Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time for a Starlink backup then
Its the groundstation that needs backing up and the location is surrounded by the sea.
Which Starlink solves utilizing the laser links between satellites.
What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
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Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#182Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
But not over a cable. Submarine cables are clearly marked on nautical charts, and even recreational boaters know not to anchor in those areas. A professional trawler captain is not going to accidentally trawl over such an area.
Fishers are infamous for flaunting the rules though. I think we can only judge this if we see records of other ships in the area.
You can, at least at that specific time that all other boats were not trawling over cables.
Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what trawling is . . . it is completely normally for a trawler to go back and forth like that.
But not over a cable. Submarine cables are clearly marked on nautical charts, and even recreational boaters know not to anchor in those areas. A professional trawler captain is not going to accidentally trawl over such an area.
There's a big difference in seriousness between being able to show whether they were likely doing something they shouldn't be doing for the sake of making more money on the fishing, vs. if they were doing what they were doing with the intent of causing damage, though. But of course, that difficulty is also exactly why it'd also be a great way for an adversary to damage your cables.
Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that right? The C band is only 4 or 5 THz wide, so that's impressive packing. (I'm way out of date, I know there is QAM and whatever.)
Modern DWDM systems use a channel spacing of 75/100 GHz, so you easily fit more than 50 channel in a single fibre.
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Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some gun calibers are measured with inches, so maybe they have some imperial markers on hand to measure bullet casings?
Many measuring devices used in eg Germany have both proper units and Freedom units printed on them. It's probably just easier to have one model that you can sell anyone on the globe. Economics of scale and all that.
I'm Norwegian, and it's very common in Norway as well to have e.g. rulers and other measuring devices with both inches and metric units. It's if anything pretty rare to have just one or the other unless it's a "format" where displaying both affect usability - e.g. make the writing too small.
Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this looks alarming and makes an engaging tweet, I have no idea how regular trawling patterns look like. They might circle around fishing spot.
Dave Barry made a similar observation about antismoking PSAs, objecting to one that had someone throw a diseased lung on a table. He pointed out that you could present any random internal organ and it would look just as bad: " This is what will happen to you if you keep smoking. Look! A perfectly healthy goat kidney!"
Thats what they do. Those lungs are fake, sold by medical supply companies. They just take a healthy pig lung and dye it black and burn holes in it for "tumors".
You can google for places to buy them.
Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its the groundstation that needs backing up and the location is surrounded by the sea.
Which Starlink solves utilizing the laser links between satellites.
You're grossly underestimating the bandwidth needs of the site. You're not going to replace a cluster of fiber optic cables with Starlink.
Re: What the damaged Svalbard cable looked like
#189Just in case why people are wondering why cutting of internet for an arctic island is a big deal. What many might not know is that Svalbard is home to the northernmost satellite station in the world. It is just one of two stations that can communicate with polar orbiting satellites each day. ESA and NASA as well as other civilian organisations are present there, and the station communicates with well over a hundred s…
To be pedantic - most places on Earth can get a contact with a polar orbiting satellite at least once or twice per day, however the number of contacts per day increases the closer you get to the poles. Svalbard is far enough north that you get lots of contacts per day. I forget the exact number and I don't have STK open in front of me to simulate it, but from memory it's something like 15 or so contacts per day for a typical earth observation orbit. This gives you lots of data and relatively frequent contacts to maximize the freshness of the imagery.
There are tons of commercial observation satellite operators that use Svalbard for downlink (downlinks at Svalbard can be procured commercially through a company called KSAT which operates the station). Ukraine has been purchasing a lot of imagery from these companies, including both optical and radar imagery. If I had to hazard a guess at a possible motive, that'd be it.