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The mouth of Eckernförde is a pretty good place to observe the main transit belt between the North Sea and the Baltic. This monitoring station disappeared towa

The mouth of Eckernförde is a pretty good place to observe the main transit belt between the North Sea and the Baltic. This monitoring station disappeared toward the end, or shortly after, a major Russian naval exercise involving almost all of their northern fleet. The US has moved an aircraft carrier, the Harry S Truman, near the coast of Norway, perhaps to observe Russian activity. The Russians have two diesel-electric boats, both Kilo class, in the Baltic. Apparently, one of them has been out of commission for a while. The rumour is that they're significantly upgrading their Baltic submarine fleet. While no passive sonar function has been disclosed for this station, it is fairly new, expensive and high-tech. It was deployed recently as an upgrade to the German data collection system in Kiel Bay. Perhaps the Russians wished to transfer nuclear submarines to the Baltic to upgrade their fleet, and this station was seen as a concern.

PaulRobinson 7y ago
This might sound like a flippant question, but I'm genuinely curious: how do you know all this? Are you a keen fan of modern naval warfare and keep abreast of it all, or do you work in the industry somehow?
- samstave 7y ago
  Thats not flippant AT ALL - i was going to pose the exact same question!
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  I'm guessing a keen reader of Jane's could know this. Pretty cool intel anyway. I'd love a news media that helped summarize a lot of stuff like this, but alas you have to rely on various blogs. "News" seems more disinfo these days than anything else.
- jonathankoren 7y ago
  There is a lot of OSINT on the web and social media. People love taking pictures of every warship that crosses the Bosporus. People read Notice To Airmen reports and share out unusual reports linked to military activity. If you follow the right people on Twitter, you can watch them analyze North Korean missile tests and identify spy satellites in almost real time.
  - algaeontoast 7y ago
    Any recommendations? I usually follow GDarkConrad on twitter for ADSB info
    - jonathankoren 7y ago
      https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura https://twitter.com/wslafoy https://twitter.com/wslafoy https://twitter.com/CovertShores https://twitter.com/CovertShores https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk https://twitter.com/Capt_Navy https://twitter.com/Capt_Navy https://twitter.com/intellipus https://twitter.com/intellipus
      - algaeontoast 7y ago
        Thanks!
samstave 7y ago
Also remember that google has been building autonomous submarine robots for a few years in alameda... with unknown sensor capabilities....
sandworm101 7y ago
I agree that it sounds like a military op, but why assume it was the Russians? This was a civilian station. If it had any sort of listening/detection capabilities those would be a threat to all military operations, irrespective of national origin. The americans, the brits, the germans, the russians, any one of them could have taken issue with this rig. But I think it far more likely that this was a military accident. Someone dragged an anchor, net or towed sonar array over this thing. They might not have appreciated what had happened until days/weeks afterwards.
trhway 7y ago
>Perhaps the Russians wished to transfer nuclear submarines to the Baltic to upgrade their fleet while I generally agree with you and wouldn't put anything past my old country, even outright intentional stealing of the station,I don't think it is nuclear submarine here. It is too big of a fish to operate efficiently in the Baltic "tadpool"(http://ocean.dmi.dk/models/figs/bshcmod.png http://ocean.dmi.dk/models/figs/bshcmod.png), and it doesn't provide any meaningful capabilities for that battle theater. From the USSR times Russia has the Baltic covered with more than enough antiship/antisubmarine/cruise missiles and other weaponry (like the short range ballistic missiles plus medium range cruise missiles which violated that treaty) which are based on land, on aircraft and on small ships, frigates and destroyers there. Nuclear submarine really doesn't add anything here. Despite all that hardware, Russia has been beefing ups its capabilities there - a lot of the ships were made operational (they hadn't been really despite their official "operational" status) plus the above mentioned new deployments of the ballistic and mid-range cruise missiles plus new generation of antiship and antisubmarine missiles (on smaller faster cheaper ships), and also i think the smaller submarine drones. These drones are much more probably at the issue here than a nuclear sub. There is also other submarine drone type - the nuclear powered and armed "doomsday" drone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_... . It is most probably built in St Petersburg and transferred to the North and Pacific fleets. While such transfers are usually with cold reactor and without warhead, there still may be some intelligence related drama around it.
duxup 7y ago
>The rumour is that they're significantly upgrading their Baltic submarine fleet. Russian rumors and threats of upgrades and military spending are a time honored tradition, with the exception of some specific projects that are not modernization at scale... the threats and rumors usually come to nothing.

