NATO Backs Effort To Save Internet by Rerouting To Space in Event of Subsea Attacks (bloomberg.com) 64
NATO is helping finance a project aimed at finding ways to keep the internet running should subsea cables shuttling civilian and military communications across European waters come under attack. From a report: Researchers, who include academics from the US, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland, say they want to develop a way to seamlessly reroute internet traffic from subsea cables to satellite systems in the event of sabotage, or a natural disaster. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Science for Peace and Security Programme has approved a grant of as much as $433,600 for the $2.5 million project, and research institutions are providing in-kind contributions, documents seen by Bloomberg show.
Eyup Kuntay Turmus, adviser and program manager at the NATO program, confirmed the project was recently approved and said by email that implementation will start "very soon." The initiative, which hasn't yet been publicly announced, comes amid intensifying fears that Russia or China could mine, sever or otherwise tamper with undersea cables in an attempt to disrupt communications during a military crisis. Data carried through cables under the sea account for roughly $10 trillion worth of financial transactions every day, and nearly all of the NATO's internet traffic travels through them, according to the treaty organization. As a result, NATO has been ramping up efforts to protect cables over the course of the past several months.
Eyup Kuntay Turmus, adviser and program manager at the NATO program, confirmed the project was recently approved and said by email that implementation will start "very soon." The initiative, which hasn't yet been publicly announced, comes amid intensifying fears that Russia or China could mine, sever or otherwise tamper with undersea cables in an attempt to disrupt communications during a military crisis. Data carried through cables under the sea account for roughly $10 trillion worth of financial transactions every day, and nearly all of the NATO's internet traffic travels through them, according to the treaty organization. As a result, NATO has been ramping up efforts to protect cables over the course of the past several months.
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It's far easier to drag an anchor across a cable bundle than it is to reach up about 250 miles and hit something the size of a dishwasher flying along at 18,000 mph.
There's like less than 10 countries that could even dream of taking out a satellite, and only 3 or so that have actually demonstrated the capability.
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There's like less than 10 countries that could even dream of taking out a satellite, and only 3 or so that have actually demonstrated the capability.
Unfortunately at least a couple of those are strong suspects when it comes to recent cases of undersea cable damage - such as the one which impacted Vietnam.
On the plus side, a state actor taking out such a satellite would probably have a hard time plausibly denying it.
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I imagine a state actor would also go after satellites.
You don't have to imagine. It is doctrine on all capable sides to take out the satellites. A few nuclear bombs in space would destroy pretty much all satellites. A high altitude nuclear bomb would prevent any communication with any satellites without destroying any satellites.
Long story short, you will see nuclear warfare soon, but the large bombs will not be for cities (mostly. New York and D.C. will certainly get several large bombs.).
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I, Karnak the Magnificent, see the future in this respect.
comm lasers communicating with Europe? from North America????? depending on the height of the towers at each end you would need repeaters every 25 miles or so (300 foot tall tower at e
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... of course you could bounce your signals off of the Moon, but I expect a low data rate for that, at best, not including simplex operation required.
I mean, you could do that. This would only work for about 7 hours a day as that's when the moon would be in a place in orbit that lasers could get to it without atmospheric distortion. Then the latency would be about 3.6 seconds, making any realtime comms next to impossible.
So yeah. Not really a good idea.
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... of course you could bounce your signals off of the Moon, but I expect a low data rate for that, at best, not including simplex operation required.
More likely the US would launch a few X-37B in non-traditional orbits with payloads of communications gear. And these X-37B would be more maneuverable that a traditional comms satellite.
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good point, they could do something like that, though I doubt the X-37B has the infrastructure built in to allow for the external antennas they would need for this tasking
I would guess that any antennas necessary would be part of the equipment in the payload bay and would be visible when the payload bay doors open. I think there is a robotic arm option too.
More satellites, at lower orbit, ... (Score:2)
Both Russia and China (as well as the USA) have displayed, publicly, the ability to destroy satellites in space. I suspect strongly that should any war break out with them that withing minutes of the war starting bunches of satellites would become orbiting debris.
Older designs at higher orbit. We are moving to newer designs at lower orbits with far more nodes. We're starting to launch nodes that can directly communicate with 5G smartphones.
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I mean, they both have rockets capable of reaching GEO/MEO, but they cost more and take more time to put on the pad/fuel up/etc. Does Russia currently have any mobile launchers with rockets capable of GEO aboard? I think those were designed for terrestrial targets, so no need to go anywhere near that altitude, hence why I say to p
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Both Russia and China (as well as the USA) have displayed, publicly, the ability to destroy satellites in space. I suspect strongly that should any war break out with them that withing minutes of the war starting bunches of satellites would become orbiting debris.
Older designs at higher orbit. We are moving to newer designs at lower orbits with far more nodes. We're starting to launch nodes that can directly communicate with 5G smartphones.
All the new improved low orbit sats do is make it take a smaller rocket to launch a bag of sand or ball bearings into a retrograde orbit. Take the number of countries that can orbit that into the same orbital shells, and that's how many countries can take out many satellites. The bonus is that each destroyed sat adds to the carnage.
