I once again have to note how in making the offer to the west Russia is refusing to acknowledge Ukraine's agency or competence.
Russia doesn't recognize Ukraine's existence, much less its agency. "Those guys over there are pretending they're a country and that is a threat to our existence that must be stamped out" was Russia's publicly-stated rationale for starting the war.
Russia can’t negotiate directly with Ukraine, not after spending the last year (at least) publicly talking about how the country shouldn’t exist. Can’t give them any legitimacy when you know you’re going to want to get the rest of the country at some point.
I once again have to note how in making the offer to the west Russia is refusing to acknowledge Ukraine's agency or competence.
it's starting to feel like they genuinely, truly believe the world view where smaller states have no actual sovereignity or independence
and not just in a loose "great powers have a lot of influence" way but like, formally
like even if zelensky was a puppet of the EU or NATO or the US or whoever he is supposed to be the puppet of, this would still have to be done through said puppet
Ever since Putin was blaming the protests against his government like a decade ago on a CIA plot, I knew he was paranoid and a bit conspiratorial, but I never really considered that he was this paranoid and conspiratorial. He seems to have believed his own bullshit on Ukrainian nationalist (or lack there of) and seems to think they are still weak and useless. It may well be that a lot of his rhetoric about how this is actually a plot by NATO against him or whatever are also things he actually believes.
press conference on norwegian readiness and security of our offshore installations
on one hand, something is going on so might as well pay attention
on the other, my eyes will roll straight out of my head if I hear one more assurance that there's "no indications of any threats" and that measures are being taken
somebody in the cabinet really needs to be told that hey, your completely empty assurances are the only thing making anyone worried. No indications, and "we are increasing readiness" like either matters?
Just say, yeah we got 9000 km of pipelines out there of course we can't do shit if someone wants to blow one of them up. It just wouldn't be a big deal for us since we export 95% and russia would have to be genuinely insane to launch an attack on NATO and we'd probably actually make money if something happened to a pipeline of ours.
I know I'll be annoyed yet here I am watching it.
I'm on watch and wait to possibly fly out your way. This is a shit show. I don't think most people grasp what "seal or repair pipeline" entails. Hell I don't think most people get what underwater demolitions or underwater construction actually is. This is all massively complex. Rocket science it is not but the logistics, time, effort, manpower, is all out of most peoples comprehension.
If bad enough I'd have to leave my cushy desk job and go do things. Most of my background was making things go boom and putting things together. So even in my 40's I'm still qualified and in good shape. Also dive certified, can operate a ship legally, and have a pilots license.
As the joke goes in EOD "if you see me running you better keep up".
that part of the readiness is legit (and not being talked about because, well, it's not like the government has anything to do with it) it's the "oh we are... making sure it's safe" stuff the government is saying that is making me roll my goddamn eyes
rest easy, everybody
if they planned to take out the pipelines to the continent by walking up to, say, Kårstø gas terminal in norway and fucking with the controls there will be increased security checks at the gate
anyway that annoyance aside: yeah underwater operations really are mindboggling in scale. Hell, all offshore petroleum kind of is.
but so is the scale of the money involved.
an example using some crude math: gas futures jumped about 10% from the nord stream pipes springing their leaks which means the norwegian gas exported since yesterday was worth 40 million euros more
and that's just from popping gas pipelines that aren't moving a single litre
so in the unlikely event someone decides to pop one of our pipelines, the amount of money that could be spent fixing it while still having an extremely profitable month is ludicrous
If it makes you feel better you seem to be at least related to my line of work on a tangent. We are good at what we do. I'm sure you know that. There are sub 5k of us in the US and we are all ex military and the saturation community is about 1k at this time. The job will get done. But figuring out how to do it, what is needed, how to get it all there, how to deploy it, how to go about it, is going to be much work work than doing the damn thing. Logistics are hard, my side was always easy. Take it down or put it up, obviously more complex but do you want construction or destruction dump the shit on the floor I go pick it up and shit goes boom or built. How you do all that is the fucking mind fuck of all of that and I didn't really deal with that. But it's much easier to boom than build, and we all know that. Then there is the fucking cleanup, and other side issues (they are not side issues but we don't have teams to deal with it because it doesn't pay, though we yell a lot in court).
