For the problem of overhead line broken strand identification, a VMD−SSA−SVM-based overhead transmission line broken strand identification method is proposed. First, the vibration acceleration response signal of overhead transmission line under breeze environment was simulated by Ansys simulation software. Then the variable modal decomposition of the vibration acceleration response of the transmission line is performed to obtain the intrinsic mode function corresponding to the vibration behavior of the transmission line. The Hilbert transform is used to analyze the intrinsic mode functions of each order, and the Hilbert spectrum and marginal spectrum of the intrinsic mode functions of each order are studied to extract the first six order intrinsic frequencies. Each set of intrinsic frequencies is input as a feature vector into a support vector machine optimized by the sparrow search algorithm for training to achieve the identification of broken strands in overhead transmission lines. This paper studies the inherent frequency changes and identification results of overhead transmission lines under two states of normal operation and broken 5 strands operation, and the test results show that the identification method based on VMD-SSA-SVM has good identification effect on broken strands of overhead lines.