Aceshardware

What do you guys make of this? I haven't read anything that begins to make sense. What I've gathered so far:

The ship undergoes "repairs" for 2 weeks in Kaliningrad just prior to this trip. Then sets sail for Finland where it loads a fairly worthless cargo of timber for Algeria.

On the 24th off the coast of sweden, it is supposedly boarded by "pirates" who say they are searching for drugs. They also torture the crew, but leave the ship 12 hours later. Local authorities are not informed for another week or so. Just the ship owners, who inform the Russian embassy. The sailors just continued their trip,

After the news "leaked" about the attack, a not so credible claim for ransom is said to have occured and the ship turns off their localizer (or do they?) and navigates some the worlds busiest waters. And no one seems worried, not even the ships owner, for another week until the ship doesn't arrive in Algeria as planned.

The Russian navy sends a large amount of ships and nuclear subs to search for the little cargo ship with the worthless cargo.

On The 15th the French coast guard picks up the Artic Sea's localizer near the Bay of Biscay. When they have a closer look, it turns out the signal is being spoofed by a Russian navy ship (!).

A few days later, the ship is "found". Malta (ship sails under maltese flag I believe) says it was never missing. Russia says it captured 8 pirates (who supposedly left the ship 3 weeks earlier).

Now, unleash that inner Tom Clancy inside you and tell me, what the hell happened there lol ?

You want a non-paranoid or a paranoid fiction?

non-paranoid (Mr Bean episode):
- ship is boarded by pirates, who torture the crew, figure there is nothing of value and leave.
- news is leaked about the attack, so some random smart-ass decides to ask for ransom money, to see if he can get easy money.
- ship owner is too concerned about where to get his next glass of vodka to remember one of his ships.
- a drunken sailor trips over the locater device, disabling it.
- the russian leadership, after having been chastised by ineptitude during the Kursk disaster, invests loads of resources into the search.
- one of the signal operators, bored to death, spoofs the missing ship to get some fun.
- random russian captain claims capture of the pirates in order to get a promotion.

paranoid (Tom Clancy novel):
- ship sets to Kaliningrad enclave base where the staff is replaced by FSB personnel. it then proceeds to load cargo as cover.
- Alexey Pavlovich, cook from the original ship crew, wakes up from his drunken stupor and discovers the ship is full of unknown people. he manages to spout nonsense on the radio before getting knocked out by the FSB agents on board.
- FSB agents claim the ship was hijacked as cover for their operation to probe NATO ship defenses at the Bay of Biscay.
- Russian navy ship spoofs ship id to test foreign navy response time to an emergency situation.
- Russia claims the ship was hijacked and the pirates captured as cover for a future sabotage operation to be carried out in the Indian Ocean.

Pirates in the worlds busiest, most policed waters, which hasnt seen pirates in a few hunderd years, boarding a ship loaded with .. timber?


If I got it right, the ransom was (supposedly) asked well before the news was made public. So that doesn't add up.


heh.



A drunken sailor or a pirate? Remember, "pirates " were seized by the russians today. Maybe they swam all that way :)



Can say that again.

Here, some more spice for this hollywood movie:

The head of the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Jukka Laaksonen, said firefighters had conducted radiation tests on the ship at a port in Finland before it began its voyage

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/wo ... torypage=2

I wonder how common it is for firefighters to conduct radiation tests on cargo ships loading timber?

I didn't look for more details about your story, but I remember reading (about a year ago) the case of a russian ship that was boarded by "pirates" near the coast of Somalia (IIRC). The ship was actually full of weapons and military equipment (tanks, helicopters, etc) that were being (illegally?) sold to an african country (I forgot which). After realizing that that was not an ordinary ship and that the russian military would come after them (as they surely did), the "pirates" first asked for some bogus ramson then quickly left the ship. The ship owners and everybody involved just kept quiet since it was very bad PR for them if made public.

In the case that I described above the russians sent only a couple of destroyers to free their boarded ship in Somalia, not large fleets of ships and subs like this time. Since the ship was "boarded" right in the beginning of its trip instead of near the end like the case I mentioned, and in "safer" waters, then maybe the ship was carrying something more important than just tanks and helicopters, as implied by the radiation tests that you mentioned.

I've read some theories that the ship would have been carrying nuclear cruisemissiles that where salvaged from the Kursk and would be sent to somewhere in the US (texas i believe) for dismantling. Doesn't make much sense to me, as i dont understand why they would be dismanteled in the US in the first place (something to do with the start treaty?) and Id understand even less why they would be sent on a trawler like that, rather than on a navy vessel. But at least it would be something that made sense that "pirates" would try to steal and it would certainly warrant the kind of effort we've seen to retrieve the vessel. It would also make sense of the radiation measurements being carried out. IIRC, Finland was quite worried about the nukes aboard the Kursk (something Russia denied for a long time, until much later after having salvaged them, they admitted to).

Either way, everything seems to suggest the cargo was far more important than even regular arms, let alone timber. Or drugs. Not that I can imagine drugs would be sent from Finland to Africa.

edit: btw, some more coincidental spice: hillary clinton was in cap verde days earlier.

I somehow doubt they would dismantle Russian nuclear weapons in the USA unless the USA was interested in getting inside information about the weapons in a covert fashion. They certainly wouldn't use a Russian owned ship for something like that, nor would be Russian government consent to such a thing.

It is not too uncommon however to carry dangerous or sensitive cargo in a random transport to try to elude potential thieves.