I don't think we will go, or I will get called back. Norway if anything has a damn fleet of ROVs and qualified divers and they can handle it. It is a shit show, but it is a fixable one. What most people must understand when looking at a situation like this is that while it is bad, and will remain bad, and the issues will bite us in the ass for decades, undersea operations are conducted by some of the best people on the planet. We love what we do! It's no cheap and this isn't a penny pinching to make quarter profits type thing. Virtually all of us hold TS/SCI clearences like Trump violated because we got trained in the military and still take contracts from them. Doing shit I can't talk about.
Which is all to say, calm down. It's a fucking mess but lets get staff on site and let them look and figure it all out? I have full confidence in the type of people who have to deal with this. You should as well. You have to be qualified as fuck to do this. It's not like getting into Harvard, you can't legacy do it. The issue is they can't say what they know, you cannot. There are security issues, panic issues, economic issues, so they will all be silent until a solid solution is in place. Then they will talk. To quote the Mandalorian "this is the way" you don't wan't them to speak. They won't know till they know. A solution can take days to draw up and months to implement, again not due to "math sucks" (math does suck and it cant be that) but due to logistics. It's always logistics.
The slave owner would never negotiate with the slaves themselves though, because that would be an acknowledgment and rejection of the entire system of privilege and class the slave owner enjoys.
Ok, I might have to steal that analogy because it express my issues with tankists quite well: they think that they are the ones who should negotiate with the slaver...
Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t a PIG be difficult since the pipe was supposedly full and not moving? Just in terms of pressure and displacement?
They're designed to operate in a pressurized pipe. Moving it several hundred kilometers without flow would be an issue, though.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
I once again have to note how in making the offer to the west Russia is refusing to acknowledge Ukraine's agency or competence.
it's starting to feel like they genuinely, truly believe the world view where smaller states have no actual sovereignity or independence
and not just in a loose "great powers have a lot of influence" way but like, formally
like even if zelensky was a puppet of the EU or NATO or the US or whoever he is supposed to be the puppet of, this would still have to be done through said puppet
Ever since Putin was blaming the protests against his government like a decade ago on a CIA plot, I knew he was paranoid and a bit conspiratorial, but I never really considered that he was this paranoid and conspiratorial. He seems to have believed his own bullshit on Ukrainian nationalist (or lack there of) and seems to think they are still weak and useless. It may well be that a lot of his rhetoric about how this is actually a plot by NATO against him or whatever are also things he actually believes.
Which is scarier.
He 100% believes it, he sees nato and the cia behind every shadow and definitely would blame them for what’s happened in the war rather than admit he was wrong about Ukrainian strength and independence.
Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t a PIG be difficult since the pipe was supposedly full and not moving? Just in terms of pressure and displacement?
If I wanted to bomb a pipeline I'd use a delayed charge on an ROV from a surface boat and get the fuck out of there. There's more than one way to do it. But again, it's just not done. You don't blow up undersea stuff because it turns into a huge multinational fiasco fast. Nobody will "haha you sure stuck it to them" everyone will be fucking pissed about toxic fish, shrimp, and other stuff. It's just not done. It's not hard to do this, the how isn't the issue. It's the why. Anybody doing deep sea work is running about with demo charges and could blast an oil platform if they gave a fuck or got bored. But it's JUST NOT DONE. Because the cleanup is a fucking mess. Also a detonation is a danger to everyone and everything down there. You have to clear this. File reports on the structures and items there, make sure nobody else will be there do it, you can't just go blowing shit up. Even in the military you have to get this sort of stuff cleared.
For the PIG this is again silly. Any sort of PIG or ROV would have to be cleared, documented, filed, and handled that way. You alert all as to what you are doing so there are not fuck ups. This is all paperwork heavy which is I way I never went senior management or officer, it's a nightmare! There's no reason to not do it because each part has serial codes on it so you aren't fooling anyone. And saturation diving doesn't work like people think. It takes days. You also sink like a rock. 70 meters is a fucking joke that's not even serious free diving which has hit 200+ meters. That's with no o2. So the issue is not how they go there. Thousands of explanations for the how. The issue is the why. You're not down with us without a why.
Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t a PIG be difficult since the pipe was supposedly full and not moving? Just in terms of pressure and displacement?
