The western Baltic is a NATO aquarium. USN warships and helos [Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group] spent all summer conducting underwater UUV / ROV drone “mine detection and demolition” drills. You have seen all the news stories. Mines are destroyed by explosives after being located by a UUV. A charted pipeline is 100X easier of a target.
If anybody else tried to explode 4 simultaneous pipeline bombs, in pairs, kilometers apart, (NS1 and NS2), NATO and the USN would know ALL about it.
A medium-size fish cannot swim in and out of the Baltic (50' controlling depth) without being recorded by dozens of sensors.
Russia has bare transit rights [during peacetime] from Kaliningrad and St. Pete, but that is it. Every Russian ship going in and out of the Baltic is virtually escorted front and rear. The Western Baltic is a small lake surrounded by NATO nations, plus NATO-cooperating Sweden and Finland.
The USN did it. Motive (POTUS orders), ability, opportunity, threats made in advance.
I take no joy in saying that, as a long-ago frogman who locked in and out of submerged nuclear submarines, rode in mini-subs (SDVS), trained with every conceivable kind of underwater demolition, and dived with air bottles, mixed gas, and pure oxygen (for no bubbles). IOW, I know whereof I speak.
To believe otherwise than the USN did this is like believing the Russians snuck up the Thames River in mini mystery subs to blow up 4 key British infrastructure sites, at the same time, kilometers apart, and got away undetected.
(I will allow that the USN may have “sheep-dipped” some Poles in on the operation, to keep the Polish govt quiet forever, but in my professional frogman opinion, it was a USN operation.)
