Fantastic, I found it weird though how much they mixed metric and imperial units in the article. (80 meters, 220 pounds, etc). I wished they would have published some more pictures, like an adjacent undamaged section of the pipeline to see what the saboteurs would have been working with.
Arrest warrant for dive instructor over Nordstream pipeline sabotage
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tarponchik
Contributor
Thanks! To quote, "Everyone who has examined the Andromeda agrees it's not the vessel anyone would choose to secure a mission. As our tech diver Derk Remmers put it: "I would use the Andromeda for a vacation, but not a sabotage mission." Yet this could be precisely why the saboteurs used it. To stay undetected and unaccountable — which they managed to do until the charges were made public this week." Nice explanation. Undetected by whom, unaccountable to whom?
I was not able to find a link to the video they took, but the Andromeda story is nothing new, see the criticism here, for example.
Did you read your link? The authors apparently know nothing of diving or boating or portable sonar units. They also make the mistake of assuming that tons of explosives were needed for the sabotage.
Another problem, cited by the press, was that at the site of the explosion, the Baltic Sea is about 80 meters deep, requiring special diving equipment including a decompression chamber for the divers – something that the yacht is not fit for. ...
For instance, the expert pointed out that one cannot just walk off the street and rent an expensive yacht with a fake passport. “You either need to accept a captain who was supplied by the leasing agent or owner of the yacht, or have a captain who comes with a certificate of competency as mandated by maritime law,” the expert continued.
Another question is how the Andromeda managed to find the pipelines in the Baltic Sea, given that they are not that big and not on the charts that come with the lease. Having a small yacht and two divers, who could stay about 15 minutes under water, it would take four years to search one square mile, Hersh wrote, citing the expert.
“So you have six people on the yacht—two divers, two helpers, a doctor and a captain leasing the boat. One thing is missing – who is going to crew the yacht? Or cook? What about the logbook that the leasing company must keep for legal reasons?” the expert continued, stressing that no Western journalist ever asked any of those questions. What’s more, it appears that none of them has ever set foot on the much-discussed vessel.
tarponchik
Contributor
The choice of the boat is not that bad, nobody would bat an eye to a couple of people lounging on a small sailing yacht messing around some area. It's got a good amount of room to stow all the gear and an idea that a team of terrorists/saboteurs would fill out paperwork and charter a captain and a cook leads me to believe the author of the criticism is not of sound mind.
Now a yacth anchoring above a pipeline for a couple of hours in a period of few days, that would raise more than a few eyebrows. I can bet that the entire pipeline is covered by radar and that the authorities know the details about every single boat that passed there in the days leading up to the explosion.
Now a yacth anchoring above a pipeline for a couple of hours in a period of few days, that would raise more than a few eyebrows. I can bet that the entire pipeline is covered by radar and that the authorities know the details about every single boat that passed there in the days leading up to the explosion.
Concur with your assessment that Seymour Hersh is off his rocker. Long on inflammatory accusations or specious versions of the matter and short on real substance. He got lucky breaking the My Lai massacre. Henry Kissinger's assessment of Hersh's 1983 book The Price of Power opined that Seymour Hersh was fond of "inference piled on assumption, third-hand hearsay accepted as fact, the self-serving accounts of disgruntled adversaries elevated to gospel, the 'impressions' of people several times removed from the scene."
So, yeah....Seymour Hersh's expert is probably a disgruntled dive instructor who doesn't know the first thing about technical diving nor basic marlinspike seamanship.
In other news, I don't think that yacht could anchor at 80m to the seabed. I think it probably motored in a predictable pattern or motored inside a small "launch basket".
So, yeah....Seymour Hersh's expert is probably a disgruntled dive instructor who doesn't know the first thing about technical diving nor basic marlinspike seamanship.
In other news, I don't think that yacht could anchor at 80m to the seabed. I think it probably motored in a predictable pattern or motored inside a small "launch basket".
We anchor at much deeper locations when fishing for halibut or black cod. Not sure I would do it overnight without a weather watch. However, it will not stay in same location due to winds and currents as the anchor line is likely double the depth to account for wave and wind tension on anchor.
The tons of explosives estimates were based on the seismograph reports. It lumped in the initial explosion and the energy released by the compressed gas in the pipeline. Experts reviewing photos and videos of the actual ruptures believe they only required a few kilos or tens of kilos of explosives.
A decent portable side scan sonar setup costs what, 5-25k? Well within the 300k budget the German police said this cost. And this is hardly looking for a needle in a haystack. The pipelines are marked on nautical charts and you can hit it anywhere on its length.
What difference does it make that the CBC divers took two dives? FWIW, the WSJ guys found it on the first dive (with a mini ROV). But it doesn't matter either way, the Andromeda had enough time during its transits for multiple dives on each site.
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