If I wanted to bomb a pipeline I'd use a delayed charge on an ROV from a surface boat and get the fuck out of there. There's more than one way to do it. But again, it's just not done. You don't blow up undersea stuff because it turns into a huge multinational fiasco fast. Nobody will "haha you sure stuck it to them" everyone will be fucking pissed about toxic fish, shrimp, and other stuff. It's just not done. It's not hard to do this, the how isn't the issue. It's the why. Anybody doing deep sea work is running about with demo charges and could blast an oil platform if they gave a fuck or got bored. But it's JUST NOT DONE. Because the cleanup is a fucking mess. Also a detonation is a danger to everyone and everything down there. You have to clear this. File reports on the structures and items there, make sure nobody else will be there do it, you can't just go blowing shit up. Even in the military you have to get this sort of stuff cleared.
For the PIG this is again silly. Any sort of PIG or ROV would have to be cleared, documented, filed, and handled that way. You alert all as to what you are doing so there are not fuck ups. This is all paperwork heavy which is I way I never went senior management or officer, it's a nightmare! There's no reason to not do it because each part has serial codes on it so you aren't fooling anyone. And saturation diving doesn't work like people think. It takes days. You also sink like a rock. 70 meters is a fucking joke that's not even serious free diving which has hit 200+ meters. That's with no o2. So the issue is not how they go there. Thousands of explanations for the how. The issue is the why. You're not down with us without a why.
So in other words this isn’t like the Oklahoma city bombing or something where some random jackass is going to load a ton of explosives into a truck and roll up on an undersea pipeline, most of the nonstate actors that could feasibly pull it off would have an enormous amount to lose and nothing at all to gain?
On other stuff, the border crossings between Russia and everywhere else are, to nobody's surprise, complete and total shitshows. Just news from the border with Georgia:
Local authorities say everyone draft-eligible in the huge line to leave Russia at the Georgian border – which is stretching for 24+ hours – is getting a conscription notice
Vehicles registered outside of Russia's North Ossetia (which is where the congested border crossing with Georgia is located) are now banned from entering the region
Francis Scarr reports for BBC.
Note that Georgia is a country that, you know, Russia invaded and took territory from recently, so they are getting anything but a warm welcome:
Near the Georgia border crossing into Russia, protesters are playing the Ukrainian national anthem and trolling the Russians who are leaving.
‘In surveys, most of you support the war. So why now are you leaving?’ reads the sign carried by the man draped in the Ukraine flag.
Emma Burrows reports for ITN.
Last thread has multiple signs that all point out the feeling that most people in Russia were fine with all the warcriming until it became their problem.
In this intercepted call with his mother, the Russian soldier reveals how he received a summons for mobilisation despite already being in Ukraine for 7 months, and doesn't know what to do with it. He wraps up by saying "f*ck this president".
not even being already in ukraine for 7 months saves your from being conscripted again, lmao
tweeter translates russian sources which are usually pro war
Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t a PIG be difficult since the pipe was supposedly full and not moving? Just in terms of pressure and displacement?
If I wanted to bomb a pipeline I'd use a delayed charge on an ROV from a surface boat and get the fuck out of there. There's more than one way to do it. But again, it's just not done. You don't blow up undersea stuff because it turns into a huge multinational fiasco fast. Nobody will "haha you sure stuck it to them" everyone will be fucking pissed about toxic fish, shrimp, and other stuff. It's just not done. It's not hard to do this, the how isn't the issue. It's the why. Anybody doing deep sea work is running about with demo charges and could blast an oil platform if they gave a fuck or got bored. But it's JUST NOT DONE. Because the cleanup is a fucking mess. Also a detonation is a danger to everyone and everything down there. You have to clear this. File reports on the structures and items there, make sure nobody else will be there do it, you can't just go blowing shit up. Even in the military you have to get this sort of stuff cleared.
For the PIG this is again silly. Any sort of PIG or ROV would have to be cleared, documented, filed, and handled that way. You alert all as to what you are doing so there are not fuck ups. This is all paperwork heavy which is I way I never went senior management or officer, it's a nightmare! There's no reason to not do it because each part has serial codes on it so you aren't fooling anyone. And saturation diving doesn't work like people think. It takes days. You also sink like a rock. 70 meters is a fucking joke that's not even serious free diving which has hit 200+ meters. That's with no o2. So the issue is not how they go there. Thousands of explanations for the how. The issue is the why. You're not down with us without a why.
