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Protecting undersea cables and new strategic challenges – Firstpost

Protecting undersea cables and new strategic challenges – Firstpost



Over the past two years, there have been major sabotage attacks on European undersea critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. In September 2022, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was blown up.

In October 2023, a Chinese-flagged vessel was suspected of damaging both submarine data cables and a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, while another Chinese vessel was accused of damaging undersea cables near Taiwan in November 2024.

In March 2024, three cables running through the Red Sea had been possibly attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The Red Sea has long been considered a maritime shipping choke point, but it is also an internet and telecommunications bottleneck, with around 90 per cent of communications between Europe and Asia, as well as 17 per cent of global internet traffic, passing through cables under the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Intentional attacks on telecommunication cables were involved in two coordinated incidents in April and October 2022, when multiple cables were cut in southern France. On Christmas Day 2024, the “Estlink 2” submarine power cable between Finland and Estonia broke. Two ships were passing overhead at the time of the incident. Finnish police suspect the “Eagle S”, a vessel en route from Russia to Egypt, was involved.

It is believed the cable broke due to an anchor the ship was dragging along the seabed. NATO will create a new Baltic Sentinel mission to patrol key areas of the Baltic Sea, following a series of incidents involving the rupture of submarine cables.

Cable Laying

Submarine cables are laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea using special cable layer ships. The first submarine communications cables were laid beginning in the 1850s. Modern cables are typically about 25 mm in diameter and weigh around 1.4 tonnes per kilometre. Larger and heavier cables are used for shallow-water sections near shore.

Britain dominated initial cable laying, and the first cable reaching to India from Aden, Yemen, was laid by the British in 1870. In the 1980s, fibre-optic cables were developed. The first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fibre, TAT-8, became operational in 1988. Modern optical fibre repeaters use a solid-state optical amplifier. The total amount of power sent into the cable is often up to 16.5 kW.

Modern cable systems now usually have their fibres arranged in a self-healing ring to increase their redundancy, with the submarine sections following different paths on the ocean floor. Switching and all-by-sea routing commonly increase the distance and thus the round-trip latency.

Global Subsea Cables

Currently, there are about 600 active and planned subsea cables worldwide, stretching over 1.4 million km, connecting literally every country, and providing connectivity for both internet and telecommunications across different regions.

Each cable has an average lifespan of 25 years. 107 new cables costing $13.8 billion were laid between 2016 and 2020. Investments of $18 billion are projected from 2021 to 2025. Undersea cables are expected to remain the primary conduit for most of the world’s internet traffic for the foreseeable future. On these cables rides data for billions of online financial transactions around the globe.

The submarine cable could be damaged through deliberate cyber or physical attacks or accidentally by man-made or natural events. Natural events like undersea volcanic eruptions and tsunamis had caused cable cuts. Implications are strategic. There is an increasing challenge to identify if damage to undersea cables is intentional or an accident.

However, combining undersea cables with satellite technology could offer added resilience and protection against potential cable disruptions. Undersea cables are already being treated as critical infrastructure. There is thus a need to understand protective measures.

Tata Communications’ Global Network (TGN) is the only wholly owned fibre network circling the planet. Big global firms such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft dominate the scene, owning or leasing around half of all undersea bandwidth. Such heavy dependence adds to vulnerability.

Strategic Role of Cables

Subsea cables may carry sensitive government communications and are used to support overseas military operations. They also facilitate more than $10 trillion of financial transactions daily. Nations often covertly tap into the data flowing through them for national security and economic espionage purposes.

Some Recent Cable Attacks

In October 2022, multiple fibre cables were cut in Marseille—a central hub for subsea cables, located in the Mediterranean, with the Atlantic to the west and links to Asia to the east—in a targeted attack.

Several major cables, including the Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1), TGN Atlantic, Europe India Gateway, and the Seacom system, were cut in the Red Sea, causing outages in February 2024, which the Houthis blamed as a reaction to US and British military strikes against them. As a result, four of the 15 severed submarine cables in the Red Sea in February, an estimated 25 per cent of traffic flowing between Asia and Europe was affected.

