Hey CDR! Our boy Jake even got an honorable mention.
Without any real reason per se, IMO it's a bad move to write off the Russians as being too unprofessional or bungling to have done the job themselves as this article implies.
The other question is what motivated Hersch to write his article?
This is the international version of the mueller report:
Everyone knows who did it. The purpose of the sham investigation is to muddy the waters, destroy evidence and avoid naming the perps “by any means necessary.”
It’s an expensive and dishonest misdirection and a total waste of time.
I've figured Ukraine from the get-go. They have the technical know-how. According to my son, who is a pipeline engineer, Ukraine has a university offering one of the few pipeline engineering degrees in Europe. (It may be the only one. The conversation took place a year ago, shortly after Nordstream got ventilated.) They have the motivation. They are the ones that benefit most from the pipelines being down (except for maybe Turkey). Ukraine has been pulling ballsy strikes the whole war.
It is a legitimate military act against a nation which is attacking them. (The gas might be going to Germany, but the pipeline is owned by the Russian government.) It is as legitimate as Britain cutting Germany's transatlantic cables at the beginning of WWI and WWII. Especially since it crippled Russia's ability to use withholding gas as economic blackmail.
Ukraine does not want to admit it now, but when the history of this war are written in 2050, my money is Ukraine will have turned out to have done it.
Well, if unnamed US and European intelligence sources speaking on the condition of anonymity are telling WaPo reporter that there is nothing to see here, then who am I to question my betters?
While some continue to debate who the actual perpetrators might be, let's just assume that the story is somewhat correct. and see if there are any lessons to be learned.
Remember, there are a lot of people from China, Russia, Iran, and even Mexican cartels who know how to swim or sail or could charter one of the thousands of U.S. yachts up for charter.
As the Brit MI6 guy noted:
"The British MI6 chief at least provided a bit of context. He said that we have to be prepared for the fact that underwater attacks are now part of the arsenal of modern warfare. His service therefore informs the British government about its own Achilles' heels, adding that there are quite a few of them. "Seabed warfare," as such underwater operations are called in military jargon, is not just about pipelines for oil and gas. The power lines of offshore wind farms and especially undersea internet cables are also targets – and potentially even easier to destroy since you don't need explosives, just the right tools."
Is anyone in the U.S. military or Law Enforcement community actively seeking to detect and counter any similar threats to U.S. interests? Or, are the still focused on gender pronouns and hunting for phantom white supremacists?
How many hundreds of military age males from hostile countries have been caught crossing our borders, but more importantly how many were "got aways" who have vanished into the interior?
Do not anticipate that Chinese (or Russian)hostilities will necessarily start with a military on military engagement or formal declaration of war. Think instead of plausibly deniable cyber attacks on infrastructure and critical base support,, communications, transportation and navigation systems. Throw in banking, social media, and internet access. Kinetic attacks similar to Nord Stream are also possible, Those are only a few of their available options.
Budanov is very obviously SBS trained and certainly has taken on their audacious flair. So yeah, guess it is a plausible tale.
Some things come to mind:
1. Using a 50 ft sailboat. Folks tend to ignore Little Plastic Toy Boats (LPTBs). Right after the USV hit on the Olengorsky the week before last, a very curious AIS hit showed up southwest of Crimea, where a Russian flagged 50 foot Beneteau was tooling about in the Black Sea ~ 100nm southwest of Crimea.
Why curious? Because the boat had somehow made it there from Vladivostok. I made a comment about it in the Pirates of the Black Sea thread on August 9 (her displayed posit at 0530Z 09 Aug was 43.12N 031.83E.)
Just checked, and now she is somehow back in the Russian Far East.
Something is quite bogus here. Unless they loaded her up on an Antonov, or could avail a Star Trek transporter, there is simply no way she could get from one place to the other in this amount of time :
Somebody should flag her name "Thalassa" and keep an eye on her MMSI: 273386920
Another case of an ignored sailboat....
A two masted schooner found herself in the middle of Battle of Savo Sound, and sailed on through unmolested. It was sighted by both sides...except for the Blue... which was so tragically blind that night. The Japanese were the first to sight her, and nearly opened fire as they thought she was a destoryer in company with the Blue. If they had and those critical minutes of surprise were lost, no telling how different that battle would have been. It was sunk the next day by the Blue.
The schooner's track is depicted on pdf pages 83-87 here:
2. Biggest risk would be the unsuitability of a Bavaria as a dive platform, especially in the weather conditions of the Baltic in September. I would love to go sailing there, but was there in September on a Forrest Sherman, and wouldn't relish doing it even on a large 50 footer (we rescued some Finnish fishermen whose boat had sunk off Bornholm) in September.