So in other words this isn’t like the Oklahoma city bombing or something where some random jackass is going to load a ton of explosives into a truck and roll up on an undersea pipeline, most of the nonstate actors that could feasibly pull it off would have an enormous amount to lose and nothing at all to gain?
To get nautical. You can't just "float out to see and be free" there are plans, permits, and other bullshit you send off. It's all heavily documented for your own god damn good so they know how to find you when you fuck up, or how gets sued when you fuck up. This is all tracked, constantly, 24/7. Short of fucking about in a bay on your yatch you can't just send ships or boats willy nilly, you'll have problems fast.
Commercial and military operations which is where the boom goes down are declared, so as not to confuse people, there are exceptions but it's routine. Nobody cares.
Now it's not unpossible some maniac leased a fishing trawley, uba dived, bombed it, and came back up and ran away to freedom and bitches but James Bond is not real! And again, it's lunatic. This is not how subsea operations are conducted. We do this via ROVs with about a total 10k people in the US and it would be known instantly if someone got up to something. Other nattions work the same. To explain, you have to ask permission to drop a diver in an area. You can't just do it. There's a whole laundry list of shit that has to go down before your diver gets his dick wet. Even then, you might be told no days bad try next day. Everyone knows where everyone is at all times.
Two tangential notes before going back to seriousness:
Saturation diving is fascinating and awesome and also completely insane, and if anyone ever has some time to kill there are some amazing documentaries about it. Just, you know, fuck nitrogen and p-diff.
Also now that I know the bells get Internet I have mental images of saturation divers playing Subnautica on Steam in their off time.
Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t a PIG be difficult since the pipe was supposedly full and not moving? Just in terms of pressure and displacement?
There are pigs with motivators to propel themselves.
Two tangential notes before going back to seriousness:
Saturation diving is fascinating and awesome and also completely insane, and if anyone ever has some time to kill there are some amazing documentaries about it. Just, you know, fuck nitrogen and p-diff.
Also now that I know the bells get Internet I have mental images of saturation divers playing Subnautica on Steam in their off time.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
To get nautical. You can't just "float out to see and be free" there are plans, permits, and other bullshit you send off. It's all heavily documented for your own god damn good so they know how to find you when you fuck up, or how gets sued when you fuck up. This is all tracked, constantly, 24/7. Short of fucking about in a bay on your yatch you can't just send ships or boats willy nilly, you'll have problems fast.
Commercial and military operations which is where the boom goes down are declared, so as not to confuse people, there are exceptions but it's routine. Nobody cares.
Now it's not unpossible some maniac leased a fishing trawley, uba dived, bombed it, and came back up and ran away to freedom and bitches but James Bond is not real! And again, it's lunatic. This is not how subsea operations are conducted. We do this via ROVs with about a total 10k people in the US and it would be known instantly if someone got up to something. Other nattions work the same. To explain, you have to ask permission to drop a diver in an area. You can't just do it. There's a whole laundry list of shit that has to go down before your diver gets his dick wet. Even then, you might be told no days bad try next day. Everyone knows where everyone is at all times.
That's saying a whole lot of nothing in this case, since whoever was doing this clearly didn't want accountability. Whatever the usual standards of conduct are is irrelevant, since they obviously would have been completely ignored.
Yeah also the "air" he lets out is how we float shit back up. Is a whole system. What we do is actually really damn cool. I have full faith in my peoples. It's a fun as fuck job. I just don't think most people know what we do, and more importantly what we do for you.
To get nautical. You can't just "float out to see and be free" there are plans, permits, and other bullshit you send off. It's all heavily documented for your own god damn good so they know how to find you when you fuck up, or how gets sued when you fuck up. This is all tracked, constantly, 24/7. Short of fucking about in a bay on your yatch you can't just send ships or boats willy nilly, you'll have problems fast.
Commercial and military operations which is where the boom goes down are declared, so as not to confuse people, there are exceptions but it's routine. Nobody cares.
Now it's not unpossible some maniac leased a fishing trawley, uba dived, bombed it, and came back up and ran away to freedom and bitches but James Bond is not real! And again, it's lunatic. This is not how subsea operations are conducted. We do this via ROVs with about a total 10k people in the US and it would be known instantly if someone got up to something. Other nattions work the same. To explain, you have to ask permission to drop a diver in an area. You can't just do it. There's a whole laundry list of shit that has to go down before your diver gets his dick wet. Even then, you might be told no days bad try next day. Everyone knows where everyone is at all times.
