yup, you can see the virtual sea of spy antenna on her /sarcasm
Posted on 09/16/2008 2:24:43 AM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
SEVASTOPOL, September 16 (RIA Novosti) - The U.S. Pathfinder ship entered on Tuesday the Sevastopol harbor that is home to the Ukrainian navy and Russia's Black Sea Fleet, a Russian naval source said."This is the second planned visit of Pathfinder at the invitation of Ukraine in the past 10 days," the source said.
USNS Pathfinder (T-AGS 60) is an oceanographic survey ship owned by the Military Sealift Command and has a civilian crew and scientists on board.
According to official statements, Pathfinder is searching for a ship which sank in the harbor during World War II.
The Soviet hospital ship Armenia was sunk on November 7, 1941 by German torpedo-carrying He 111 planes while the ship was evacuating refugees and wounded military and staff from Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that approximately 7,000 people died in the attack.
However, Russian intelligence believes that ships of the Pathfinder class could be used for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering purposes.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at en.rian.ru ...
surely they can come up with a better cover story than that. They don’t need an oceanographic ship to find a shipwreck in a harbor. I’m sure it was mapped years ago as a hazard to navigation.
There’s probably enough to spook gear with task force that’s already there to risk anything funny. I’d let the survey ship happily ping away looking the wreck - any bathymetric data on the enemy’s doorstep is always a plus.
MI Pingski
Marine archaeology is a hot item in the Black Sea, as it used to be a much smaller, isolated body of water known in antiquity as the Old Euxine Lake (7500 years ago).
When the small isthmus of land connecting Europe to Asia Minor collapsed, the salty water from the Sea of Marmara flooded into the area around the old lake, rising up to eventually become known as the New Euxine Sea.
Under the surface of the today’s Black Sea is the drowned remains of a civilization. Our ships have been going in there and mapping the sea floor, which has been driving the Russians crazy for the past 19 years!
Use it as a cover term? I don’t think most archaeologists would tolerate that, as they all want to go out on field expeditions to some of the most remote and politically dangerous of places, like Iran and Afghanistan. Having covert members on the expedition can make them suspect in the eyes of antagonistic government officials and so almost all academics will refuse to allow any spooks on their teams.
You gotta crank up that paranoia.
yup, you can see the virtual sea of spy antenna on her /sarcasm
Funny that the Russians did not say a thing about USS Mount Whitney being a spy ship.
She has more ELINT gear than this thing, which by the looks of her, has nothing.
In the late 60's I did a short temporary duty assignment to cover a crewmember on emergency leave on the USS Banner, AGER-1. The AGER stands for Auxillary Oceanographic Environmental Research Ship. The USS Pueblo was hull number AGER-2.
'nuf said.
Why heck ........... they've been saying the same thing about my 14 foot john-boat.
We should really screw with their minds and send in a dozen or so commercial fishing boats to wander aimlessly around the Black Sea.
Given their history of using “fishing trawlers” as spy ships, the Ruskies would crap themselves blind trying to figure out what they are up to. They’d have bears flying around the clock to watch them.
“...don’t believe that Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was being used by the evil Americans as a spy plane...”
Nope. But I do know that a jetliner hijacked over the Med during the ealy 1980s had a handful of senior ranking NSA officials on board who were never “made”, and who were rescued unharmed along with most of the passengers.
Great idea!
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