ASTROL 1 is a largely flat cargo ship with hatches that likely would serve well as drone pads.
She is a similar model to SCANLARK, recently apprehended by German authorities on drone suspicions and to PORT OLYA 4, drone import ship on Iran trade. Sunk by Ukraine.
At time of drone attack start ASTROL 1 was just 35-40 km to the southeast of Copenhagen airport, having passed the hours before.
The night before she spent zig-zaging Kattegat, as if to arrive timely to destination?
Sunk ship PORT OLYA did these tracks last year, highly likely importing drones or other armaments from Iran to Russia in Caspian Sea.
ASTROL 1 did at least three similar trips last 12 months, last in Feb 2025.
Very circumstantial, but in this photo ASTROL 1 is maneuvering right in front of known gun runner SPARTA IV. Photo taken in 2021. Kaliningrad? St Petersburg?
The case presented here is of course highly circumstantial.
ASTROL 1 is steaming south of Gotland. 4 hours ago she left normal traffic patterns and made a turn for Gotland.
I'll leave for the marine commands to decide if she is possible to apprehend and worthy of it.
Oh, almost forgot. With AIS we always run the risk of looking at a falsified track. A ship similar in shape to ASTROL 1 passes a webcam with a good match to the AIS-track, yesterday morning, north of Helsingør. This gives more credibility to the AIS-track being true.
Unless ASTROL 1 turns she will be on Swedish waters in 90 minutes. Ripe for picking.
Closest openly advertized NATO units is a Latvian catamaran patrol a few hours to NWW. There are almost certainly unadvertized units in the general area as well.
Today Russian Navy corvette Soobrazitelny 531 intervened to make German media, politicians and possibly coast guard stay away from a shadow tanker in waters between Denmark and Germany.
Details from Swedish politician: a Greenpeace protest was under way, Russian corvette closed in at high speed, initially not replying to radio from German Coast Guard. German CG then escorted activists/politicians/media away.
Ie, Russia interrupted western democratic activities.
Russia is jamming Baltic Sea - 6th proof, 4th method.
Pskov, Kaliningrad and Kingisepp stand out as highly likely spots for the jammers, found by analyzing NISAR satellite imagery.
Method is copied from work by @SeanGorman and verified by identifying a known jammer, +/- 2.5km🧵
Method is best described by @SeanGorman in this article, my inspiration.
Short version, jammers produce interference seen by the radar, bearings are taken and combining several such it is possible to compute a center position and its uncertainty. gpsworld.com/converging-on-…
Uncluttered view of my detection. NB, there are only a few passes per jammer. Some likely false positive detections and jammers around Ukraine.
The files are 14GB each and in beta, coverage is limited and unfortunately there are no perpendiculars passes (much better detection).
NATO has started broadcasting a regular request for the reporting of suspicious observations from mariners in Baltic Sea.
Not sure when it started, but a while ago. Thanks anon follower for the recording! =)
Full text:
... in the Baltic Sea region in coordination with NATO Baltic nations to safeguard safety and security, freedom of navigation and the security of undersea infrastructure.....1/2
To assist in this maritime security effort please report immediately any observations of unusual maritime activity or behavior over VHF channel 16. This is Lyngby Radio monitoring VHF chan.....2/2