The article does mention the weather:
"When the team of reporters in the Andromeda arrived at the site above where the explosions took place, a force 5 or 6 wind was blowing, it was raining, and the swells were significant. Standard Baltic Sea weather, in other words – in which it is difficult to keep a sailboat in one spot. According to weather data, mid-September 2022 was similar for several days, though it was calmer both before and afterward."
No way could they precision station keep that Bavaria 50 in those conditions. Did they run a buoy tethered line down to the pipelines on the bottom then, and the boat stood off?
If so, ballsy for sure!
Perhaps waiting for a weather window may explain her meanderings. It suggests there was a quite seasoned sailor aboard.
Doubt many saw this story as it bubbled up. Seems the CIA had a clandestine boat service a while back that was badly -and tragically- mismanaged.
"In early December 1941 in the Philippines, a young Navy ensign named Kemp Tolley was given his first ship command, an old 76-foot schooner that had once served as a movie prop in John Ford's "The Hurricane." Crewed mostly by Filipinos who did not speak English and armed with a cannon that had last seen service in the Spanish-American War, the Lanikai was under top-secret presidential orders to sail south into waters where the Japanese fleet was thought to be. Ostensibly the crew was to spy on Japanese naval movements, but to Tolley it was clear that their mission was to create an incident that would provoke war. Events overtook the plan, however, when Pearl Harbor was bombed before the Lanikai could get underway. When Bataan and Corregidor fell, she was ordered to set sail for Australia and became one of the few U.S. naval vessels to escape the Philippines. "
It is hard to believe that a vessel as small as the 50' Andromeda could properly support a team of divers in the sea conditions that are often present at that time of year.
Artificial intelligence combined with inertial navigation is now being employed for a variety of applications in the area of undersea unmanned robotics.
A question here: Is it reasonable to speculate that small robotic UUVs carrying timed explosives were launched from the Andromeda near the pipelines on one or more occassions?
These small UUVs would need only enough maneuvering capability to travel the relatively short distance down to the pipelines and then to precisely position themselves at the desired emplacement sites.
A diving team might be needed only to be certain these small UUVs had been safely launched and were headed in the right direction before disappearing into the depths.
Is it also possible that the parts and pieces of these small UUVs were brought aboard surrepticiously and then assembled once the vessel was underway?
Anything is possible technically if you have the money, the talent, and the time.
Sounds like the opening of "The Riddle of the Sands" which also takes place in the Baltic and has a maritime security theme. What is old is again new, as Riddle of the Sands was published in 1903.
The idea that some super duper diver dudes were required to do this is highly questionable. It would be the riskiest slowest most complicated way to do it.
It was a 6'+ diameter pipe laying on the bottom, not buried.
The area where this happened is one of the most fished and bottom trawled areas of the Baltic.
Its mud sand and clay bottom.
Any competent bottom fishing crew can get a line on this pipe, and once a line is on it dropping a payload on it is doable.
There are tens of thousands of boatmen from many nations capable of setting a line on these pipes, but few divers.
Another 'quite odd' AIS hit on a Russian sailing vessel in the Black Sea well off from Crimea. This time the Russian flagged sailing vessel Lastochka.
The last hit on this one was at approx 28/0952. Posit: 42' 50"N 032' 46"E. And the (non pro account) Marine Traffic showed a its first AIS B squawk at 28/0719Z Posit: 42' 48"N 032' 31"E. So a ~6.4 kt track for a couple hours then "poof"...
Last time the Thalassa was then transported to Vladivostok. Lets see what parallel universe the Lastochka ends up in.
So Russian Flagged S/V Latochka MMSI: 273298780 this time.
Clancy....eat yer heart out
Fantasy, pure fantasy. Clancy has nothing to worry about, his fiction is more believable.
But go ahead, snort up the copium.
North Sea in late Sep? I'll pass, The Aegean perhaps.
My bet is the Russians and the Spiegel article is part of the disinformation campaign.
As with most current Journalism it seemed full of tech errors like rebreathers needing no tanks.
Hey CDR! Our boy Jake even got an honorable mention.
Without any real reason per se, IMO it's a bad move to write off the Russians as being too unprofessional or bungling to have done the job themselves as this article implies.
The other question is what motivated Hersch to write his article?
This is the international version of the mueller report:
Everyone knows who did it. The purpose of the sham investigation is to muddy the waters, destroy evidence and avoid naming the perps “by any means necessary.”
It’s an expensive and dishonest misdirection and a total waste of time.
