[Oldmanmatt]

"If built, the 4,000 km (2,500 miles) cable will be the world's longest undersea power cable, and would supply up to 8% of the UK's electricity consumption."

Does anyone else see this and just think, "fuck me, that's a massive national security liability"?

Not just you. It was the “attacks” on cables (comms and power) and pipelines, that lead to me being “called” back into the mob in 2020. UK has spent a lot on this issue since then. Look at the RFA’s new ships, like Proteus.

[Johnny Brown]

Wow, big project! Some deep water too, the easy thing about the North Sea is it is so shallow.

[stone]

That got me Googling to find this about a deep sea transmission cable https://www.offshore-energy.biz/industry-first-as-prysmian-installs-hvdc-cable-in-waters-over-2000-meters-deep/

[tomtom]

HVAC cables are big... this isn't like a thin bundle of fibre optics in an armoured cable.. You'd need to do a bit more than drag an anchor through that to bust it...

(I'd imagine - OMM I suspect you have a better idea!)

Wonder if the project is now dead in the water with the change of govt and the increased likelihood of solar farms etc.. in the UK.. Wholesale battery prices have dropped by 50% in the last year - so large scale battery storage with out own increased wind/solar capability might be cheaper to provide that 8%....

[teestub]

HVAC cables are big... this isn't like a thin bundle of fibre optics in an armoured cable.. You'd need to do a bit more than drag an anchor through that to bust it...

(I'd imagine - OMM I suspect you have a better idea!)

Yeah i imagine Will was thinking more along these lines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabotage

[Will Hunt]

Indeed. I can imagine it being feasible to patrol the southern end of the North Sea, but less so the entire route through different country's/international waters from the north coast of Africa to the UK!

[Oldmanmatt]

HVAC cables are big... this isn't like a thin bundle of fibre optics in an armoured cable.. You'd need to do a bit more than drag an anchor through that to bust it...

(I'd imagine - OMM I suspect you have a better idea!)

Yeah i imagine Will was thinking more along these lines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabotage

First the caveat:
I’m not Bond, nor some super soldier, just a Marine Engineer with a mixed gas, scuba (not surface supported) diving background. I used to do support role stuff in that field in the RN, in the 90s. The RN lost that expertise by the early 2000s due to cut backs and lack of perceived need.

Around the mid 2010s, suspect “devices” (some quite large) started turning up on cables in the North Atlantic, so deep they could be sonar imaged but not removed or really examined. Eventually some people/a submarine was caught/observed “collecting” one of these devices. Whether or not one was recovered by Western agencies and a panic ensued at the potential of some of these devices to monitor communication or, perhaps, disrupt such; I couldn’t say.
However, various groups were formed to devise/present potential countermeasures and security strategies for this problem.
I was recruited by one of these groups, with a plan to reactivate the mothballed, batch one, River Class patrol boats as rapidly deployable platforms for ROV/SOF operations, to be largely civilian crewed because of RN manpower and skills issues.
Anyway, after two years of planning, Covid interruptions and MOD stupidity, we got kicked into “budgetary review” (read cancelled and the RFA’s bid (actually a better long term proposition if way more expensive) got the nod. I was approached by the RFA as we were leaving the “Axe” meeting and two weeks later, back in uniform (pending security clearance). I quit after a year, because I was less than impressed by the RFA’s , uh, “organisational abilities”…