That's saying a whole lot of nothing in this case, since whoever was doing this clearly didn't want accountability. Whatever the usual standards of conduct are is irrelevant, since they obviously would have been completely ignored.
Its a busy shipping lane though, I would assume its a bit like flying a private plane: sure, you absolutely can physically jump into your plane and start flying around without telling anyone , but in most cases that makes you more conspicuous not less, and you can be sure someone will be around rather quickly to check you out and ask what exactly you are doing and why.
On other stuff, the border crossings between Russia and everywhere else are, to nobody's surprise, complete and total shitshows. Just news from the border with Georgia:
Local authorities say everyone draft-eligible in the huge line to leave Russia at the Georgian border – which is stretching for 24+ hours – is getting a conscription notice
Vehicles registered outside of Russia's North Ossetia (which is where the congested border crossing with Georgia is located) are now banned from entering the region
Francis Scarr reports for BBC.
Note that Georgia is a country that, you know, Russia invaded and took territory from recently, so they are getting anything but a warm welcome:
Near the Georgia border crossing into Russia, protesters are playing the Ukrainian national anthem and trolling the Russians who are leaving.
‘In surveys, most of you support the war. So why now are you leaving?’ reads the sign carried by the man draped in the Ukraine flag.
Emma Burrows reports for ITN.
Last thread has multiple signs that all point out the feeling that most people in Russia were fine with all the warcriming until it became their problem.
The sad part is that the Russian MoD probably feels like they're being super clever about all this.
'Ho ho ho! Look at these cowards, getting exactly the fate they wanted to avoid!'
Yeah and in a couple months when the temps turn freezing the government will be getting a fate of army mutinies.
Scooter on
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Another interesting fact about this is how no one is talking about any sort of sonar data from the area. A major underwater gas pipeline didn't have sonar surveillance nearby? Really?
Absolute silence so far - from all the governments involved. Siesmic data you can't hide because it travels too far, but really? Nothing? When we have a whole lot of data for Unexplained Sounds under the ocean?
The big detail of course is sonar capabilities tend to be somewhere between secret and mega-fucking-secret, but in that region, around a major strategic asset, the idea that there isn't a lot of data or what went on is completely implausible.
For sonar you need a sonar. They give you a very limited view of sonic reflections in a specific area. So for finding a pipeline, you move the sonar around until you see it’s reflection.
It would take a lot of time to sonar map the Baltic and you couldn’t see anything not directly underneath your ship.
Mostly intelligence gathering uses listening buoys. These can hear engines and noise. But the Baltic is busy and narrow in spots and noisy and so I’m sure there’s a limit to which noises can be filtered out.
Using an ROV from the back of a ship won’t have stood out much. If a ship spoofs its GPS transponder there’d be no sign of them having been there.
Here’s the current marine traffic map of the Baltic:
We are very, very good at picking out individual sounds from listening buoys, and there's been a lot of work recently on improving those sorts of systems. Detecting and classifying commercial traffic is table stakes there - what you have is a big obvious event which will have made a lot of noise, which perfectly timestamps when you walk backwards to reconstruct it.
It's hard to detect submarines. Swedish diesel electric submarine managed to get into a US military harbor for a "kill" during an exercise. Russian submarines pop in and out of Stockholm archipelago multiple times every year. Rarely are they conclusively proved to have been there. We mostly know because who and what else was it going to be?
In the case of the pipelines they're extremely long distances. It doesn't seem like a hard thing for someone with the capability to do - to sabotage something this long that is lying on the bottom of the ocean. Nobody was going to plant 5 thousand sonar stations along the length of the pipelines based on even conclusive info that the attack was going to take place next Tuesday.
FSB has opened case on damage to Nord Stream, it was classified as "act of international terrorism"
Source: Russian General Prosecution Office https://t.me/genprocrf/2091
FSB has opened case on damage to Nord Stream, it was classified as "act of international terrorism"
Source: Russian General Prosecution Office https://t.me/genprocrf/2091
FSB has opened case on damage to Nord Stream, it was classified as "act of international terrorism"
Source: Russian General Prosecution Office https://t.me/genprocrf/2091
‼️ White House announces new $1.1 billion weapons pkg for #Ukraine. It includes +18 HIMARS systems, hundreds of armored vehicles, radars and counter-drone systems.
