Not very stealthy is it, if "Spy Ship" Yantar is in the News again.
After diving on the wreck of the Ursa Major in the Med, Yantar is now off the coast of the UK, ostensibly mapping undersea cables according to press releases.
Now you could put two and two together and regard this is a message from Putin.
If Yantar has dived on the Ursa Major wreck and found the explosion came from something like an Unmanned Surface Vessel, Russia regard the UK as a Major collaborator with Ukraine on the development of USVs, even going as far as to say publicly they know Royal Navy assets are working inside Ukraine helping develop these vehicles.
Now Yantar appears off the coast of the UK, it's a clear signal the Ursa Major was sunk by a USV or some other identifiable method, that the Russians considers heavily linked to UK involvement in the Ukraine conflict and our proxy war with Russia.
Yantar mapping undersea cables and pipelines is a clear message: we know what you did. Yantar is a very visible asset doing a very obvious job. Not the normal mission of a spy ship. This is a message with meaning.
Of course, the undersea assets will have already been mapped covertly. Russia has the massive special-operations submarine Belgorod that is specifically designed for undersea interdiction of cables, pipelines and other undersea assets. It is specifically designed to be very stealthy, close to the standards of NATO subs. A lot of Russian Roubles have been poured into that sub. It is nuclear powered, so it can stay submerged for long periods and travel vast distances without surfacing.
It can navigate to UK waters in the wake of other Russian vessels transiting the English Channel, then loiter undetected to use laser scanning of the seabed, without making sonar emissions that would be detected. It can then move out of UK waters in the wake of a second vessel transiting the Channel. I did wonder why so many Russian vessels were using the channel in recent years, now I know.
We have even gone as far as surfacing a UK attack sub close to Yantar. Not standard Operating Procedure, the nature of a sub is to stay stealthy. But in the cat and mouse messaging game, surfacing a sub close to a Russian Intelligence gathering ship sends another message.
Anyway, if you are in the know, you know hat the Russians know, you know our government know the Russians know, we also know why the Russians want us to know they know and you now you know what everyone else knows, even if you don't know everything I know.
No comments:
Post a Comment