Originally Posted by
Video Mixdown
I was wondering about the nature of the threat to undersea cables posed by Russian submarines and how it can be countered short of sinking the sub. Presumably such an attack would require the use of a submersible launched from a mother-sub, which would then have to loiter on station to support the submersible and recover it when the deed was done. Defensive tactics are no doubt highly classified, but maybe in peacetime it'd be something like using disruptive ASW tactics to either prevent the submersible from being launched or to shepherd the mother-sub off-station leaving the deployed submersible and its crew stuffed.
Surely the preferred option is to tap the cables, rather than to break them. A bomb will break any cable efficiently, no need for mini subs to do that.
Both the US as well as Russia have specialized bottom crawling subs whose most plausible routine use is to place and maintain cable tap installations.