy the requirements of ha ving been necessary and proportionate in order to defend those villages. It follows from the illegal character of the Georgian military assault that South Ossetian defensive action in response did conform to international law in terms of legitimate self-defence."

Don't trust everything from the mass scream media... and "believe" is something for the church. There is this thing called Google on the internets I "believe".

A good start is assume that ANYTHING published from russian channels will be propaganda. It's a bandit state.

Most official output from russia needs a really heavy filtering. But to use the word 'bandit state' - I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

To me, a bandit state echoes a temporary institution that is held up mostly through the use and threat of direct violence. To my eyes elements of the current status harken to a russian tzardom hundreds of years back.

Strong autocratic leaders have always been a part of the political apparatus and the fatalistic psyche of the population drive individuls to yield, survive and pour their energies to something else than politics. It is also notable that russia is a typical country suffering from the curse of oil which itself is empirically a really hard thing to avoid or heal from which twists the dynamics even further.

I would suggest three brief bodies of text to explore the problem of russia to those who are not familiar with them:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Kennan's long telegram: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/ke...

And thirdly, a bit longer work that reads like an autobiographic surrealist version of Catch-22, a description of the soviet system which trained most of those now in power (Suvorov:"Inside the soviet military"): http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/index.html

Yeah, and WP and Fox News are the trustworthy sources. :D

Dude, what Western people are completely missing, is that we're being bombarded with propaganda too! The Ukraine crisis starts and suddenly Russians turn out to be massive homophobes, huh?

Putin is evil and Obama is good, right? Nevermind that the US is still torturing people in the very Guantanamo Obama promised to close.

It's just not as simple as choosing to side with "the good guys" (=The West). In reality, it's a game of politicians vs us little folks, ie. rulers vs subjects.

> The Ukraine crisis starts and suddenly Russians turn out to be massive homophobes, huh?

Suddenly? They'd been widely criticized for their new homophobic laws well before the Ukraine crisis.

Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same. It means that the other country should stop. Can we stop making this a race to the bottom?

> They'd been widely criticized for their new homophobic laws well before the Ukraine crisis.

I'm not so sure about that.

> Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same.

I'm equally against all "countries" (=governments, in practice). You may have noticed they all do bad things, either currently or eventually.

> I'm not so sure about that.

It's easy to verify by looking up some dates. The law against homosexual propaganda stems from June 2013, and has been widely criticized ever since, including calls to boycott the Winter Olympics at Sochi, in February 2014. The protests that led to the Euromaidan revolution started in November 2013, the actual revolution took place in February 2014, and was soon followed by Russian intervention.

If you didn't start to pay attention to Russia until after the crisis started, I can imagine you might think the homophobia criticism came only after the crisis, but it actually started half a year earlier.

There's been such a massive propaganda campaign over Ukraine that it's difficult to verify anything.

But what we do know is that it's all a geopolitical power struggle. The US wants Kiev under its control, but that control has been slipping.

I (and others apparently) down-voted this for the tone. Your last paragraph wasn't necessary and detracted from your overall point.

That's fair enough. Thanks for the hint/clarification.

The Russians have also claimed to have chased away a US submarine from the Barents sea [1] So clearly both sides think the other is still conducting sneakies.

[1] http://news.usni.org/2014/08/11/u-s-denies-attack-submarine-...

> The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the flights publicly, also said that the pace of Russian flights around North America, including the Arctic, have largely remained steady, with about five incidents per year.

> Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to call this a Russian provocation. He said the Russians have a right, like any other nation, to operate in international airspace and in international waters. The important thing, Warren said, is for such exercises to be carried out safely and in accordance with international standards.

Whilst they may not be able to identify the nation responsible there's pretty good odds it was a Russian SSK. Everyone else operating in those waters isn't going to risk entering Swedish waters as they have an announced policy of using force against unidentified submerged contacts. Entering foreign territorial waters submerged, especially of a nation with counter-detection capability and a military that may fire on you, is the sort of decision that goes right to the top.

> there's pretty good odds it was a Russian SSK. Everyone else operating in those waters isn't going to risk entering Swedish waters as they have an announced policy of using force against unidentified submerged contacts

What kind of argument is this? Are Russians somehow notorious for being reckless and suicidal? Or how else does Sweden's policy as you describe it make the odds higher that it was a russian submarine? Please explain.

I don't know how the classification was made, but the first picture suggests that the sub was operating in broad daylight, within a few hundred meters of the coast, with masts and possibly the sail visible to the naked eye from shore??? This was either an on-board emergency, some very, very careless submariners (not something submariners in any country are known for), or something else entirely.