I've figured Ukraine from the get-go. They have the technical know-how. According to my son, who is a pipeline engineer, Ukraine has a university offering one of the few pipeline engineering degrees in Europe. (It may be the only one. The conversation took place a year ago, shortly after Nordstream got ventilated.) They have the motivation. They are the ones that benefit most from the pipelines being down (except for maybe Turkey). Ukraine has been pulling ballsy strikes the whole war.
It is a legitimate military act against a nation which is attacking them. (The gas might be going to Germany, but the pipeline is owned by the Russian government.) It is as legitimate as Britain cutting Germany's transatlantic cables at the beginning of WWI and WWII. Especially since it crippled Russia's ability to use withholding gas as economic blackmail.
Ukraine does not want to admit it now, but when the history of this war are written in 2050, my money is Ukraine will have turned out to have done it.
Well, if unnamed US and European intelligence sources speaking on the condition of anonymity are telling WaPo reporter that there is nothing to see here, then who am I to question my betters?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/03/nord-stream-bombing-yacht-andromeda/
Very Interesting!
While some continue to debate who the actual perpetrators might be, let's just assume that the story is somewhat correct. and see if there are any lessons to be learned.
Remember, there are a lot of people from China, Russia, Iran, and even Mexican cartels who know how to swim or sail or could charter one of the thousands of U.S. yachts up for charter.
As the Brit MI6 guy noted:
"The British MI6 chief at least provided a bit of context. He said that we have to be prepared for the fact that underwater attacks are now part of the arsenal of modern warfare. His service therefore informs the British government about its own Achilles' heels, adding that there are quite a few of them. "Seabed warfare," as such underwater operations are called in military jargon, is not just about pipelines for oil and gas. The power lines of offshore wind farms and especially undersea internet cables are also targets – and potentially even easier to destroy since you don't need explosives, just the right tools."
Is anyone in the U.S. military or Law Enforcement community actively seeking to detect and counter any similar threats to U.S. interests? Or, are the still focused on gender pronouns and hunting for phantom white supremacists?
How many hundreds of military age males from hostile countries have been caught crossing our borders, but more importantly how many were "got aways" who have vanished into the interior?
Do not anticipate that Chinese (or Russian)hostilities will necessarily start with a military on military engagement or formal declaration of war. Think instead of plausibly deniable cyber attacks on infrastructure and critical base support,, communications, transportation and navigation systems. Throw in banking, social media, and internet access. Kinetic attacks similar to Nord Stream are also possible, Those are only a few of their available options.
Budanov is very obviously SBS trained and certainly has taken on their audacious flair. So yeah, guess it is a plausible tale.
Some things come to mind:
1. Using a 50 ft sailboat. Folks tend to ignore Little Plastic Toy Boats (LPTBs). Right after the USV hit on the Olengorsky the week before last, a very curious AIS hit showed up southwest of Crimea, where a Russian flagged 50 foot Beneteau was tooling about in the Black Sea ~ 100nm southwest of Crimea.
Why curious? Because the boat had somehow made it there from Vladivostok. I made a comment about it in the Pirates of the Black Sea thread on August 9 (her displayed posit at 0530Z 09 Aug was 43.12N 031.83E.)
Just checked, and now she is somehow back in the Russian Far East.
Something is quite bogus here. Unless they loaded her up on an Antonov, or could avail a Star Trek transporter, there is simply no way she could get from one place to the other in this amount of time :
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:3709061/zoom:10
Somebody should flag her name "Thalassa" and keep an eye on her MMSI: 273386920
Another case of an ignored sailboat....
A two masted schooner found herself in the middle of Battle of Savo Sound, and sailed on through unmolested. It was sighted by both sides...except for the Blue... which was so tragically blind that night. The Japanese were the first to sight her, and nearly opened fire as they thought she was a destoryer in company with the Blue. If they had and those critical minutes of surprise were lost, no telling how different that battle would have been. It was sunk the next day by the Blue.
The schooner's track is depicted on pdf pages 83-87 here:
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA003038.pdf
2. Biggest risk would be the unsuitability of a Bavaria as a dive platform, especially in the weather conditions of the Baltic in September. I would love to go sailing there, but was there in September on a Forrest Sherman, and wouldn't relish doing it even on a large 50 footer (we rescued some Finnish fishermen whose boat had sunk off Bornholm) in September.
The article does mention the weather:
"When the team of reporters in the Andromeda arrived at the site above where the explosions took place, a force 5 or 6 wind was blowing, it was raining, and the swells were significant. Standard Baltic Sea weather, in other words – in which it is difficult to keep a sailboat in one spot. According to weather data, mid-September 2022 was similar for several days, though it was calmer both before and afterward."