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All the new improved low orbit sats do is make it take a smaller rocket to launch a bag of sand or ball bearings into a retrograde orbit. Take the number of countries that can orbit that into the same orbital shells, and that's how many countries can take out many satellites. The bonus is that each destroyed sat adds to the carnage.
The newer designs are also easier to replace.
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Lasers between the continents is too impractical. Combine tropospheric scatter and enough ships, you might be able to build a microwave relay system, but the cost would be horrendous and obviously extremely vulnerable to enemy action. If you are wondering what I'm imagining, think multiple White Alice type links across the Atlantic.
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Just a kickback to some Nato Fellas (Score:1)
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Wave off the hand wavers.
Re:Just a kickback to some Nato Fellas (Score:4, Insightful)
Starlink does require the undersea cables to have any reasonable bandwidth. The ground stations are connected back to fiber. If they have to rely solely on satellite to satellite communication to replace an undersea cable they'll find about the same impossibility as NATO at achieving the needed bandwidth.
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and the autonomy to be self-operated and not be at the whims of a petulant baby CEO who cozies up to autocrats like Putin.
You forgot about that one, and it's pretty important from a national security perspective.
Space Junk (Score:2, Interesting)
Russia has effectively threatened to shred Starlink's orbit with anti-satellite weaponry if Starlink is used to target Russian territory.
That would really suck. People need to calm the fuck down (vs voting to rearm Azov, like Congress).
Probably why there's a rush to IPO too.
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The surface area of the entire low earth orbit field is actually more square miles than Earth itself on land. You'd have to use enough nukes to burn the entire planet to hit them all. They're not all in the same place and they are all moving.
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Found the guy who doesn't understand the relationship of radius to spherical volume.
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Cool. Now tell me how a nuclear weapon detonating on "Side A" of the planet is going to do anything about the larger-than-50% of the satellites or so that aren't in line of sight of that high-altitude explosion because there's a planetary body in the way, to say nothing of the ramifications of expressing a high-altitude nuclear detonation and resultant EMP on the earth's surface below, where the EMP effects aren't going to care a whole lot about national boundaries or flags on other satellites also within
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Re: Space Junk (Score:2)
The US can field aircraft which can provide military communications. Losing satellites would be bad, but not a deal breaker.
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No, I feel high and mighty dismissing your cavalier attitude towards the release of nuclear weapons, thinking that the rest of the world wouldn't immediately pound the nation that does so into a thin red paste if there's anything of humanity left after the fact.
There's a really good reason no nukes have been used in anger since Nagasaki - namely that when more than one country has the ability to use them, every single country is vulnerable no matter how many you've got as long as the world collectively deci
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Not if they use nuclear weapons.
Or retrograde orbit ball bearings. Or even a bag of sand.
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Take a while to destroy the 7,000 or so already in orbit.
Actually, there was a military study done on this. With just a very small number of precise hits, you could cascade fail enough of the network that it would stop working. Remember, only a small number of Starlinks com with ground uplinks. The rest are paperweights without them.
Additionally, there was another option tossed to simply put random debris in the same orbit and they entire network would just obliterate itself as more and more debris from the crashes littered the sky.
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Remember, only a small number of Starlinks com with ground uplinks. The rest are paperweights without them.
Even with the newer inter-satellite links, any one of them can be switched to be a concentrator for the others. At worst you'd have to wait for manual communication to make this happen, but really that would already have to be automatic to account for positioning anyway.
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Take a while to destroy the 7,000 or so already in orbit.
Actually, there was a military study done on this. With just a very small number of precise hits, you could cascade fail enough of the network that it would stop working. Remember, only a small number of Starlinks com with ground uplinks. The rest are paperweights without them.
Additionally, there was another option tossed to simply put random debris in the same orbit and they entire network would just obliterate itself as more and more debris from the crashes littered the sky.
Exactly. To have an operable space borne satellite system, peace or at least countries understanding that destroying satellites is both relatively simple and scorched earth (space) at the same time. Whoever destroys LEO for a long time will be a pariah, probably.
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Russia has threatened a lot of things to no effect. How many times have they claimed they'll be "forced" to use nuclear weapons if Ukraine is provided with weapons to defend itself?
That would really suck. People need to calm the fuck down (vs voting to rearm Azov, like Congress).
Yes, Vadim. A highly nationalist organization defending its country is such a
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Goddamn right. (Score:2)
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How does molten lead transmission speed compare to a stationwagon full of backup tapes?
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Probably should mount a long, hard simulacr
It's a Paper Study to Find What Already Exists (Score:3)
That's how the Internet works now!
That will be $400,000 please!
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Re: It's a Paper Study to Find What Already Exists (Score:2)
I was thinking that. It's a feature already. Wtf?
Alternatives (Score:2)
Really, Really Big (Score:2)
Microwave Towers, tall enough to shoot data between Europe, Iceland and/or Greenland, and North Americay.
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Alternatively, we could institute a giant trebuchet program that would launch station wagons full of backup tapes into sub-orbital trajectories across the cold, gre/ay Atlantic.
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Ping times would suck, though.
We're talking hundreds of terabits (Score:3)
It is not hard to envision tethered high altitude balloons with laser satellite links. The real issue is no one is going to pay the $100B+ to create and maintain the satellite constellation in space required to support the bandwidth of the existing cable infrastructure just in case a war results in disrupted cables.
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