The incredibly short distance from the coast suggests the possibility of an unmanned submarine to me. Territorial waters start at 13NM; operating at the 12.75NM is like conducting military operations 12.75NM inside a country's sovereign borders.

You mean like 0.25NM inside a country's borders?

No, I mean 12.75NM. If you can take a picture of a submarine with your phone from the shore, it's within a few hundred yards.

I think the parent was confused due to your inconsistent/ambiguous use of reference points for distances (13NM away from the coast vs 12.75NM inside [apparently] of the maritime boundary). I experienced the same confusion, reading your original post.

They were all drunk, c'mon! Obvious :)

And now I have only to guess which side downvoted this :)

Reckless and suicidal as in annexing a part of a European country and virtually openly invading another part by force while simultaneously stepping up military intimidation against NATO allies across the board?

Apparently so.

Issue with Crimea is so much more complicated than that.

While the inclusion of it as part of Ukraine in 1991 is not in dispute, the land was only "moved" into the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. At the time, it was about equivalent to transferring jurisdiction between one US county to another. A US state to state transfer would not be similar, as USSR laws were very centralized and there wasn't really that much difference between the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) and Ukrainian SSR. (Soviets sure loved long names and acronyms!)

From the wikipedia article: "In 1954, it was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union." [1]

Demographics are also complicated, with 2001 census (latest wikipedia article cites) showing 58% of population identifying themselves as Russian, so it is at least plausible that the majority of the population would prefer Russia as the parent state over Ukraine. [2]

The situation in "Donbas" is just downright deplorable. Both sides are not in the clear as to how this conflict came about and how it is unfolding. For proof, take a look at the Human Rights Watch report on use of cluster munitions: http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cl....

Personally, I would probably not have such a problem with either side using these, had they been used exclusively against military groups outside of populated areas, or at least in sparsely populated areas, but they are being fired at cities. Firing one of these into a city is inhumane regardless of who occupies the city. There are still civilians that probably did not have a chance to run away, usually the elderly and people with children. These munitions hurt them the most.

For what a cluster munition is, read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_munition.

In the end, the more we do finger pointing at a large group, the less progress we will make towards a lasting peace. Not all Russians are war-hungry, not all Ukrainians think Bendera is a hero, etc. etc. etc.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Demographics

I am deeply aware of the minutiae of the conflict.

Crimea's status was indeed complex which is why independence with a strong Russian bent would have been acceptable by all international players. In 2014 there is no excuse though for straight-up military annexation under false pretences without the slightest hint of respect for international law.

In the end the populist appeal of healing the wound of a 'lost Crimea,' as you so aptly demonstrate, won over from respecting international norms, something which can aptly be called reckless and suicidal just by itself.

Concerning the Donbass all of the world except for one country is remarkably clear on how the conflict came about.

Just like happened in Georgia and Moldavia, Russian-backed forces were sent in to inflame moderate ethnic tensions and use unmarked mercenaries supported by surplus Russian military material to turn the conflict violent and eventually create a frozen conflict allowing Russia to prevent NATO expansion and exert geopolitical control over the region.

In Ukraine that almost worked again except that MH17 drew international attention at an inopportune time giving Ukraine the time to mobilise a counter-attack eventually causing the Russian regular army to have to be sent in unmarked to keep the conflict going which led the global community to escalate its economic warfare to the point where the intent became to cripple the Russian economy to the point of unsustainability... which sounds even more reckless and suicidal to me.

Also notice that nowhere do you hear me arguing it's okay for Ukrainian forces to fire shells at Russian positions which strategically locate themselves next to urban targets. The conflict is intensely brutal with both sides indiscriminately firing shells and rockets into civilian areas and well documented evidence of even Russian forces sending false-flag shells into their own civilian areas and even more evidence of the Ukrainian army using that as a permanent excuse for inappropriate and overreaching bombing...

And as far as finger pointing goes; I'm pointing at the Russian government. I have however also been deeply shocked by the degree to which the Russian population considers annexation of a region an OK-ish thing and directly causing the loss of several thousands of lives through escalating a conflict by military intervention a 'complex issue.'

Wow, and I thought I had a bias for having relatives close to the conflict...

A citation or two or three would be nice on all of this, as I do not share many of your assumptions. That said, without being there first hand, I don't think one could really know the truth.

Not sure if you read Russian, but here's more "entertainment" on the subject of MH17: http://lenta.ru/news/2014/11/14/boeing/.