No way could they precision station keep that Bavaria 50 in those conditions. Did they run a buoy tethered line down to the pipelines on the bottom then, and the boat stood off?
If so, ballsy for sure!
Perhaps waiting for a weather window may explain her meanderings. It suggests there was a quite seasoned sailor aboard.
Doubt many saw this story as it bubbled up. Seems the CIA had a clandestine boat service a while back that was badly -and tragically- mismanaged.
https://news.yahoo.com/the-cia-sent-a-team-of-four-operators-on-a-spy-mission-targeting-china-none-came-back-090041816.html
"The CIA sent a team of 4 operators on a spy mission targeting China. None came back."
Poor guys didn't keep a sufficient "Weather Eye", and paid the price....
I am no Horatio Hornblower, but I do know this:
If you go Down to the Sea in ships, then you should take your mariner skills seriously...
One last tale of covert derring-do aboard a sailboat by the USN, and a great read:
https://www.amazon.com/Cruise-Lanikai-Incitement-Bluejacket-Books/dp/1557504067
Cruise of the Lanikai: Incitement to War
"In early December 1941 in the Philippines, a young Navy ensign named Kemp Tolley was given his first ship command, an old 76-foot schooner that had once served as a movie prop in John Ford's "The Hurricane." Crewed mostly by Filipinos who did not speak English and armed with a cannon that had last seen service in the Spanish-American War, the Lanikai was under top-secret presidential orders to sail south into waters where the Japanese fleet was thought to be. Ostensibly the crew was to spy on Japanese naval movements, but to Tolley it was clear that their mission was to create an incident that would provoke war. Events overtook the plan, however, when Pearl Harbor was bombed before the Lanikai could get underway. When Bataan and Corregidor fell, she was ordered to set sail for Australia and became one of the few U.S. naval vessels to escape the Philippines. "
Cannot wait for the streaming series, this had to be the most epic demolition diving OP ever
What follows is pure speculation on my part.
It is hard to believe that a vessel as small as the 50' Andromeda could properly support a team of divers in the sea conditions that are often present at that time of year.
Artificial intelligence combined with inertial navigation is now being employed for a variety of applications in the area of undersea unmanned robotics.
A question here: Is it reasonable to speculate that small robotic UUVs carrying timed explosives were launched from the Andromeda near the pipelines on one or more occassions?
These small UUVs would need only enough maneuvering capability to travel the relatively short distance down to the pipelines and then to precisely position themselves at the desired emplacement sites.
A diving team might be needed only to be certain these small UUVs had been safely launched and were headed in the right direction before disappearing into the depths.
Is it also possible that the parts and pieces of these small UUVs were brought aboard surrepticiously and then assembled once the vessel was underway?
Anything is possible technically if you have the money, the talent, and the time.
Sounds like the opening of "The Riddle of the Sands" which also takes place in the Baltic and has a maritime security theme. What is old is again new, as Riddle of the Sands was published in 1903.
Der Spiegel used to be a credible source for news and balanced commentary. No longer, sadly...
I'll will repeat what I've said in the past.
The idea that some super duper diver dudes were required to do this is highly questionable. It would be the riskiest slowest most complicated way to do it.
It was a 6'+ diameter pipe laying on the bottom, not buried.
The area where this happened is one of the most fished and bottom trawled areas of the Baltic.
Its mud sand and clay bottom.
Any competent bottom fishing crew can get a line on this pipe, and once a line is on it dropping a payload on it is doable.
There are tens of thousands of boatmen from many nations capable of setting a line on these pipes, but few divers.
It’s plausible. Who knows is not talking, and that is expected.
More skulduggery on the Black Sea...
Another 'quite odd' AIS hit on a Russian sailing vessel in the Black Sea well off from Crimea. This time the Russian flagged sailing vessel Lastochka.
The last hit on this one was at approx 28/0952. Posit: 42' 50"N 032' 46"E. And the (non pro account) Marine Traffic showed a its first AIS B squawk at 28/0719Z Posit: 42' 48"N 032' 31"E. So a ~6.4 kt track for a couple hours then "poof"...
Last time the Thalassa was then transported to Vladivostok. Lets see what parallel universe the Lastochka ends up in.
So Russian Flagged S/V Latochka MMSI: 273298780 this time.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:7239776/zoom:9
A pattern of "show up and gone" obviously spoofed AIS B hits of Russian flagged sailing yachts southwest of Crimea.
Hmm...
Wonder where those at sea Kilo's hang out?