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Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

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Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#171

Post by rendall »

captainmuon wrote: post #123
rendall wrote: post #67

Everyone seems to know it was Russia and is just casting out ideas to find a plausible motivation. I find that completely baffling. For opportunity, consider that while setting up the pipeline needs a weird high-pressure residence and special training, blowing it up takes a fishing boat, scuba gear and underwater explosives. The equipment and training is cheap and available. So, those with opportunity is almost anyon…

I just hope it wasn't the US. That would be a devastating breach of trust for Germany and would backfire badly if it came out. I'm rooting for the Danish anarchists. You basically just need underwater explosives and a boat. You hang the explosives on a long rope, throw it over board like an anchor, and drag it into the pipeline. When you hit the pipeline, you detonate the explosives.

> You hang the explosives on a long rope, throw it over board like an anchor, and drag it into the pipeline. When you hit the pipeline, you detonate the explosives

That's genius. The detonator would not have to be very sophisticated to magnetically detect the steel in the pipeline.

"The gas pipes are made of 4.1 cm thick steel, which is protected by an 11 cm thick reinforced concrete shell"

https://yle.fi/uutiset/74-20000414 (in Finnish)

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#172

Post by XorNot »

rendall wrote: post #139
samastur wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it happened in international waters ON THEIR assets.

It didn't happen in international waters. It happened in Danish, Swedish and Finnish waters. Denmark is in NATO.

And everyone in NATO is doing their best to ignore it, because they know where war leads.

People ignore acts of war all the time to keep the peace where nuclear arms are involved.

NS1 and NS2 aren't shipping any gas, and notionally are "Russian": dramatic but no change in the status quo.

Blowing a pipeline between two NATO members which is shipping gas and imperils their population is very different: NATO can't ignore that.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#173

Post by DangerousPie »

ktfelt wrote: post #138
rendall wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry. It wasn't the US. Not really our style. Sure, the CIA pulls dirty tricks, but those are quiet, in-the-shadows skullduggery where no one's paying attention. CIA doesn't do big and loud where other Americans can see it. Plus, motivations are wrong. The US catastrophically ends European energy dependence on Russia so that... it can compete with the Middle East and Russia and Canada on a more equal footing?…

There is Stuxnet and its predecessor, which blew up a pipeline! https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r... The U.S. motivation is that it has tried to shut down energy trades between the Soviet Union/Russia and Germany for more than 50 years.

But those trades were already shut down and not coming back anytime soon. If Germany had refused to join sanctions and was still using NS1 + NS2 at full capacity right now then maybe there would have been some motivation to force the issue. But why now, when the pipelines weren't even active?

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#174

Post by Gibbon1 »

rendall wrote: post #144
AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are good points but the main shortcoming of all the theories about Russia is that we still treat (or want to) Russia as a rational actor. I remember just before the war I would bid everything that Russia would in no way start the war. It just didn't make any rational sense. Who in sound mind would think to do it knowing that all the West [might/would] unite against you. However rationality is being lost…

> we still treat (or want to) Russia as a rational actor. People clearly do not treat Russia as a rational actor, given that everyone seems to assume Russia permanently ends European dependency on its fuel by blowing up their own equipment in NATO territory is the primary actual real go-to theory to be taken seriously. I'm not trying to dismiss your speculations about mafioso-style thinking. I mean, assuming all of t…

> Russia permanently ends European dependency on its fuel

I'm dubious to the max that the pipelines can't be repaired fairly quickly.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#175

Post by rendall »

belorn wrote: post #164
rendall wrote: post #67

Everyone seems to know it was Russia and is just casting out ideas to find a plausible motivation. I find that completely baffling. For opportunity, consider that while setting up the pipeline needs a weird high-pressure residence and special training, blowing it up takes a fishing boat, scuba gear and underwater explosives. The equipment and training is cheap and available. So, those with opportunity is almost anyon…