Anyway, the threat is real and I don’t need to specify who poses that threat. They have invested heavily in subsea operations even as their surface fleet has degraded to irrelevancy. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say we have been engaged in a fairly quiet “Cold War” with this nation for around a decade and the events in Ukraine are just a spark of that war which has blown up more than either side anticipated.
NATO has largely been caught napping, since the ‘War on Terror” and “policing” seemed the future of global armed conflict and things like Navies had started to look pointless. Young people are not particularly interested in Military life and the BS, long deployment/separation, shit living conditions, poor pay that goes with it; particularly in a Naval context. Even if we do finally get a fleet (and it’s being built rapidly) manning it requires a huge shift in attitude and approach by the MOD/RN. Dragging the RFA into a more military footing has resulted in huge loss of manpower, for instance.
Did you ever wonder why our new Carrier fleet can’t go very far and spends most of its time in port? Not enough people and that these carriers actually needed a support fleet of supply ships/tankers that never got built (now beginning, but ten years from launch) plus a fleet of screen/protection warships, the first of which won’t be operational for at least another five years…
Anyway, any rumours that we are essentially at the mercy of our foe and suggestions that this blackmail over the vulnerability of our comms and and pipelines, might be why why “sanctions” have been mainly a PR exercise, are a vile, baseless, slander…

I know Stone, why can’t we all just get along, eh?

[stone]

The big advantage of the UK-Morocco link is that it is far enough for there to be limited correlation in the weather at the ends. It is quite normal to have the same weather pattern across eg all of North Western Europe.

In the UK about twice a year we have have a weather pattern such that there is limited renewables over a two week period. If you're saying electricity storage is a fix for that, get your calculator out. It would be >5TWh-ish. That is way beyond batteries or  the pumped hydro geographical possibility. Power-to-gas-power has terrible round trip efficiencies and cost, Perhaps liquid air energy storage might be scaled up to that though. https://highviewpower.com/
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2013.08.077

So everything that can be done to chip away at that issue is to be greatly welcomed IMO, including links to Morocco. Floating far offshore wind with few lull periods is also great. Same with developing unconventional high altitude wind (kites)  or even space-based 24hr solar transmitted back to Earth etc etc.

Grid scale batteries are used more for frequency response. They replicate what is done by the inertia of all the rotating machinery of synchronous generators such as hydro, nuclear, gas, coal etc. They enable a higher penetration of asynchronous wind and solar onto the grid. 

[stone]

I know Stone, why can’t we all just get along, eh?

It is possible to at the same time recognise that Russia is bad and we need to defend ourselves and also aim to improve relations and recognise that what we have done in the past hasn't always helped.

[seankenny]

and recognise that what we have done in the past hasn't always helped.

The old lie of NATO expansion from the far left and right will never die; it’s too much a part of their identity. It remains a fundamentally pro-Russia view, however, with also a little bit of xenophobia. Those little Russians don’t have any ideology or agency of their own y’know!

[Wellsy]

Since at least the 90s Europe has outsourced national defence to the US and increasingly it's turning out to have been a pretty shit idea.

I'm a big lefty but I really do think that the UK needs to invest heavily in actual, practical defence. Not things like counting money to Ukraine as defence spending towards our GDP target; actually recruiting people, getting the kit we need etc. I think we were daft to ever let those things slip away.

Like, to me its pretty shocking that as an island nation we allowed our Navy to lose the expertise to deal with threats to things like deep sea communication lines and power cables.

[teestub]

Did you ever wonder why our new Carrier fleet can’t go very far and spends most of its time in port? Not enough people and that these carriers actually needed a support fleet of supply ships/tankers that never got built (now beginning, but ten years from launch) plus a fleet of screen/protection warships, the first of which won’t be operational for at least another five years…

As I understand we don’t actually have any jets to go on the carriers either, is that true?
Part of the problem seems to be procurement for these things, quotes and timescales seem to come in but then the actual costs and timetables bear no resemblance to these!

[Johnny Brown]

I've seen plenty of F-35B in the air the last few years (that's fifth generation Top Gun fans!) so we do have some, operational on carriers since 2020. Long history but lead times not ridiculous considering demand, plus British Aerospace were a partner in its development. (My son is obsessed with planes...)

