Wanted to check what I was capable of checking regarding the Hersh piece. There are facts presented that do allow for some open-source work, namely the setting of the explosives via a Norwegian Alta-class minesweeper, and the dropping of a sonar buoy by a Norwegian P8...
...Norway has three Alta-class ships, M350 Alta (MMSI: 258001000), M351 Otra (MMSI: 259014000), M352 Rauma (MMSI: 259015000). Publicly available data suggests none were in the area for Baltops (June 5 to June 17, 2022), but I've requested additional tracking data to confirm...
...one Oksay-class minesweeper, the M343 Hinnoy (MMSI: 259019000), did track near the sites of the blasts (as reported by @DMA_SFS) in June, but its track does not match up to what you'd expect (holding position over the sites for a period of time so the divers could deploy)...
...Norway has five P8s, meanwhile, but none were tracked by @ADSBex in the area on September 26, 2022, and you would expect them to be. A US P8 (hexcode AE6581) was tracked in the area on that date, but it arrived about 90 minutes after the first blast...
...in short, the publicly available data does not corroborate Hersh's reporting. I should have additional vessel tracking data soon, and if that shows otherwise I'll update here.
Hope this thread was useful. I do want to note - I'm not aiming to exculpate or condemn here, and, personally, I'm open-minded. I'm interested in any and all evidence. This was just a quick exercise of using OSINT to check Hersh's claims, and the public data doesn't match up.
Just a point to note in response to one of the pushbacks I've seen on above - namely that the ship/plane would attempt to evade tracking. If you read the piece, Hersh's source says the explosives were to be planted during BALTOPS...
...during an exercise in which NATO divers would plant mines ie not a covert operation. As regards the P8 sonar flight, again the source said it was not designed to be covert, but a "seemingly routine flight"...
...and even when surveillance planes go dark, you often still have some tracking data from that day of operation, from take off or at landing etc. There is no tracking data for any of Norway's P8s (which, at any rate, were not scheduled to be operational until this year).
This is why an OSINT approach has merit in this case. Perhaps a totally covert operation was undertaken to blow up the pipelines. But that is not what Hersh describes in his piece, which is why I say the piece doesn't match up to publicly available data.
@evasmagacz So that P8 arrived well after the first blast was detected.
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