On the subject of MH17, it's really appalling how the media and people discussing it seem to focus on the Ukrainian conflict and not on the loss of life here itself or even on the people working to fight AIDS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17#Pas....

I know I would get down-voted because of the display of emotion there but you replying with the Su-25 conspiracy theory which has been debunked ad-nauseam just really further makes my point.

Pretty much everything I shared is fairly common knowledge/sense with Occam's Razor applied to geopolitics. I'd be interested in which of the 'assumptions' you don't share.

And about the MH17 loss of life... I'm Dutch. I have close friends who lost close friends there. I feel the loss. I'm just even more sad that they even died mostly in vain.

I'm sorry for their loss!

For the "entertainment" remark, I find the various theories somewhere between insulting and criminal, because that airspace is so tightly controlled, both NATO and Russia know what happened, but neither side is coming forth with concrete evidence for various reasons that do not serve justice. The reason I linked to it is to illustrate how ridiculous the entire situation is.

It's hardly "reckless and suicidal" if you think

1. p=90% the Swedish policy is so much hot air, at least until international tensions reach the boiling point. (A person who thought this would have been right.)

2. You might have stealth tech sufficient to evade the Swedes' sensors.

3. It is valuable to know for sure about #2, and there's only one way to know for sure.

The p=10% that #1 is false certainly constitutes a risk, so the only rational actor who would make the play we saw would be someone matching #2 and #3, and right now that's the Russians. Plus the Russians have a history of actively probing their opponents' defenses, so the move would hardly be without precedent.

>actively probing their opponents' defenses //

In what way are they opponents?

Politically. Geographically.

Well differing political ideology doesn't make you an opponent unless you're seeking to govern the same area. I'm not sure how you can be geographical opponents when you're different countries - competing for local resources, is that what you intend?

The same Sweden was basically sleeping when russian planes contested swedish aerospace, and danish F16's had to act on it, and show the russians the door out. Swedish military isn't exactly famous for being on the ready and deliver on threats.

It's so relaxed, to the point that its a running joke among neighbour nations.

Source: I'm from denmark, and lived in sweden for 6 years up until 3 years ago, and my father has lots of nordic military contacts.

> so relaxed, to the point that it's a running joke

"One month"! The article says Sweden has proof of intrusion "in October". If they had gathered enough information a month ago, why didn't they issue a diplomatic protest? Or did it take them one month to gather the information?

To whom would they issue this diplomatic protest? There's no proof which country this sub was from.

> The same Sweden was basically sleeping when russian planes contested swedish aerospace

I don't know why it matters, but yeah, that happened once. The QRF has been improved since then. The reason why the Swedish Air Force didn't respond quickly enough was that the defence has been all but dismantled since the 90's due to "peace in our time". Both the Minister of Defence and the Prime Minister said today that Sweden will defend its borders with all means necessary. It seems we've woken up.

Because while they are probably quite sure about who did it (The one non allied state with sub capability operating in the Baltic, my guess), they don't have any proof that is good enough to use in a diplomatic protest.

>danish F16's had to act on it //

Because?

Some jets flew over that caused no harm to anyone, wasn't probably even seen by any civilians. Is that a reason to retaliate with a show of force - or had they already used diplomatic channels to tell them that this was not allowed?

This sounds like you want to start WW III because someone stepped on your toes at the bar. Sweden perhaps don't think that some other country swinging their dick is a reason to get in to armed aggression.

It's a pretty standard procedure i've been told. It is kinda like checking someone's reflexes... A sort of diplomatic dance of sorts.

and why not the sneaky U.S.?

What would there be to be gained from that?

Because it was operating fairly calmly on the surface, which strongly suggests that it was a diesel boat. Nuclear subs stay submerged after leaving port to help keep stealth. Diesel subs, on the other hand, have to either surface, or extend a snorkel, in order to pull in air to run the engines to recharge the batteries. The US, like the UK, and France has a pure-nuclear submarine fleet; the last American diesel boat was taken out of commission in the nineties. This leaves countries like Germany, whose boats have a distinctive profile that the photographed boat doesn't have, and Russia.

In your comment about Germany, are you referring to the Type 209? My data is very dated (1997), but at that point, there were a lot of German-made diesels owned by other nations (including Argentina in the Falklands War). They are/were the Ak-47 of submarines, and many were substantially upgraded with things like Stirling engines so they could remain submerged longer. Point being, if it is a diesel (and I agree with your assessment that it is), it would be difficult to tell visually what nation it comes from, because many older diesels (particularly the German ones but also other) have been sold off and ended up in the fleets of various other countries.