[Oldmanmatt]

Did you ever wonder why our new Carrier fleet can’t go very far and spends most of its time in port? Not enough people and that these carriers actually needed a support fleet of supply ships/tankers that never got built (now beginning, but ten years from launch) plus a fleet of screen/protection warships, the first of which won’t be operational for at least another five years…

As I understand we don’t actually have any jets to go on the carriers either, is that true?
Part of the problem seems to be procurement for these things, quotes and timescales seem to come in but then the actual costs and timetables bear no resemblance to these!

I believe there are 30 in service, split between RN and RAF (and all capable of carrier ops) and either 47 or 75 to be delivered this year, but I had to google that. Last I heard anything from inside, there were enough for one carrier, but they were augmented by US Marine and USN flights.
Something like 130 in the overall order (by end 2025 I think), though we crashed one already…

[teestub]

Ah cool yeah I’ve seen these flying down our valley, didn’t realise they didn’t require a separate carrier version. $100 mill a pop!

[Oldmanmatt]

So…
All this talk about UK’s Comms/Cyber security (and pipelines) but actually it didn’t need “bad actor” rouge nations and high tech devices deployed at extreme depth to bring down the global network.
A dodgy line of code in a security update, buggers entire planet.

[seankenny]

I think modern Russia is more brown than rouge.

(Please don’t edit that Matt as I think rouge nation is a fantastic description!)

[stone]

Seems to me post WWII treatment of West Germany and Japan by the West is a lesson from history in exemplary foreign relations. The world gained two wonderful countries both in terms of what it is like for people there and also in what they do for the rest of the world.

Everyone pretty much agrees that post WWI treatment of Germany is a lesson from history in calamitous, inept  foreign relations. People after WWII took that lesson and learnt from it and so acted very very differently after WWII. It is well worth reflecting on what was done back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander_for_the_Allied_Powers#Transforming_Japan

After the fall of the Soviet Union, things could have gone various different ways. Of course people there had agency and played their part. But it seems to me way off to claim that the west played no part. We sent advisors over there, their advice was followed to a large extent. Ever since, what we have done and not done has contributed to how the situation has developed. From what I can see, all that we have done has steered Russia into becoming ever worse. And I don't agree that we didn't have a choice in that and I do think there are lessons to learn. And I agree that we need a better Navy to cope with that mess.

[seankenny]

The shock treatment policy was dumb*. But what does that have to do with Putin’s choice to engage in imperial conquest and to refuse to accept the modern state system? Russia is richer than Ukraine so it’s not as if there is an economic rationale for invading. You are basically using this defensible argument about economic policy in the 1990s as a cover for your much shakier argument about defence policy in the 2000s and 2010s.

Your comparison with Germany and Japan also ignores the fact that they were fairly well developed countries before the war, whereas Russia’s development (as I understand it) stalled in the 1970s. The USSR was, by its end, a broke petrostate and countries with lots of natural resources tend to easily fall into an extractive and predatory system. That tends to be fairly independent of the policy of outside actors.





* With the proviso that it was a completely new situation, of course. No one had ever turned a communist country into a capitalist one before.

[Oldmanmatt]

I think modern Russia is more brown than rouge.

(Please don’t edit that Matt as I think rouge nation is a fantastic description!)

Bloody fat fingers and autocorrect! Bane of my life…

[Oldmanmatt]

Seems to me post WWII treatment of West Germany and Japan by the West is a lesson from history in exemplary foreign relations. The world gained two wonderful countries both in terms of what it is like for people there and also in what they do for the rest of the world.

Everyone pretty much agrees that post WWI treatment of Germany is a lesson from history in calamitous, inept  foreign relations. People after WWII took that lesson and learnt from it and so acted very very differently after WWII. It is well worth reflecting on what was done back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Commander_for_the_Allied_Powers#Transforming_Japan

After the fall of the Soviet Union, things could have gone various different ways. Of course people there had agency and played their part. But it seems to me way off to claim that the west played no part. We sent advisors over there, their advice was followed to a large extent. Ever since, what we have done and not done has contributed to how the situation has developed. From what I can see, all that we have done has steered Russia into becoming ever worse. And I don't agree that we didn't have a choice in that and I do think there are lessons to learn. And I agree that we need a better Navy to cope with that mess.

