News NATO outlines Internet doomsday plan — researching tech to reroute subsea Internet traffic via satellite in case of attack

[Admin]

NATO wants to ensure the reliability of its internet communications network by ensuring that data can seamlessly switch between undersea cables and satellites in case of any disruption.

NATO outlines Internet doomsday plan — researching tech to reroute subsea Internet traffic via satellite in case of attack : Read more

 

[ThomasKinsley]

I'm not clear on the intended capabilities. Will this reroute all consumer Internet or only military communications? If it's the former, then I wonder how HEIST will handle the traffic.

 

[Blastomonas]

I'm not clear on the intended capabilities. Will this reroute all consumer Internet or only military communications? If it's the former, then I wonder how HEIST will handle the traffic.

I suspect that this is NATO traffic only. Interestingly, i would have thought that they would already have a back up in place.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

I suspect that this is NATO traffic only. Interestingly, i would have thought that they would already have a back up in place.

Back during the Cold War, NATO had dedicated high elevation narrow beam and line-of-sight transmitters and receivers in each NATO nation to serve as a backup communications system but they have all been decommissioned by now.

ACE High NATO Communications System – Subterranea Britannica

Subterranea Britannica is a society devoted to the study and investigation of man-made (including Nuclear Bunkers) and man-used underground places.

www.subbrit.org.uk

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Command_Europe_Highband

NATO also had a command and control bunker network but all the known locations have also been decommissioned.

All I can say for certain is that either NATO no longer has equivalents to these Cold War projects, or they do but are classified so no one knows about them.

 

[Blastomonas]

Back during the Cold War, NATO had dedicated high elevation narrow beam and line-of-sight transmitters and receivers in each NATO nation to serve as a backup communications system but they have all been decommissioned by now.

ACE High NATO Communications System – Subterranea Britannica

Subterranea Britannica is a society devoted to the study and investigation of man-made (including Nuclear Bunkers) and man-used underground places.

www.subbrit.org.uk

NATO also had a command and control bunker network but all the known locations have also been decommissioned.

All I can say for certain is that either NATO no longer has equivalents to these Cold War projects, or they do but are classified so no one knows about them.

This makes sense. It makes less sense to advertise these weaknesses to your enemies, unless of course, one already has good backups in place.

 

[Avro Arrow]

While it's probably a good contingency plan, I don't really see this as being the prime target that the author thinks it is. Any nation with the technology necessary to carry this out would also be a nation that uses the internet itself and they would be crippling themselves just as much as they'd be crippling their target(s).

 

[bit_user]

For commercial internet traffic, satellites can't serve as a viable substitute for transoceanic cables. Therefore, the focus should be on:

• bury sections on continental shelves.
• camouflage - some kind of jacket that makes it harder to locate by sonar, which is probably how you're going to find it in the deep sea.
• prepositioned repair vessels, to rapidly repair damaged sections, following an attack.
• redundancy - stage excess capacity, on multiple paths.
• monitoring - maintain underwater monitoring stations & robotic patrols, near key points of vulnerability.
• retaliation - prepare measures to cut off links to any nation that has the capability & motive to do something like this.

Also, satellites can be taken out by satellite-to-satellite and (I assume) ground-based beam weapons. So, they're really not an ideal fallback. Perhaps maintain a fleet of high-altitude drones that can rapidly deploy a mesh network, as a fallback to that (i.e. for military communications).

BTW, none of this addresses undersea pipelines. Just sayin'

P.S. Does anyone know the tensile strength of these cables? I'm just imaging the kind of stress and strain they must be under, due to ocean currents, their own weight, and all the crud that probably sticks to them.

 

[bit_user]

While it's probably a good contingency plan, I don't really see this as being the prime target that the author thinks it is. Any nation with the technology necessary to carry this out would also be a nation that uses the internet itself and they would be crippling themselves just as much as they'd be crippling their target(s).

I can think of several nations with the capability and motive to do this that are already sufficiently isolated that they wouldn't be nearly as crippled as their adversaries, by such a move.

At the UN, Russia proposed to outlaw any weapon in space (not just WMD) but was rejected (Link)

Seems like a way to shift the blame onto others for what you're doing. If they don't trust Russia not to adhere to the treaty, then signing it would just put them at a disadvantage.

 

[USAFRet]

While it's probably a good contingency plan, I don't really see this as being the prime target that the author thinks it is. Any nation with the technology necessary to carry this out would also be a nation that uses the internet itself and they would be crippling themselves just as much as they'd be crippling their target(s).

If, over a decade, you've prepared your military to operate without the commercial "internet", you are better prepared to exist if it goes away.

Would some of your ops be degraded? Sure.
But if you've already laid out basic workarounds, your vulnerability is lessened.

 

[Avro Arrow]

If, over a decade, you've prepared your military to operate without the commercial "internet", you are better prepared to exist if it goes away.

Would some of your ops be degraded? Sure.
But if you've already laid out basic workarounds, your vulnerability is lessened.

I hadn't thought of that but it does make perfect sense. 👍