Russia-linked cable-cutting tanker seized by Finland ‘was loaded with spying equ

[myteaquinn]

https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1151955/Russia-linked-cable-cutting-tanker-seized-by-Finland-was-loaded-with-spying-equipment

[Molvania Poacher]

Thanks MTQ!

Here are some interesting pictures relating to that latest incident:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14232327/Moment-police-boarded-Russian-linked-ship-crammed-spy-gear.html

[NJQA]

I am surprised by how clean the cut is.  It is as if it was sheared rather than torn.  Maybe a specially shaped anchor?

[NJQA]

I am surprised by how clean the cut is.  It is as if it was sheared rather than torn.  Maybe a specially shaped anchor?

One of the locals provided the answer.  The picture of the severed cable is from a different event in July 2024 where a defect in the cable was repaired.  The Daily Mail used the older picture but didn’t clarify that this picture was not from the December event.

https://news.err.ee/1609560733/estlink-2-suspected-fault-location-on-the-bottom-of-the-gulf-of-finland

[BoomboxDX]

The cut still looks pretty clean, almost as if it was done by an anchor with some sort of sawing implement attached.

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

Oh, but it was just an accident.

An accident that has happened four times in the same general area over the past month or so, with four different ships involved. Totally accidental. 

Here's what it takes to drop an anchor on a large ship:

https://youtu.be/TrT1Pl3pR6Y?t=268

[Molvania Poacher]

More archival anchor deployment footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTw5pk6dcX0

[NJQA]

Or this scene from the Battleship movie?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AJKah6-YCY

Yeah, it doesn’t work like that.  No anchor could handle the momentum of a ship underway like that.  Standard practice is to come to all stop prior to deploying an anchor.  After deploying you would back astern to set the anchor.


Back in my active duty days I learned that it wasn’t so much the flukes of the anchor digging into the sea bed that held a ship in place as it was the weight of the chain deployed.  Not all anchors have flukes.  Submarines have mushroom anchors for instance.

Losing an anchor or dragging is not unheard of.  When anchored we were required to regularly take fixes on our position to ensure we weren’t slipping.

Surface ship anchors are visible so if they had a special anchor to cut cables, it would be apparent.

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

Later in that video I posted above, the presenter follows the path of the ship in question in the latest cable severance by GPS positioning, and time stamps are applied per the ship's reporting of position.

There is a brief point after the cable was damaged where the ship slows quite a lot then speeds up again and the presenter speculates that this point may have been where they pulled up the anchor (or whatever device was used to sever the cable). The ship was confronted and seized soon after that point in time by the Swedish Coast Guard.

I agree with Boombox that that cable cut, if those images are actually from one of the cables cut in the Baltic recently, is too clean from just a standard anchor drag. The stress placed upon it by a lateral force such as an anchor pulling on it would cause it to fray at the break, along the lines of a rope or a piece of string being frayed. It would not be a clean cut. That clean cut has to come from some sort of saw, which I guess could be fitted to to an anchor, substituted for an anchor or perhaps dropped from the bow of the boat. It would be interesting to look at the seabed around that cable cut. (I hope that they took photos.)

[NJQA]

I am not sure that the photo you are referring to is the actual break.

I don’t think they have shown a picture of the cable damaged in the latest incident.  I believe the photos shown were from an earlier incident.

It is possible the photos we have seen are from a piece of the cable that was cut out to facilitate repairs.  We may be seeing an end the repair crew cut with a saw.

If the ship had a cutting device of some sort, can you imagine the arc explosion when you cut through and shorted the cable with your cutting device?  I would expect to find the device arc welded to the remenants of the cable.

[NJQA]

The picture here is more like what I would have expected.

https://lieber.westpoint.edu/baltic-sea-cable-cuts-ship-interdiction-c-lion1-incident/

This photo isn’t labeled as to what it actually is of, but it is illustrative of what damage might look like.

Remember that they don’t have to actually sever the cable.  All they need to do is breach it to seawater and there will probably be arcing.

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

I don't believe that these are high-voltage cables carrying power; I was under the impression that these are telecom cables and I presume the cables contain bundles of fiber optic lines. That being the case, I would not expect any sort of explosion, arcing or anything like that.

The folks at either end of the line will notice the received signals drop to zero and that is how they will find out. They will use the loopback circuits (of some sort that I assume they must must have) placed periodically along the cable to find and locate roughly where the interruption is.

[NJQA]

Estlink2 is a HVDC power cable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estlink

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Estlink_2_incident

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

Fair enough, but some of the other incidents involved data cables, e.g., the most recent one between Sweden and Latvia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navibulgar#2025_cable_cutting_incident.

Suffice to say that a mixture of power and telecom cables are being cut. Because I haven't been following every detail on every cut, I wasn't aware that some of the cables were for power until I saw this.