re: #47 mmmirele

That the translation uses the very specific word bathyscaphe is intriguing to me. A normal sub can’t dive to the depths below a few hundred meters. Bathyscaphes can dive to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. If you were going to cut undersea cables, a bathyscaphe would be the way to go.

The design of these things, as we know of it, is to have several bathyspheres connected together and then covered with a more conventional submarine shell that’s unpressurized. It can descend to multiple thousands of meters. Two of its possible missions would be intercepting communications on undersea cables or destroying them. There’s some satellite communications backup for these cables, but it’s expensive and would be only for high priority communications. Cutting the cables would cripple internet communications.

There was some talk about this vessel (the Losharik) trying to retrieve a nuclear powered submarine drone. I don’t know if this is the case.

Whatever they were doing, fire on a submarine is a submariner’s worst nightmare and it would have been a horrible way to go.