You've got a point, there. I was mostly trying to point out that pretty much everyone else in the general neighborhood is nuclear-only. It could potentially be a Venezuelan sub, but I wouldn't put them high on the list of countries willing to do a stunt like this.

Former Eastern Bloc nations or Soviet republics? I agree with you that the intersection of countries still using diesels and countries that would be poking around Sweden is a small set - no obvious candidates, unless the rumors are true that Russia has been unable to keep their nuclear fleet operational and has reverted to diesels.

We havent been the ones doing bombing runs [1], sending transport planes [2] in European airspace or sending long range bombers to the Gulf of Mexico recently[3].

Besides we wouldnt send a sub to get intel when we have the Internet and the Swedes are already helping us [4].

[1]http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/nato-says-russian...

[2]http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-nato-f-16s-intercept-russian-tra...

[3]http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/world/europe/russia-bombers-pl...

[4]http://www.thelocal.se/20131211/sweden-aided-in-nsa-hacking-...

Because they don't operate SSKs any more, same reason it isn't the sneaky UK. Both of whom are accused of operating in Russian waters, but those decisions are made at the very top of the political hierarchy on a per-mission basis. Doing so inside Swedish waters is incredibly unlikely due to the massive political fallout for negligible reward.

Edit to add: SSK due to the size and operating on the bottom. "Small U boats" are SSKs (diesel electric) not SSNs, as the nuclear power plant is massive.

Are subs still used to lay wiretaps on undersea communication cables? The submarine was spotted off the coast near Stockholm, and there are four undersea cables going through the area, according to submarinecablemap.com.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_(SSN-23)

When I saw the news, my first thought was narco-submarines. They got to be designed, built, and tested somewhere, and the size of such submarines has been reported to be similar to those of military use. It also make sense to do so inside a larger city which has a large enough technical educated workforce.

update: Once built, the submarines can be sold on the black market. Using it in Sweden make very little sense given the bridge in south and border in north.

Why would you build one in Sweden in order to sail it to South America and then back again?

Narco submarines are for getting drugs into jurisdictions, which for Europe is the Atlantic states, usually Spain or Portugal. Once within Europe drugs are easy enough to transport around, even into Sweden.

Far more likely it was the Russians.

Narco-submarine doesn't sound plausible at all.

Sweden has very little border control on land borders. You can drive a van from mainland Europe through Denmark and over a bridge. Or cross over from the Finnish border in the North. It doesn't make any sense to build a submarine for drug trafficking purposes when you can just drive a car or walk over the border.

Typical narco-subs are not submersible at all, the bulk of the craft is below water but the conning tower is on the surface at all times. This unknown craft was under water apparently for several days. (edit: according to Wikipedia, newer narco-subs may be fully submersible, but still probably not for extended periods of time)

Also, the Swedish military claims to have had "contact" and detected the craft with several sensors.

Perhaps it was an extremely large narco-submarine [1] smuggling drugs into Sweden.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine

To be honest, I don't think many people doubted that Russian submarines were in its water. China would have been a surprise. The USA, unsurprising except that its reported

Well, it would not be the US's first time invading an ally's waters, presumably to spy, as we did to Israel in 2004 for whatever reason. http://www.haaretz.com/news/report-submarine-spying-off-coas... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States_re...

How do they know it's a foreign submarine? If they know it's a small submarine, and the pilot was apparently clumsy enough to scrape the bottom, maybe it's an amateur engineer who has built their own submarine.

It's not exactly unheard of: https://www.google.com/search?q=homemade+submarine&espv=2&bi...

Because they can probably get accurate sizings of the fin from the photograph and scrapes in the sea floor, and no amateur will have built a submarine that big.

"Small U-boats" are small in relation to SSNs, and especially SSBNs, they're not actually small.

They were clear that it was a military vehicle.

_If_ it was an amateur engineer it must have been both a crazy and a skilled motherfucker. The bottom scrape did probably occur when the submarine did hide from the Swedish navy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC3_Nautilus

Exactly, that's all the point I was trying to make: not exactly unheard of for Scandinavians to be building crazy-awesome submarines in their backyards, essentially.

I don't know that it was "scraping the bottom", some Russian subs are known to have caterpillar treads.

I think that the amateur engineer would have explained by now that it was his sub...

honestly I want to know, just exactly what can they accomplish knowing this?