Cable Protection and Repairs

The newer cables are fibre-optic data pipelines. The fibres themselves are made of wafer-thin glass, but, to keep them safe from common threats, they are encased in a pipe comprising polycarbonate, aluminium, steel wires, and polyethylene.

Accidental cable faults can occur. Most incidents highlight that onshore landing stations remain the most vulnerable point in a cable system to damage or attack, and fortunately, these can be repaired more easily. However, when a deep-sea submerged part of a cable is cut or damaged, repairing it could take several weeks, and this could be a costly exercise, both for repair and disruption impact.

The location of the cut has to be identified. A specialist vessel has to go and repair the fault. Unfortunately, there are only around 60 repair vessels globally. Rough seas can delay the operation.

Vulnerability and National Security

Submarine cables are exposed to a variety of potential threats. Many of these threats are accidental, such as by fishing trawlers, ship anchors, earthquakes, turbidity currents, and even shark bites. Several vulnerabilities of submarine communication cables make them attractive targets for organised crime and military action. The remoteness of these cables in international waters poses significant challenges for continuous monitoring and increases their attractiveness as targets of physical tampering, data theft, and service disruptions.

The cables’ vulnerability is further compounded by technological advancements, such as the development of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), which enable covert cable damage while avoiding detection. However, even low-tech attacks can impact the cable’s security significantly, as demonstrated in 2013, when three divers were arrested for severing the main cable linking Egypt with Europe, drastically lowering Egypt’s internet speed.

Transmitting massive amounts of sensitive data every day, they are essential for both state operations and private enterprises. Disruptions to these cables can lead to communication blackouts and, thus, extensive economic losses.

Interruption of military data on the cable network during intense operations could have direct consequences for the military. An example of state dominance in the global cable infrastructure is China’s ‘Digital Silk Road’ strategy, funding the expansion of Chinese cable networks, with the Chinese company HMN Technologies often criticised for providing networks for other states, holding up to 10 per cent of the global market share.

Chinese investments in critical cable infrastructure are approximately 25 per cent of global submarine cables. The US is trying to counter by supporting alternative projects. Most countries are working on a minimum of three or four different routes to ensure there is no blackout of transmission.

Cyber Security Issues and Counters

Increasingly, sophisticated cyberattacks threaten the data traffic on the cables, with incentives ranging from financial gain, espionage, or extortion by either state actors or non-state actors. Further, hybrid warfare tactics can interfere with or even weaponise the data transferred by the cables. However, attributing an incident to a specific actor or motivation of such an actor can be challenging, specifically in cyberspace.

Cybersecurity strategies for submarine cables, such as encryption, access controls, and continuous monitoring, primarily focus on preventing unauthorised data access but do not adequately address the physical protection of cables in vulnerable, remote, high-seas areas as stated above. Physical security remains important.

Technical Countermeasures

Typically, cables are buried in waters with a depth of less than 2,000 meters. Increasingly, they are also being buried in deeper seabed so as to protect against high seas fishing and bottom trawling. Embedding is also advantageous against physical attacks from organised crime. Other technical solutions are advanced protective casings and monitoring them with UUVs.

Legal Support System

The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) represents key submarine stakeholders and plays a vital role in promoting cooperation and information sharing among stakeholders. As of 2025, a tense US-China relationship complicates this task, especially in the South China Sea, where there are territorial disputes. China has increasing control and influence over global cable networks while both financially supporting cable projects and exerting diplomatic pressure and regulatory action.

Submarine cables are internationally regulated within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but there are implementation challenges. Some scholars argue that UNCLOS should be updated to protect cables extensively, including cooperative monitoring and enforcement protocols.

Given the increased involvement of organisations like NATO, it is recommended to clarify the roles of military and non-military actors in cable security and enhanced multi-level governance models.

Multilateral Efforts

The rising great power competition remains an impediment to global cooperation. In May 2023 the Quad announced a new initiative for undersea cable protection in the Indo-Pacific, called the “Quad Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience”.

Last June Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, argued that Russia has a right to attack subsea cable systems, citing his belief that the West was responsible for sabotage to the Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline in 2022. “If we proceed from the proven complicity of Western countries in blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints, even moral, left to prevent us from destroying the ocean-floor cable communications of our enemies,” he wrote.