Diving down 60-80 meters in the baltic ocean is quite advanced technical diving if you are just going to go down there and up again. Doing any kind of work (which increase breathing) at those depths is a massive step in complexity. We are talking about cold water diving, at hypoxic gas depths, with usually low visibility. The dive would require several hours of decompression in the middle of a shipping lane. The dens…

Someone downstream suggested dragging explosives on a rope, detonating when they hit the pipeline. Wouldn't even need to stop.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#176

Post by cloutchaser »

ktfelt wrote: post #140
piaste wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had your exact same reaction, except with the US at the top of the suspects list (or non-governmental agents whose interests align with the US, of which there are plenty). The #1 reason I'm still leaning Russia nevertheless is because of an outside factor: Russia isn't screaming bloody murder about it . If 3/4th of their pipelines had gone up and nobody in the Russian government was involved, Lavrov would already b…

I noticed that the Western press is quiet, too. Normally they'd scream "terrorist attack" on every front page. Now they only cite Ukraine claiming a Russian terror attack or say nothing. If a Canadian pipe was blown up, the headlines would be different.

I wouldn't be suprised if this turns into the next "lab leak theory" in terms of censorship.

There's going to be one acceptable party line, parrotted in the media and anything else will be censored on social media as well.

There's too much at stake and the infrastructure is already there to create full on censorship for one side and non stop propaganda for the other.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#177

Post by sofixa »

rendall wrote: post #166
sofixa wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree with you, it generally makes absolutely no sense for Russia to be behind this Like it makes no sense for them to invade with the state of their army, shell a nuclear power plant, dig trenches in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, waste rockets on civilian targets? Why are you assuming Russia to be a rational actor?

Why are you assuming an explanation that depends on an irrational actor when permanently end European dependence on Russian fuel is a more direct, rational motive that benefits many other actors?

Because:

1) Russia has proven itself to be a highly disruptive and irrational actor

2) European dependence on Russian fuel is already ending. By the time anybody is ready to trust Russia with energy we would have moved past the current reliance on gas. Completely destroying NS1 and NS2 don't change much there.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#178

Post by pjerem »

XorNot wrote: post #163
DownGoat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charges could have been placed weeks ago, finding culprits will be very hard if someone does not take responsibility

How would you trigger them? 100m down radio doesn't work at all. ELF antennas are nation-state level assets and need receiving antennas that are hundreds of metres long. Acoustic messaging is possible, but again hard to do. Timed charges are plausible but that's a heck of a commitment (of course 3/4 breaches suggests a possible misfire - I imagine theres a hunt on for the last one).

A good old clock.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#179

Post by rendall »

exDM69 wrote: post #133
rendall wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, fair point. I agree that the various coast guards are extremely competent and coordinated, and are poring over the data that they have now. I disagree that capture is inevitable unless submarine.

Capture of the individuals behind it? Perhaps not. Identifying the vessel(s) supporting the sabotage operation? Much more likely.

Possibly. I agree that it's possible, but not inevitable. That's assuming even that stopping, diving, attaching explosives was the method.

Someone upstream suggested dragging explosives along behind the boat like an anchor, detonating when detecting the steel and concrete of the pipe. Wouldn't need scuba gear, nor even to stop.

Re: Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

#180

Post by belorn »

rendall wrote: post #175
belorn wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diving down 60-80 meters in the baltic ocean is quite advanced technical diving if you are just going to go down there and up again. Doing any kind of work (which increase breathing) at those depths is a massive step in complexity. We are talking about cold water diving, at hypoxic gas depths, with usually low visibility. The dive would require several hours of decompression in the middle of a shipping lane. The dens…

Someone downstream suggested dragging explosives on a rope, detonating when they hit the pipeline. Wouldn't even need to stop.

Sure it becomes much simpler if you remove the diving aspect to it, or simply remove the need to return to the surface alive.

I would suspect dragging an explosive with a rope would take a long time, enough that radar and other ships would likely notice the behavior, especially if you intend to hit the pipeline 3 times on 3 different locations. Really expensive sonar would reduce the required time, as would really precise GPS locations, but even so, from what I know, it a very time consuming activity. Still a better theory than sport diving.

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