Thread by @MichaKobs

The #Nordstream lunch break
Last we learned, the alleged 6 RU dark ships apparently never arrived because despite Synthetic Aperture Radar being able to see through clouds, only two ships were found with AIS turned off during the time period in question.
wired.co.uk/article/nord-s…

Earlier, ex-intelligence officer Jacob Kaarsbo of the think tank Europe told the TIMES that no unusual Russian activity was known. Hmm?
archive.is/zsQo5#selectio…

And according to CNN, the Danish military said they face the Russians every week, which again calls into question the alleged flurry, by sea and air, on Sept. 21-22. (After all, no one could have guessed that 4 days later...)
edition.cnn.com/2022/09/28/pol…

In addition, at 6pm on Sept. 21 the USS Kearsarge+2 was lingering at the later crime scene while the presumed RU ghost convoy was more than halfway there. Assuming that this “ghost convoy” was about to secretly place explosives, this sounds like a highly questionable timing.

Moreover, there was a lot of USAF activity in the days before, with helicopters repeatedly flying over the sites in question, on September 1,2,3,10, and 19. Some came in from Gdansk, Poland, while others reportedly took off from the USS Kearsarge.

Something was going on that apparently had nothing to do with drills. So possibly the Russians wanted to see what is happening there, and not the other way around. And apparently they got there with 2 ships while after 4 month in the Baltics the USS Kearsarge suddenly left.

Rather routinely, the Nymfen came over, reportedly took 112 photos and sailed away.
Defense Command: "No access to records is granted for the photos because they are "part of intelligence work, which is why they are exempt from access to records"". Secret!
information.dk/indland/2023/0…

That morning, a Swedish spy plane took off, but watched Kaliningrad.
At 6:30 UTC a stealth ship set off from its home port of Karlskona, heading straight for the future crime scene, while the Nymfen and presumably the Russians were already heading home.

The Visby reached the NS1 crime scene [3] at 13:03 local time and switched off the AIS. After that, the stealth ship disappeared from radar for 20 hours. However, Dagens Nyheter could not elicit any further explanation from the Navy's press officer.
archive.is/eAUS5

The only thing that seems certain is that Russian ghost ships did not lower hundreds of kilogramms of explosives into the depths while the Visby is watching a few meters away.

Equally certain, the Russians did not sail to the NS2 crime scene because there is nothing to suggest that they were being followed, this crime scene is in the middle of the Danish radar range, and the Russian ships were back in Kaliningrad the next evening.

After 20 hours, the Visby reappeared at 11:03 local time just a few kilometers west of her last position [4] and headed for Simrishamn. Why did she not sail to her home port of Karlskrona, 60km away, and instead sail to Simrishamn [5], 85km away, for a short 1.5 hour lunch break?

Simrishamn is a small town with only a small harbor, yet in 2020 a Baltops logistics center was set up there and shipping was closed. During Baltops22, for example, divers of the Royal Norwegian Navy trained here with remotely operated underwater robots (ROV).

After only 1.5 hours, the Visby cast off again and headed back to the future crime scene [6]. At 18:10 she turned off her AIS again near NS1 and disappeared. Were they still looking for Russians?

Six hours later she appears 90km further south at the site of the future NS2 blast [7]. Why there, of all places, where no Russians had been sighted? The Visby could have made the trip in 1.5 hrs, which means theoretically that it could have been there the day before too.

However, from here she sails around Bornholm and back to the future NS1 crime scene, arriving 12 hrs later at 12:00 local time and disappearing again for the next 22 hrs [8].

But something strange happened. After 22 hrs without AIS, she re-appears off Kaliningrad [9], at least according to "MarineTraffic" AIS data examined by two Dagens Nyheter journalists before October 4. The navy's press manager can't comment.

According to the Marine Traffic data used by @OAlexanderDK for his March 21 article, it looks like the Visby continued at full speed until it reached the Kaliningrad EEZ and only there turned off the AIS, much in contrast to the October 4 article.

The description is unambiguous:
[8] Kl 12.13 position data stops being transmitted. Then the ship is again at the area where three gas leaks are detected later on.
[9] Kl 14.28 position data is available. Navy ships are now close to the Russian border at the Kaliningrad enclave.

However one may interpret this contradiction, after OAlexander's publication the data disappeared completely from the server, so that a subsequent investigation is possible only on the basis of the screenshots. And according to the screenshots, these data seem to have changed.

Besides the high-speed ride into the middle of the RU naval drill, the journalists had apparently also "overlooked" the yellow (slow) ride along the pipelines, which, according to the timeline, could only have taken place in the 20 hrs gap from 22nd to 23rd b/w point [3] and [4].

Did the journalists simply overlook these trips for some reason or were they inserted later, for example, to explain the long gap right at the later crime scene?
However, one comment made by the journalists is interesting.

In other words, the identification of the vessel has been changed. This is called AIS spoofing or AIS identity theft. It is just a hint that the AIS data can be completely faked. Ship-B can send the AIS data of ship-A, ship-B could also send own AIS data and ship-A's AIS data...

Ship-A could also falsify its own AIS data, so that it appears in a completely different position, with different direction and different speed.
What was that again? The SAR data detected TWO "dark-ships" in the area of the pipelines?

What if these dark-ships appeared by AIS to be somewhere else entirely? For example in Kaliningrad? Or what if SAR cannot see the stealth ship at all? Doesn't that open up unimagined possibilities reminiscent of a magic show?

PS: I just looked at a 3rd set of AIS data. These are unfortunately limited to the east, but otherwise more complete.
According to this, the Visby passed the later explosion site on the morning of the 22nd (yellow) with AIS turned off and headed east. The track ends at 11:19 UTC.

On the morning of the 23rd (orange) 5:52 UTC she re-enters the area from the east and heads straight for Simrishamn, but does not appear to dock. From there she circles Bornholm once. At midnight she is south of the island.

She then left the area at 11:17 UTC on the 24th (red), presumably heading for Kaliningrad.
This eliminates the Visby from the circle of suspects because she spent not enough time at any of the explosion sites.

However, her route on the morning of the 22nd also suggests that no Russian ships were operating there at that time (10:30 UTC).

It is also interesting to note that the three U.S. Navy warships (green) suddenly turned on AIS and headed west at about 17:15 UTC (19:15 local time) on the 21st just 10km west to south. So it is hard to say how long these ships were at this location.

*10km west to south from the later explosion sites.