The recent news of four undersea fiber optic cables being cut between the U.S. and Europe has caught the attention of many people.
Some see it as retribution for the U.S., while others blame Russia.
The importance of submarine fiber optic cables cannot be overstated.
Submarine cables are cables wrapped in insulating material and laid on the ocean floor for telecommunications transmission.
Submarine cables are divided into submarine communication cables and submarine power cables. Modern submarine cables use fiber optics as the material to transmit telephone and Internet signals.
Undersea cables are an important power base for connecting the Internet around the world, carrying more than 90% of the world's Internet data transmission.
Once the submarine fiber optic cable is disrupted, it will have an incalculable impact on the operation of the global Internet.
Therefore, the safety of submarine fiber optic cables has been a major concern.
In April this year, Norway's submarine fiber optic cable was cut off and 4.3 kilometers of fiber optic cable disappeared.
And according to Hersh's revelation, Norway was the accomplice of the United States in the Nord Stream incident. This incident aroused speculation.
Then, Russian intelligence produced and made public a map of the U.S. undersea fiber optic cables and claimed that Russia could cut them.
This move elicited a strong reaction from the United States and Europe.
However, shortly thereafter, four fiber optic cables between the U.S. and Europe were cut, including three to France and one to the United Kingdom.
Both the U.S. and Europe blamed Russia, while Russia denied it.
This incident has once again raised concerns about the safety of submarine fiber optic cables.
The security of submarine fiber optic cables has become part of international politics.
Russia's operation, which is learned from the United States, is purely here and there, and the threat is full of implications. If the U.S. and Europe are deeply involved in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Russia can not be ruled out to continue to "cut" the fiber optic cable between the U.S. and Europe.
Russia published the information about the U.S. submarine cable, on the one hand, is equivalent to calling on the global anti-American forces to attack the U.S. submarine cable together, on the other hand, is also for the future to shirk responsibility to prepare for the pavement.
The submarine cable project is recognized as a complex and difficult large-scale project by countries all over the world, so much so that there are still many countries in the world that are not able to build submarine cables on their own.
Because of the difficulty of laying, the maintenance and repair costs of submarine cables are also very high.
In shallow seas, such as water depth of less than 200 meters in the sea cable is buried, while in the deep sea is used to lay.
Hydro-jet burial is the main burial method.
The bottom of the buried equipment has several rows of water jets, parallel distribution on both sides, operating, each hole at the same time to the seafloor jet high-pressure water column, the seafloor mud and sand will be washed away, and the formation of the cable trench.
The upper part of the equipment has a cable guide hole, used to guide the cable to the bottom of the cable trench, by the tide will automatically fill the trench.
The buried equipment is towed forward by the construction vessel, and various instructions are made through the working cable.
The cable laying machine generally does not have underwater burial equipment, relying on the self-weight of the cable laid on the surface of the sea floor.
Once the cable problems, in the vast ocean, from a depth of several hundred meters or even several thousand meters to find the diameter of the sea bed less than 10 cm of the cable, as a needle in a haystack.
Then detecting the fracture point of the fiber optic cable, salvaging it, re-connected it, and putting it back on the sea floor, its technical difficulty can be imagined.
Compared with land cables, submarine cables have the following advantages
1 Laying does not require digging a trench or supporting with brackets, thus less investment and faster construction.
2 In addition to the landing lot, the cable is mostly in a certain depth of the seabed, not subject to damage by the natural environment such as wind and waves and interference from human production activities, so the cable is safe and stable, strong anti-interference ability, and good confidentiality performance.
Submarine communication cables are mainly used for long-distance communication networks, usually for submarine cables.
Long-distance between islands, cross-sea military facilities, and other more important occasions.
Submarine power cable laying distance is much shorter than the communication cable, mainly used between land islands, across rivers or harbors, from land connected to drilling platforms or drilling platforms connected, etc.
In general, the application of submarine cables to transmit electricity is undoubtedly more expensive than the same length of overhead cables, but it is often more economical than the use of small and isolated power stations for regional power generation, and more benefits in offshore areas. In countries with more islands and rivers, such cables are more widely used.