Ostap Yarysh is a journalist for the Voice of America.
Some leaks from Kremlin plans and thoughts, media is trustworthy, but still it is unconfirmable information.Basically, Kremlin decided not to rush with annexing regions immediatly after referendums, but do it at "normal processing speed" over next week, reason being that despite propaganda best efforts, nobody here gives a f@ck and is to bus being angry at mobilization. So, annexation will not give them "patriotic fervor", but instead of realizing that their support base is illusionary as are Putin goals, Kremlin just doubles down on insane propaganda explaining us how annexation will be good for Russia.
Also Putin still hopes to negotiate with the West (but not with Zelensky, dude is still convinced he is mere puppet), and even has compromise in mind! To wit: Russia annexes LNR and DNR, but Kherson and Zaporoghie will become "independent states" with "Russian military presence". Yes, even after total failure to stop Ukrainian counter offensive and going for desperation methods like army of very literally untrained old disabled conscripts
so... they don't want to negotiate with the ones who are actually hurting from the war, the ones who actually know what toll it is taking
but negotiate with us who are paying the price of... just the energy crisis and, well, getting done phasing out military equipment in record time
yeah good luck with that
Russian propagandists are very-very obsessed with idea of EU "freezing in winter" without our gas. As things here usually are, this means Putin is very likely to buy into his own cool aid and think of it as real existential crisis for EU, which he has "by the balls" in long term
It is going to be cold and it is going to suck. But from the UK... all that means is everyone wants Ukraine to win faster, please. There is no serious factional dispute between the political parties on this, only on how to mitigate the damage meanwhile. If the UK government falls because people are cold, they will be replaced by another government which will still support Ukraine.
Even ordinary people here widely understand that there is no negotiation possible with the Putin regime at this point. At work we don't talk about it much because there isn't anything to talk about. We all agree.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
People talk about Russian fatalism but I can't say I ever really understood what it meant until now. There's something about a culture that allows all these people to cheer along or ignore such a self-destructive, genocidal invasion and who only react when they are personally in danger by running away. And then you see reports about how ridiculously high alcoholism and substance abuse rates are, particularly for men, in Russia, and it all comes together. Everyone just sort of accepts what is going on as inevitable and they bear it and anesthetize themselves to it as much as possible.
It's really sad to see because Russian culture is in many ways beautiful. The resilience and wry cynicism that comes out of their art and philosophy are wonderful, and yet it also seems to come along with a heavy dose of undue resignation.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Regarding the leaks - a potentially astronomically stupid question but would it be better if they just lit it all on fire to burn it up? At least from an environmental perspective?
Regarding the leaks - a potentially astronomically stupid question but would it be better if they just lit it all on fire to burn it up? At least from an environmental perspective?
From a GHG perspective, yes. I assume there are safety reasons to avoid that.
Regarding the leaks - a potentially astronomically stupid question but would it be better if they just lit it all on fire to burn it up? At least from an environmental perspective?
Yeah probably. Might be dangerous to light or hard to keep lit plus it's not THAT that much of an environmental catastrophe like if this were a comparable amount of oil.
I mean definitely not ideal, but 'only' like a day of GhG output from a mid-sized nation bad from back of the envelope calculations.
‼️ White House announces new $1.1 billion weapons pkg for #Ukraine. It includes +18 HIMARS systems, hundreds of armored vehicles, radars and counter-drone systems.
Ostap Yarysh is a journalist for the Voice of America.
That's a lot of freedom heading straight to where it's needed more. That package alone could guard the a massive chunk of the northern border with Belarus and Russia.
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Russia doesn't recognize Ukraine's existence, much less its agency. "Those guys over there are pretending they're a country and that is a threat to our existence that must be stamped out" was Russia's publicly-stated rationale for starting the war.
Ever since Putin was blaming the protests against his government like a decade ago on a CIA plot, I knew he was paranoid and a bit conspiratorial, but I never really considered that he was this paranoid and conspiratorial. He seems to have believed his own bullshit on Ukrainian nationalist (or lack there of) and seems to think they are still weak and useless. It may well be that a lot of his rhetoric about how this is actually a plot by NATO against him or whatever are also things he actually believes.