If its Russian, why would they care other than an effort actually didn't work. In the grand scheme of things Russia isn't going to be overly worried about Sweden. So I figure at most, they will have to figure out some new tactics to avoid detection and keep doing it till they get it right, if ever

It's just playing to the home crowd.

Russia isn't going to be overly worried about Sweden

They are. The article even states the reason:

The Nordic country has also drawn closer to NATO in the past few years although the current government has ruled out seeking membership of the U.S.-led alliance.

Also, it would not be the first time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363). Of course, that happened in the past era, but the recent events have shown, that history tends to repeat itself.

Sweden and Russia don't pose any direct threat to each other, but even though Sweden's military has been defunded in the past few decades after the cold war, it's still one of the biggest weapon exporters in the world.

Aside from joining the NATO alliance, Sweden could seek to create or strengthen some other alliance. The Baltic sea and the Danish straits are important waterways to Russia, St Petersburg's access to the North Sea and the Atlantic. Russia's access to the Mediterranean goes through Turkey's (NATO) internal waterway. Both routes could effectively be shut down by a hostile navy.

Those are the conventional military-strategic concerns that are supposedly making Russia so nervous about NATO aggression. Crimea is (allegedly) important for Russia's naval security, so had to go back to Russian control. Actively driving a geographically strategic country, with resources into increasing it's naval power and seeking an alliance is losing at strategy.

On the economic, Oil prices have recently dropped. They may drop further. Russia is very reliant on oil revenues for public funding. Europe and the US are nearing the point of sanctions. Foreign investment is taking a hit. New energy projects like gas pipelines are unlikely. They do not need some pointless costly conflict.

IMO, it comes down to this. An direct NATO-Russia conflict is unlikely. The cost is too high for all parties. But tensions can rise and relations can deteriorate. Russia seems to think that's ok, borderline desirable.

I'm knowingly ignorant of international politics. Can someone who follows this speculate the meaning of this?

I'm fairly ignorant about that too, but I like speculating. The only way I've been able to explain Russian military crossing borders like this is showing their muscles internally. Is there anyone here with more insight?

There are probably other reasons; putting spec-ops on land, checking up on old equipment, testing the armed forces, etc.

Or to just see if they can go in there & remain undetected.

This gives a better explanation of the context

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/20/guardia...

Some top swedish officials have been closely working with the CIA, for example Carl Bildt.

This is probably just a PR effort to sway the swedish public towards NATO partnership/affiliation. Perhaps there was no submarine, or it was a NATO one ...

Always ask yourselves: cui bono? The Russians have nothing to gain from risking a submarine in swedish (of all) waters. Sweden as a NATO member would be extremely useful to NATO at this point.

Objectively Russia may have nothing to gain from short military intrusions into neighboring countries, but these decisions are driven by more indirect goals.

There is plenty of evidence that Russia is actively testing the military readiness of countries close to their borders. For example, intrusions by Russian military airplanes into Finnish airspace have increased tenfold compared to previous years.

Dismissing the submarine reports as a NATO ploy looks like a conspiracy theory when it's clear that Russia is actively doing this stuff all over their European border.

> Objectively Russia may have nothing to gain from short military intrusions into neighboring countries

The entire idea of "objective gain" (and "Russia" as a unit that could have gain) is sometimes-useful but often misleading convenient fiction. All gain (in the sense that it motivates action) is grounded in subjective utility, and so is not objective, and, further, is the gain of individual actors for which larger entities (e.g., states) are potentially-misleading aggregate units of analysis.

Its not a matter of whether Russia has something objectively to gain from short military incursion, but whether Russian decision-makers feel that they have subjective utility tied to decisions which produce such incursions.

Finnish Ministry of Defence has reported five airspace violations by Russian airplanes this year, and there were three in 2013.

Sorry, I misremembered the numbers. There were none in 2008-2012, and eight in the past 18 months. So that is a significant increase in activity, but it can't be described as "n-fold" since there wasn't any before :)

> The Russians have nothing to gain from risking a submarine in swedish (of all) waters.

Testing detection and response capabilities, wiretapping undersea cables... they've been caught red handed in Swedish waters in the past.

Back when this was happening it was big news because the Swedish military didn't really hide they were searching for a submarine in an enclosed bay. In the end they didn't catch anything, so this could be seen as an embarrassment for them whether or not there really was a sub.