NATO announced Operation “Baltic Sentry” in the Baltic Sea to deter attacks on critical undersea infrastructure. It follows a declaration of solidarity between nations at the Baltic Sea NATO Allies Summit in Helsinki on January 14, 2024.

India’s Undersea Cable Network

India’s current subsea cable infrastructure includes 17 international cables landing at 14 distinct stations across five landing city stations at Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin, Tuticorin, and Trivandrum. There are also domestic submarine cables, such as the Chennai-Andaman and Nicobar Island Cable (CANI), connecting Port Blair along with seven other Islands of Andaman & Nicobar, and the Kochi-Lakshadweep Island (KLI) cable system for a direct communication link through a dedicated submarine optical fibre cable between Kochi and 11 Islands of Lakshadweep.

Sify Technologies owns a cable landing station in Mumbai for MENA and GBI submarine cable systems. BSNL owns its first international submarine cable connecting India and Sri Lanka (BLCS) and its cable landing station in Tuticorin.

As of 2023, India’s network had a cumulative capacity of 138.55 terabits per second (tbps), with 111.11 tbps actively in use, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

India’s digital infrastructure is on the verge of a revolutionary transformation, with three significant undersea cable projects expected to go live by March 2025, increasing internet capacity fourfold. These projects, 2Africa Pearls, India-Asia-Express (IAX), and India-Europe-Express (IEX), will ensure faster and more reliable digital connectivity. Reliance Jio is leading these projects with funding from a consortium including Facebook and Google. The IAX (16,000 km) and IEX (9,775 km) cables have 200 tbps of capacity each. The IAX cable will connect Mumbai to key hubs in Southeast Asia. The IEX cable will link India with Europe via the Persian Gulf. Tata Communications owns five cable landing stations, three in Mumbai and one each in Chennai and Cochin.

Blue-Raman connects Italy, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and India; this cable bypasses the Egyptian chokepoint. It has a capacity of over 200 Tbps and is funded by a consortium led by Google. MIST cable will link Mumbai and Cochin in India to Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. It has a capacity of 218 tbps and became operational in 2024. SEA-ME-WE 6 is an upgrade to the link from Singapore to Marseille; this cable spans 19,200 km with a capacity of 126 tbps. It is scheduled to be operational in 2025 and involves a consortium of telecommunications companies.

The 2Africa Pearls project is one of the longest subsea cable systems globally, stretching over 45,000 km and supported by investments from major players like Bharti Airtel and Meta (formerly Facebook). It will allow data transmission capacity of 180 tbps and will connect 33 countries across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, with Airtel’s Mumbai landing station. It has a capacity of 180 tbps and is funded by a consortium that includes Facebook and China Mobile. The boost in internet capacity will greatly improve the quality of services, especially for high-demand applications such as 5G video streaming, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, AI-based services, and cloud computing.

Way Ahead India

The West was implicated in the tapping of cables for surveillance purposes after documents leaked by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden showed leading telecoms firms had given Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters spy agency access to undersea cables. Experts say that Russia too was monitoring undersea cable systems closely.

India has a huge cable network, and capacity and speed will increase significantly. Repairs can be expensive and time-consuming. India has to double secure its cables. Also build multiple redundancies. India must enhance the fault detection and repair facilities. Other than rogue elements, India must closely monitor Chinese and Pakistani maritime activities. China is showing much greater interest in India’s neighbourhood. Both the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman are important choke points. The heavy dependence on the Red Sea and its high vulnerability have to be factored.

India has also to be conscious that a lot of global telecom hardware has origins in China. The situation is not going to change in a hurry. Alternative sourcing and local production must be encouraged.

TRAI has recommended that all Indian telecom companies operating undersea cables must demonstrate ownership of the portion of cables located in Indian waters. TRAI has also proposed that a government committee explore financial viability models for commissioning Indian-flagged ships for the repair and maintenance of undersea cables. Undersea cables are a very important strategic asset. India needs to be conscious. We need to build and protect.

The writer is former Director General, Centre for Air Power Studies. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.



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