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The satellite imagery of the Alta shows the dates June 5, 7, 20, and later (until the Alta is scrapped on the 30th). The BALTOPS 2022 exercises took place June

by scythe 4y ago

The satellite imagery of the Alta shows the dates June 5, 7, 20, and later (until the Alta is scrapped on the 30th). The BALTOPS 2022 exercises took place June 5–17. So the imagery generally does not provide evidence of the Alta's location during most of BALTOPS 2022.

tptacek 4y ago
It's helpful to consider that BALTOPS itself is a batshit cover for one of the highest profile military operations of the last 20 years (it's sort of like the military equivalent of altering the schedule at the San Diego Comic Con to cover a heist), and that it might be hard to even come up with a reason that you'd need an Alta-class ship to pull this off, or really even a military ship at all; a lot of what Hersh is talking about here appears to be stuff that civilian extractive industry professionals already do (remote detonation in particular).
- peteradio 4y ago
  Would a "professional" agree to do this work without extensive obvious evidence that it was sanctioned on high? Wouldn't you risk becoming fall guys if you agree to do all this with a minimal crew on a wooden fishing boat? You'd risk being arrested by the local police. I think there is some holistic view on how to get the whole thing to work that might not lead to an obvious minimal solution. Various interests get in the way and add quite a degree of complication.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    You don't need to go find the world's best miners like in the movie Armageddon; you can use military divers. You just don't use a carefully tracked warship, one of a single-digit number in its class, as a diving platform. You get the same weird thing with this "camouflage" thing with the C4. Camouflaging from what? They need to make the explosive charges undetectable... for what? Like, the US blows up the Nord Stream pipeline and Russia is like, "oh, shit, we never detected a mine, I guess we'll never know if NATO was behind this, and they're innocent until proven guilty!" Forget for a second about the "salinity matching" thing being gibberish; what exactly was this part of the operation that Hersh decided to document trying to accomplish? There is zero uncertainty that somebody blew up the pipeline.
    - scythe 4y ago
      >Like, the US blows up the Nord Stream pipeline and Russia is like, "oh, shit, we never detected a mine, I guess we'll never know if NATO was behind this, and they're innocent until proven guilty!" If the US did blow up the pipeline, they would be most interested in keeping it a secret from Germany, not Russia. It would also be important to keep it secret from the voting public, other neutral countries (India, e.g.), pretty much anyone except Russia.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
ianburrell 4y ago
Is there any evidence that Alta was operational? Last time she moved under own power was 2012. She was towed to the scrapper. If could have moved herself, then they could have saved the cost of the tow. It doesn’t make any sense that would use ship was bound for the scrapper. They would have to fix the engines and half the other stuff wouldn’t work. People would have noticed ship that never moved moving. There are working ships that could have done the job.

by scythe 4y ago

tptacek 4y ago

It's helpful to consider that BALTOPS itself is a batshit cover for one of the highest profile military operations of the last 20 years (it's sort of like the military equivalent of altering the schedule at the San Diego Comic Con to cover a heist), and that it might be hard to even come up with a reason that you'd need an Alta-class ship to pull this off, or really even a military ship at all; a lot of what Hersh is talking about here appears to be stuff that civilian extractive industry professionals already do (remote detonation in particular).

peteradio 4y ago
Would a "professional" agree to do this work without extensive obvious evidence that it was sanctioned on high? Wouldn't you risk becoming fall guys if you agree to do all this with a minimal crew on a wooden fishing boat? You'd risk being arrested by the local police. I think there is some holistic view on how to get the whole thing to work that might not lead to an obvious minimal solution. Various interests get in the way and add quite a degree of complication.
- tptacek 4y ago
  You don't need to go find the world's best miners like in the movie Armageddon; you can use military divers. You just don't use a carefully tracked warship, one of a single-digit number in its class, as a diving platform. You get the same weird thing with this "camouflage" thing with the C4. Camouflaging from what? They need to make the explosive charges undetectable... for what? Like, the US blows up the Nord Stream pipeline and Russia is like, "oh, shit, we never detected a mine, I guess we'll never know if NATO was behind this, and they're innocent until proven guilty!" Forget for a second about the "salinity matching" thing being gibberish; what exactly was this part of the operation that Hersh decided to document trying to accomplish? There is zero uncertainty that somebody blew up the pipeline.
  - scythe 4y ago
    >Like, the US blows up the Nord Stream pipeline and Russia is like, "oh, shit, we never detected a mine, I guess we'll never know if NATO was behind this, and they're innocent until proven guilty!" If the US did blow up the pipeline, they would be most interested in keeping it a secret from Germany, not Russia. It would also be important to keep it secret from the voting public, other neutral countries (India, e.g.), pretty much anyone except Russia.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

ianburrell 4y ago

Is there any evidence that Alta was operational? Last time she moved under own power was 2012. She was towed to the scrapper. If could have moved herself, then they could have saved the cost of the tow. It doesn’t make any sense that would use ship was bound for the scrapper. They would have to fix the engines and half the other stuff wouldn’t work. People would have noticed ship that never moved moving. There are working ships that could have done the job.