Which is scarier.
If it makes you feel better you seem to be at least related to my line of work on a tangent. We are good at what we do. I'm sure you know that. There are sub 5k of us in the US and we are all ex military and the saturation community is about 1k at this time. The job will get done. But figuring out how to do it, what is needed, how to get it all there, how to deploy it, how to go about it, is going to be much work work than doing the damn thing. Logistics are hard, my side was always easy. Take it down or put it up, obviously more complex but do you want construction or destruction dump the shit on the floor I go pick it up and shit goes boom or built. How you do all that is the fucking mind fuck of all of that and I didn't really deal with that. But it's much easier to boom than build, and we all know that. Then there is the fucking cleanup, and other side issues (they are not side issues but we don't have teams to deal with it because it doesn't pay, though we yell a lot in court).
I don't think we will go, or I will get called back. Norway if anything has a damn fleet of ROVs and qualified divers and they can handle it. It is a shit show, but it is a fixable one. What most people must understand when looking at a situation like this is that while it is bad, and will remain bad, and the issues will bite us in the ass for decades, undersea operations are conducted by some of the best people on the planet. We love what we do! It's no cheap and this isn't a penny pinching to make quarter profits type thing. Virtually all of us hold TS/SCI clearences like Trump violated because we got trained in the military and still take contracts from them. Doing shit I can't talk about.
Which is all to say, calm down. It's a fucking mess but lets get staff on site and let them look and figure it all out? I have full confidence in the type of people who have to deal with this. You should as well. You have to be qualified as fuck to do this. It's not like getting into Harvard, you can't legacy do it. The issue is they can't say what they know, you cannot. There are security issues, panic issues, economic issues, so they will all be silent until a solid solution is in place. Then they will talk. To quote the Mandalorian "this is the way" you don't wan't them to speak. They won't know till they know. A solution can take days to draw up and months to implement, again not due to "math sucks" (math does suck and it cant be that) but due to logistics. It's always logistics.
They're designed to operate in a pressurized pipe. Moving it several hundred kilometers without flow would be an issue, though.
- John Stuart Mill
He 100% believes it, he sees nato and the cia behind every shadow and definitely would blame them for what’s happened in the war rather than admit he was wrong about Ukrainian strength and independence.
If I wanted to bomb a pipeline I'd use a delayed charge on an ROV from a surface boat and get the fuck out of there. There's more than one way to do it. But again, it's just not done. You don't blow up undersea stuff because it turns into a huge multinational fiasco fast. Nobody will "haha you sure stuck it to them" everyone will be fucking pissed about toxic fish, shrimp, and other stuff. It's just not done. It's not hard to do this, the how isn't the issue. It's the why. Anybody doing deep sea work is running about with demo charges and could blast an oil platform if they gave a fuck or got bored. But it's JUST NOT DONE. Because the cleanup is a fucking mess. Also a detonation is a danger to everyone and everything down there. You have to clear this. File reports on the structures and items there, make sure nobody else will be there do it, you can't just go blowing shit up. Even in the military you have to get this sort of stuff cleared.
For the PIG this is again silly. Any sort of PIG or ROV would have to be cleared, documented, filed, and handled that way. You alert all as to what you are doing so there are not fuck ups. This is all paperwork heavy which is I way I never went senior management or officer, it's a nightmare! There's no reason to not do it because each part has serial codes on it so you aren't fooling anyone. And saturation diving doesn't work like people think. It takes days. You also sink like a rock. 70 meters is a fucking joke that's not even serious free diving which has hit 200+ meters. That's with no o2. So the issue is not how they go there. Thousands of explanations for the how. The issue is the why. You're not down with us without a why.
So in other words this isn’t like the Oklahoma city bombing or something where some random jackass is going to load a ton of explosives into a truck and roll up on an undersea pipeline, most of the nonstate actors that could feasibly pull it off would have an enormous amount to lose and nothing at all to gain?