The political side is that Sweden is not in NATO, as the electorate sees NATO as too global and too likely to draw the country into remote conflicts or the next world war. Russia is the only remotely plausible military threat in the region, so it's the bogeyman NATO will have to use if it wants to lure Sweden in. This incident will be used to argue the Swedish military is inadequate on its own. On the other hand Russia is testing everyone's military capabilities, e.g. Russian planes routinely skirt US airspace. In the 80's Sweden had lots of similar incidents (as well as confirmed ones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents), and those didn't drive Sweden to join NATO. However Swedish society has become a lot less militant since then, abolishing conscription and reducing military budgets, and the memory of Sweden faring splendidly through WWII by staying independent is not as fresh. Eventually Sweden may end up in NATO solely because there isn't political will to do anything else.

If Sweden were to join NATO that could have implications for the neighboring Finland, which isn't in NATO either but still has conscription. Finland is the buffer between Sweden and Russia, so it is a given Finland would have an independent Sweden's backing.

Another thing is that there's much trade between Finland and Russia, and it's certainly old hat in Finland to fish for benefits by being the one European country that's not overtly russophobic. Finland even has much Russian military equipment.

Also, this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B19kYo80yec , though I don't really remember its backstory. (The RT article linked in the description seems to be reporting on a Swedish site reporting on that video, and the link to the Swedish site is broken.) But the impression I have got is that Russian media is overall unashamed in reporting on Russian interests abroad.

This looks like hunt for Loch Ness monster :)

Yes! I've seen clearer Loch Ness's monster pictures :D

And downvoted! (despite the comment being truly (y)) Hilarious :)

I've read through the FAQ and I don't understand downvotes here. As I'm quite new, can you explain to me the reason of this particular downvote?

Never read the FAQ, honestly, but I think this must be covered in the classified Cold War appendix :)

I did not personally downvote you, but you were likely downvoted because the HN community generally does not favorably view comments which only contain jokes/humor (or comments which complain about being downvoted).

There must be a huge overlap with this c-ty: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-w...

It does, the photo looks a lot like a person in a kayak to me. Presumably they've analysed the image and can give the scale of the object though?

The other evidence may well be a submarine, I wouldn't know.

I think we have Cold War fashionistas downvoting people here for not being correctly aligned with aircraft carriers

This is the "conclusive evidence": http://www.forsvarsmakten.se/siteassets/6-aktuellt/nyheter/2...

That's not the claim. On the press conference they showed those images to give two individual examples to the public. They hold that the strongest evidence is classified.

Yea, sounds more reasonable. The quote was actually from the Swedish press (not the gov), and they seem to have gone a bit overboard with their description of the evidence.

Or rather:

> The submarine's presence was picked up by military sensors, Goransson said. Supporting evidence, he said, included a picture showing a bubble pattern typical of a diving submarine and a sonar image of tracks on the sea floor.

Here are the ideas this propaganda piece is meant to sink into Swedes' heads:

    - Russians are scary and bad. We're on the good guys' side.
      (The good guys are NATO and the West in general, of course)
    - We need to increase our military spending.
    - We need to join NATO.

I suspect recent Russian behaviour might make NATO membership a lot more popular all of a sudden.

Russian behaviour such as ... ? There have been plenty of allegations, that's true - but zero proof. It's sad how western media have completely failed to ask for any proof and have just been blowing NATO's political horn.

There's no proof that Russia forcibly annexed Ukraine? What newspaper have you been reading?

What can you possibly mean? Russian troops and tanks entered the Ukraine by the thousands. Even after the 'withdrawal' some remain. What were they doing there, picking flowers?

You guys make me laugh. Such ridiculous statements that display complete ignorance for the situation in the Ukraine (which has not been annexed, perhaps you mean Crimea, which voted to become independent from Ukraine) speak for themselves, nothing more to add. It's sad that some of these people can downvote based on their "knowledge".

Upvoted. Ministry of Truth is doing its job very well (on the other part of the world).

I'm not sure if you've heard about a recent "civil war" between ukraine and russian "separatists"....

> russian "separatists"....

They are called "pro-russian separatists".

They also seem to be pretty russian themselves.

They annexed this place called Crimea a little while back, you may have read about it in the papers. And a little while before that they went an invaded a country called Georgia. I honestly can't think of what more you could ask in terms of proof.

Crimeans voted to join Russia though. And the fact that all of this is so controversial is proof of massive reality-distortions by the media.

> It's sad how western media have completely failed to ask for any proof and have just been blowing NATO's political horn.

NATO / "The West" uses its own mainstream media to further its own agenda. Russia uses theirs to further theirs.

The ordinary people on both sides are just bombarded with propaganda.

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