Odd.
Pretty sure the advisors didn’t recommend “you ex-KGB fellas should seize the nations state industries and become an Oligarchy “.

Comparing the fall of the USSR to defeated Germany and Japan? Didn’t we (mostly the US) occupy them?
So, you’re saying the West should have moved militarily on the collapsed Russian state and occupied then rebuilt?
Okaaay…
Most of the Eastern block nations rebuilt themselves into half decent democracies, a few bumps and the odd civil war along the way, but most are in fair nick now.
I wish you could decide whether the West should interfere in other nation’s sovereignty or not.

[stone]

Japan and Germany in 1945 were bombed flat.

The USSR, as was, in 1990 probably had in some ways the best educated population there has ever been in any country ever. Universities etc across the world have benefitted from emigres from there. They had factories, a transport system, utilities etc.

The economic wrecking they then suffered after 1990 played greatly into anti-western sentiment and provided a springboard for malign politicians. The economic system our advisors advocated for quickly led to oligarchy and oligarchs manoeuvre to sacrifice all else in the interests of consolidating their own power - including supporting us-and-them nationalist politicians.

The lesson from post WWI Germany is that imposing a terrible economic situation leads to terrible politics which leads to violence and global threat.

To me, people in the future will see the risks and opportunities of post-soviet reconstruction and come to the conclusion that we screwed up terribly much as was done with post WWI Germany and in contrast to post WWII Germany and Japan.

[stone]

Pretty sure the advisors didn’t recommend “you ex-KGB fellas should seize the nations state industries and become an Oligarchy “.

That wasn't far off.

They advised giving out shares to everyone that could be sold on immediately. Only a few people had much money or nouse about financial markets etc. Those few quickly bought control of everything and became oligarchs. They tended to be ruthless insiders. It was very predictable and predicted.

The advisors had a belief that wealth and power ought to go to whoever had the nouse to grab it. They considered inequality as being conducive to economic efficiency. They were proved very wrong by how their experiment played out. They still now make similar arguments as to what would help for here too.

[Oldmanmatt]

Ah, see that’s really not very accurate and deals mainly in your personal dislike of the capitalist system. Particularly where you cite the “beliefs” of the advisors. Principally, the UN advisors sought to assist in setting up a democratic structure to enable swift elections. A good many capitalist “pirates” swept down on the vulnerable assets, for sure, but few of those outsider held on to their gains for long.
But.
That was equally true in the other former Eastern Block nations.

The powerful former state security apparatus was still powerful, it (or at least certain members of it) used that power to take control both politically and financially. To stop that (because both KGB and GRU were significant military operations, controlling troops and weapons) would have taken military intervention by the UN/West. Bearing in mind that those elements of the former apparatus controlled the bulk of the nuclear arsenal, it’s unsurprising that such a move was dismissed.
Your inability to accept the reality of bullies and ruthless, powerful men and their attraction to large numbers of people is baffling to me.

[stone]

OMM, I just wrote about how splendidly things turned out post WWII in Germany and Japan, so I hardly think it makes sense to say I have a blanket dislike of the capitalist system.

Oligarch take-over of Russia was overseen by western advisors and those advisors subsequently said it wasn't a problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Shleifer#Russian_Project
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/normal_jep.pdf

Saying that the rest of the ex-Warsaw Pact countries have done fine seems fairly dubious to me. Look at a timeline of 1990 until now and compare that to a time line for economic development of Germany and Japan from 1945 onwards.

Regarding Eastern Europe not becoming anti-Western as Russia has done, we treated them as friends from 1990 onwards whilst we rapidly started treating Russia as an enemy.

I'm interested, do you agree with the widely held view that post WWI treatment of Germany contributed to how things developed there?