Kursk would likely have nuclear cruise missiles and possibly nuclear Squall warheads. If you check out the plan since Soviet times, the plan was to depend against US aircraft carrier groups using SLBMs and nuclear tipped torpedoes. Cruise missiles are just another, albeit cheaper, method of delivery.

yeah, im no expert on the start treaty, but afaik, nukes that are dismantled are dismantled by the us or russia themselves, under supervision. It would be pretty insane to send each others nukes for dismanteling.

I dont know the specifics about the kursk, but its indeed more than likely nukes where onboard, and its equally likely the russians would deny that, at the very least until they are salvaged them. That must have happened a long time ago though, and I cant imagine the russians carelessly letting nuclear cruise missiles lay on just 100m depth for that long, so I doubt there is any relation.

Theories about the arctic sea having an illegal (nuclear) load intended for Syria or Iran dont make too much sense to me either, at least not for a state endorsed shipment; Looking at the map, if Russia wanted to send anything there, there are easier ways. OTOH, Kalinigrad is home to the Russian baltic fleet, and the Arctic Sea was there for unspecified repairs during 2 weeks, just prior to this trip. I doubt thats coincidence.

here is another small piece of the puzzle:

Further complicating the picture are Swedish media reports suggesting that the Arctic Sea was hiding a second, smaller vessel while sailing off Sweden’s east coast.

Data from an automatic vessel tracking system showed that the Arctic Sea’s crew constantly tried to hide one side of the ship from being visible to other ships in the vicinity, the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, citing a Swedish coast guard official, reported on its web site Wednesday.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/600/42/381007.htm

Another relevant question I read somewhere else, is why those "pirates" would have spoken accented English to the Russian crew, if they where themselves Russians and Letvians.

More clues. I looked up a map of international waters and plotted the AS's course and location where it got boarded:



Its only in international waters that the russians would be legally allowed to board the ship and arrest the pirates for a trial in russia.

Oh, they were boarded at african coast, my mistake. Looking at the map, IIRC, it happened near where the arms shipment that I described before also was boarded.

I think that the present incident was about an illegal arms shipment, but with more unconventional weapons. Delivering regular weapons to Africa isn't a big deal, as everybody do it already, and I don't think that african countries would have an use for unconventional weapons right now or even the option to buy even illegally.

Despite Iran being close to Russia, would it be more risky to try to smuggle unconventional weapons by land or by air when american troops surround Iran today and many of the nearby countries, like Georgia, are client estates that would stop and denounce the deal?

If it really is about unconventional weapons, my guess as an armchair specialist is that it was smaller missiles or small tactical warheads for the russian missiles that Iran already have, but nothing big.

I keep reading that the latest generation of russian supersonic cruise missiles are very capable weapons and hot items in the weapons trade nowadays.

A short link about such missiles:
http://www.ausairpower.net/ascms.pdf

The other explanations (Kursk, etc) don't make sense to me.

I didnt really post that in response to your post. It just occured to me the russians either deliberately waited, or directed that ship to somewhere where they could board it and handle the issue without any foreign interference or preying eyes whatsoever. They couldn't have done that anywhere else along the route (or its intended route!).

Its also interesting the the Actic Sea would have nearly run out of fuel there, if posts I read elsewhere are to be believed. It couldn't have gone much further without refuelling.



I guess it depends who was sending. If it was a russian state sanctioned mission, Iran couldn't have been the destination. So much easier to send a ship across the caspian sea. Not that I believe the russian state would have any interest to supply Teheran with nukes or even other nuclear material for countless reason. Syria is similar, they would ship across the black sea and then around turkey to send anything there. Unless of course the sender wasn't the russian state, but some rogue elements who didn't have the luxury of being able to transport the cargo across Russia over land.



The 2 week "repairs" in kalinigrad suggest it was indeed pretty big. It should be easy to hide missiles below a pile of timber, that wouldn't require any work on the ship. Of course, those repairs could have been coincidence, I just doubt it. Not that I have any good guesses what it could have been. Although, if we're playing Tom Clancy, then maybe they built a launch platform on that ship?

Sounds far fetched, I know, but I know there has been speculation during and after the cold war about that. Since even Russian nuclear subs would have a hard time remaining undetected, the Russians where thinking or working on anonymous commercial vessels that could be used as launch platforms for cruise- or ballistic missiles. They would probably have an easier time reaching US shores than their subs.



The russians have plenty of weaponry that most of the world (both states and "terrorists") would have an interest in. Their underwater missile, those supersonic cruise missiles, AA missiles, heck all kinds of advanced weaponry. But not much they couldn't sell openly if they wanted to. So I don't think the shipment was state sanctioned, my best guess would be that those "pirates" where agents, either russian or western and the ship was an illegal arms trade and then sent to high seas so the russians could retrieve the cargo in all discretion. Whatever it was.

Yes, I also wasn't responding to your post, it was just a correction to a former post where I claim that the ship was boarded in the beginning of its travel.



A state sanctioned mission in violation of international nuclear proliferation treaties is still illegal. And if they were caught (or not) by sea perhaps there was a higher probability that they would also be caught by land or air had they used the most predictable routes, but who knows.




By nothing "big" I meant no ICBM parts or strategic warheads.
Drugs also don't require cars and trucks to be heavily modified, nevertheless any smuggler will try to hide them with the most ingenius way possible, and not just throw the drugs inside the trunk and put some stuff over it to conceal.




And my guess would be smaller tactical warheads for the kind of missiles linked in my other post, missiles that were already sold to China, India and Iran (maybe other countries) and that apparently have no western counterpart nor proven defenses against.
But again, who knows.

The plot thickens:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... years.html

Apparently some of the "hijackers" where supposedly dead. The Jerusalem posts thinks it might have been a mossad action to stop illegal arms (sams and cruise missiles) :

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... 2FShowFull