Forces chief: Russian navy could cut British internet cables

RUSSIA poses a threat to Britain’s internet access and trade because under-sea communications cables are vulnerable to its navy, the head of the Armed Forces has warned.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach last night said the “modernised” Russian navy had the ability to disrupt the cables and that the UK must bolster its own naval forces to counter the threat.

His warning comes amid a row over defence spending, with sources pointing out that the UK has had no submarine-hunting aircraft since 2010, while the number of ships and submarines which could protect the cables had fallen too. The Ministry of Defence is currently lobbying the Treasury for more money it says is needed to shore up Britain’s defences. The Chief of the Defence Staff gave the speech only days after a think tank said an attack on the cables, which carry 97 per cent of the UK’S global communications and an estimated £7 trillion in daily financial transactions, would “cripple” security and commerce, with the threat “nothing short of existential”.

Sir Stuart told the Royal United Services Institute: “There is a new risk to our way of life which is the vulnerability of the cables that criss-cross the seas. Imagine a scenario where those cables are cut or disrupted which would immediately and potentially catastrophically affect … our economy and other ways of living.”

Russia is known to be building new submarine equipped military“deep sea research” ships that are believed to be spying on the worldwide grid of cables.