PaulRobinson 7y ago

This might sound like a flippant question, but I'm genuinely curious: how do you know all this? Are you a keen fan of modern naval warfare and keep abreast of it all, or do you work in the industry somehow?

samstave 7y ago
Thats not flippant AT ALL - i was going to pose the exact same question!
scottlocklin 7y ago
I'm guessing a keen reader of Jane's could know this. Pretty cool intel anyway. I'd love a news media that helped summarize a lot of stuff like this, but alas you have to rely on various blogs. "News" seems more disinfo these days than anything else.
jonathankoren 7y ago
There is a lot of OSINT on the web and social media. People love taking pictures of every warship that crosses the Bosporus. People read Notice To Airmen reports and share out unusual reports linked to military activity. If you follow the right people on Twitter, you can watch them analyze North Korean missile tests and identify spy satellites in almost real time.
- algaeontoast 7y ago
  Any recommendations? I usually follow GDarkConrad on twitter for ADSB info
  - jonathankoren 7y ago
    https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura https://twitter.com/wslafoy https://twitter.com/wslafoy https://twitter.com/CovertShores https://twitter.com/CovertShores https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk https://twitter.com/Capt_Navy https://twitter.com/Capt_Navy https://twitter.com/intellipus https://twitter.com/intellipus
    - algaeontoast 7y ago
      Thanks!

samstave 7y ago

Also remember that google has been building autonomous submarine robots for a few years in alameda... with unknown sensor capabilities....

sandworm101 7y ago

I agree that it sounds like a military op, but why assume it was the Russians? This was a civilian station. If it had any sort of listening/detection capabilities those would be a threat to all military operations, irrespective of national origin. The americans, the brits, the germans, the russians, any one of them could have taken issue with this rig. But I think it far more likely that this was a military accident. Someone dragged an anchor, net or towed sonar array over this thing. They might not have appreciated what had happened until days/weeks afterwards.

trhway 7y ago

>Perhaps the Russians wished to transfer nuclear submarines to the Baltic to upgrade their fleet while I generally agree with you and wouldn't put anything past my old country, even outright intentional stealing of the station,I don't think it is nuclear submarine here. It is too big of a fish to operate efficiently in the Baltic "tadpool"(http://ocean.dmi.dk/models/figs/bshcmod.png http://ocean.dmi.dk/models/figs/bshcmod.png), and it doesn't provide any meaningful capabilities for that battle theater. From the USSR times Russia has the Baltic covered with more than enough antiship/antisubmarine/cruise missiles and other weaponry (like the short range ballistic missiles plus medium range cruise missiles which violated that treaty) which are based on land, on aircraft and on small ships, frigates and destroyers there. Nuclear submarine really doesn't add anything here. Despite all that hardware, Russia has been beefing ups its capabilities there - a lot of the ships were made operational (they hadn't been really despite their official "operational" status) plus the above mentioned new deployments of the ballistic and mid-range cruise missiles plus new generation of antiship and antisubmarine missiles (on smaller faster cheaper ships), and also i think the smaller submarine drones. These drones are much more probably at the issue here than a nuclear sub. There is also other submarine drone type - the nuclear powered and armed "doomsday" drone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_... . It is most probably built in St Petersburg and transferred to the North and Pacific fleets. While such transfers are usually with cold reactor and without warhead, there still may be some intelligence related drama around it.

duxup 7y ago

>The rumour is that they're significantly upgrading their Baltic submarine fleet. Russian rumors and threats of upgrades and military spending are a time honored tradition, with the exception of some specific projects that are not modernization at scale... the threats and rumors usually come to nothing.