Note that Georgia is a country that, you know, Russia invaded and took territory from recently, so they are getting anything but a warm welcome:
Last thread has multiple signs that all point out the feeling that most people in Russia were fine with all the warcriming until it became their problem.
tweeter translates russian sources which are usually pro war
To get nautical. You can't just "float out to see and be free" there are plans, permits, and other bullshit you send off. It's all heavily documented for your own god damn good so they know how to find you when you fuck up, or how gets sued when you fuck up. This is all tracked, constantly, 24/7. Short of fucking about in a bay on your yatch you can't just send ships or boats willy nilly, you'll have problems fast.
Commercial and military operations which is where the boom goes down are declared, so as not to confuse people, there are exceptions but it's routine. Nobody cares.
Now it's not unpossible some maniac leased a fishing trawley, uba dived, bombed it, and came back up and ran away to freedom and bitches but James Bond is not real! And again, it's lunatic. This is not how subsea operations are conducted. We do this via ROVs with about a total 10k people in the US and it would be known instantly if someone got up to something. Other nattions work the same. To explain, you have to ask permission to drop a diver in an area. You can't just do it. There's a whole laundry list of shit that has to go down before your diver gets his dick wet. Even then, you might be told no days bad try next day. Everyone knows where everyone is at all times.
Saturation diving is fascinating and awesome and also completely insane, and if anyone ever has some time to kill there are some amazing documentaries about it. Just, you know, fuck nitrogen and p-diff.
Also now that I know the bells get Internet I have mental images of saturation divers playing Subnautica on Steam in their off time.
"But I've already had conscription"
"What about second conscription"
There are pigs with motivators to propel themselves.
We aren't that cool, but we try to be
(Spoilered for extreme crab cruelty)
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I've seen that years ago and it's still what the kids would call "big oof". Some pretty crazy forces involved.
That's saying a whole lot of nothing in this case, since whoever was doing this clearly didn't want accountability. Whatever the usual standards of conduct are is irrelevant, since they obviously would have been completely ignored.
Its a busy shipping lane though, I would assume its a bit like flying a private plane: sure, you absolutely can physically jump into your plane and start flying around without telling anyone , but in most cases that makes you more conspicuous not less, and you can be sure someone will be around rather quickly to check you out and ask what exactly you are doing and why.
The sad part is that the Russian MoD probably feels like they're being super clever about all this.
'Ho ho ho! Look at these cowards, getting exactly the fate they wanted to avoid!'
Yeah and in a couple months when the temps turn freezing the government will be getting a fate of army mutinies.
This is the first time we've had a concrete war aim from the Russians since like, April.
It's hard to detect submarines. Swedish diesel electric submarine managed to get into a US military harbor for a "kill" during an exercise. Russian submarines pop in and out of Stockholm archipelago multiple times every year. Rarely are they conclusively proved to have been there. We mostly know because who and what else was it going to be?
In the case of the pipelines they're extremely long distances. It doesn't seem like a hard thing for someone with the capability to do - to sabotage something this long that is lying on the bottom of the ocean. Nobody was going to plant 5 thousand sonar stations along the length of the pipelines based on even conclusive info that the attack was going to take place next Tuesday.
I heard he cracked under the pressure. Having it caught on camera really sucked for him, and the whole episode left him broken.
Source: Russian General Prosecution Office
https://t.me/genprocrf/2091
Spidermanpointing.png
Ostap Yarysh is a journalist for the Voice of America.
It is going to be cold and it is going to suck. But from the UK... all that means is everyone wants Ukraine to win faster, please. There is no serious factional dispute between the political parties on this, only on how to mitigate the damage meanwhile. If the UK government falls because people are cold, they will be replaced by another government which will still support Ukraine.
Even ordinary people here widely understand that there is no negotiation possible with the Putin regime at this point. At work we don't talk about it much because there isn't anything to talk about. We all agree.
It's really sad to see because Russian culture is in many ways beautiful. The resilience and wry cynicism that comes out of their art and philosophy are wonderful, and yet it also seems to come along with a heavy dose of undue resignation.
From a GHG perspective, yes. I assume there are safety reasons to avoid that.
Yeah probably. Might be dangerous to light or hard to keep lit plus it's not THAT that much of an environmental catastrophe like if this were a comparable amount of oil.
I mean definitely not ideal, but 'only' like a day of GhG output from a mid-sized nation bad from back of the envelope calculations.
That's a lot of freedom heading straight to where it's needed more. That package alone could guard the a massive chunk of the northern border with Belarus and Russia.