This post is to bring to your attention that something has happened recently that has almost certainly caused concern and sleepless nights for many people. It may sound innocuous if a little aggressive but it may actually signal that something important is about to happen. The particular event involves the silencing of a Norwegian underwater sensor system which probably had the ability to track Russian submarines which work very hard not to be tracked.
See the following story. These people have a good reputation for discussing things of interest without using secret sources.
Even when rivals do not intend to go to war, they do things we might call provocative and not all that trusting or friendly. So for example, since WW2 we have flown jets somewhere close to the Russian border to see how long it takes for their radar to light up, where they are, and a bunch of what is sometimes called "signals intelligence", which means we may not know what they are saying but we know they are talking. Russia might fly a strategic bomber towards the UK to see how long it takes for them to be intercepted. This is all normal peacetime activities. If you want peace, they say, prepare for war. So far so good. But there is more to it than that. When JFK was assassinated and people asked why the pentagon did not go on alert, the guy in charge of that said something like "the board was clear", the board probably referring to something called NMIC. in other words, yes, the president had been assassinated which could be the opening stage of a war, but none of the other things they look for had happened. What sort of things? Well there is a list of things. Assassinations for example, mobilization of the ground forces which are in maneuver near the border. Important reconnaissance systems becoming inoperative. The satellites go dark. The relevant embassy or embassies starts destroying classified material. All of these things happen now and then, sometimes for innocent reasons (e.g. a satellite went dark but thats because it simply broke, no need to get your panties in a bunch over it.) But there is more history here.
When Israel was about to do the 1967 preemptive strike they told us to take a listening post, a ship in the Mediterranean, away. We refused or ignored them and they blew up the USS Liberty so that we could not hear the fighters being scrambled for Egypt (even if we did not know what the pilots were saying, they wanted surprise so no warnings). There is a fuzzy line between what you might normally do, try to catch spies for example, and things you might do if you were about to attack and needed tactical surprise (or in some cases strategic surprise, a whole other thing). Its one thing for Russia to roll up an amphibious tank onto a beach in Sweden to spy on a naval base in the middle of the night, but its a whole other thing to cut underwater cables, revealing they have that ability, which is a big deal independent of the cables actually cut. We knew they had that capability but they had not demonstrated it on operational cables of a strategic listening system by a neighbor. You only do that right before you need to do something you dont want people to see. Something fairly big.
So in deterrence theory we say that if there is nuclear war it is very important to have a few days notice, if you can, because all kinds of things can be moved around for safety. So we keep a 24/7 team in the basement of the pentagon connected to a bunch of different sources to ask what is going on. Are the satellites mysteriously going silent? Have NATO generals suddenly disappeared? Are the bad guys on maneuvers near the border. Are the underwater cables going out?
The job of the people on the ground is to read the clues and form the right conclusions about what is going on. Thats what they get paid for.
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