The HMCS Toronto had an identity crisis while deployed with NATO SNMG2 in the Black Sea

There are some things that happen in world military affairs that only I get upset about, and this is probably one of those things.

According to their AIS transponder, HMCS Toronto departed 2019-01-21 ~11:45Z from CFB Halifax for a six month tour with NATO Standing NATO Maritime Group Two (#SNMG2), and unlike previous Royal Canadian Navy-NATO deployments (like HMCS St Johns), HMCS Toronto has been operating with their AIS transponder off the whole time, for months.. until they entered the Black Sea and seem to have started broadcasting the MMSI of the HMCS Charlottetown. In some form or fashion, whatever had been entered manually into the transponder was not as it should be - but I don't know how it happened. From my seat here in Ottawa, one of my windows to the deployed maritime world is MarineTraffic.com, which has a worldwide network of AIS receivers. Along the way, in the Black Sea (and now in the Med), HMCS Toronto has been near many of those receivers, and I was able to put them on a map to illustrate where they were. Each place where they were broadcasting their location using AIS was being heard by not just the MarineTraffic.com receivers when they were close to shore, by design they were being "heard" by any ship, including Russian Navy SIGINT vessels in the area, without going through MarineTraffic.com. I mention this to make sure you have at the forefront of your mind that the HMCS Toronto itself is broadcasting their precise location, over marine VHF, and through the miracle of technology, are transmitting that location to everyone around the world; it isn't just Russian AGIs that know where the HMCS Toronto is - and that's not a problem or cause for concern!

The commander of SNMG2, Commodore Boudewijn Boots of the Royal Netherlands Navy, engages with the public over social media, bringing pictures from the bridge to Twitter, letting you know where they are regularly; so I have absolutely no doubt the location of the ships is in no way a "secret", and revealing the location of HMCS Toronto is in no way compromising their security - they are broadcasting their location themselves, but are showing up on MarineTraffic.com as using the identification number (MMSI) of the HMCS Charottetown.

#SNMG2 🇳🇱🇨🇦🇹🇷🇧🇬🇷🇴 completes her #NATO #BlackSea deployment. 🇧🇬Exercise #SeaShield proved our Allied maritime capabilities once again. Working with our 🇺🇦 and 🇬🇪partners showed NATO's commitment and enhanced our cooperation at sea. Thank you all. pic.twitter.com/WnKuSjDkqE

— Boudewijn Boots (@BoudewijnBoots) 17 April 2019

Are they trying to impersonate HMCS Charlottetown? What happened?

There are many Twitter accounts that are not operated by individuals, and are actually detractors put there to hijack the conversation and mislead the public; that said, I haven't given up on the platform yet, even though its extremely difficult to tell the difference between outraged soccer moms and paid disinformation operatives conducting their affairs in bad faith.

One inventive answer is that it was a prank or otherwise inside joke among the comms operators on the HMCS Toronto referencing when HMCS Charlottetown was performing exercises near Florida and labelled itself a "Pleasure Craft" (rather than a warship) over it's AIS transponder.
I'm not convinced that's the case.

I always appreciate messages from people who may know something but can't tell me anything because I don't have a need to know; "There are things at play here that are beyond the letter of the book." Okay, that's almost Yoda-worthy.

We also have at least two organisations' standard operating procedures in competition with each other, along with the personal views of the commanding officier (Cdr Martin Fluet), the commander of SNMG2, NATO itself, and the Royal Canadian Navy. Something changed, and I don't know who gave what orders to whom.

I was not paying any attention to HMCS Toronto's movements, because after they left Halifax and turned off their transponder, I didn't expect to see them for six months. When they departed the Black Sea, and I noticed they were using the MMSI assigned to the HMCS Charlottetown, I was quite surprised. You'll remember they were the ones who lost power / caught fire / broke down off the coast of Scotland and we were able to track them as they were limping around. Maybe they decided that was too transparent, and have gone in the other direction? The problem with that mentality is the underlying reason to turn off their transponder; to avoid public scrutiny, not t avoid the Russian Navy - who I'll guess are the primary adversary when conducting European war games. The Russians have their own national technical means to monitor and track NATO ships; and AIS, used by commercial ships the world over to avoid collisions, is not their primary method to detect or monitor #NATO ships. Does it help? Sure, everything helps, I'll give you that. If the Russians think the USS Ross is at a specific location, and they can "hear" USS Ross broadcasting its information from that same location, it does act as a confirmation, but if there's ever a shooting war, the first thing all the NATO ships would do is turn off their transponder - not just change their name, or pick a different MMSI.

Changing the ship's MMSI doesn't hide the location of the ship from anyone; why do it?

That is what I was losing my mind over.

It is ultimately the commander of the HMCS Toronto who is responsible for the safety of his crew and his ship. The commander's choices are guided by directives from his superiors.

• What advice was provided to him from NATO? or the Royal Canadian Navy? I don't know.
• Was there a new directive or was the SOP changed? I have no way of telling, 
• Did Commodore Boudewijn Boots and Cdr Martin Fluet, actually change nothing, but someone made a typo when entering the transponder number in the system? Maybe. The MMSI for HMCS Toronto and HMCS Charlottetown are only one number off.

My frustration is fundamentally that it is unrealistic to think the Russian Navy, who were following SNMG2 the whole time, mistook HMCS Toronto for HMCS Charlottetown. Nobody in the world was fooled. There was absolutely no improvement made to the security of the ship, or the mission, as far as I can tell.

• If it was an act of obfuscation or deception it was completely useless and didn't warrant doing.
• If this was done on purpose, in order to deceive, what does that say about the Royal Canadian Navy's level of maritime domain awareness? Did they think it would change something?
  That's what greatly concerns me.
• If this was a typo, a major system on the ship shouldn't have typos, and at the time they left Halifax they were using the right transponder number, meaning they changed it along the way. That's disturbing.

I would love to discover that this was all a ruse by the Royal Canadian Navy, and this was a repainted HMCS Charlottetown that actually transited to the Black Sea because the HMCS Toronto had much more extensive damage than had been previously reported; but I have no evidence to support that, I just made it up.

Derrick cracked me up with this, and it's at least partially true. The Royal Canadian Navy, and by extension NATO, and the American DoD, I believe, need a lot of help in understanding what is or isn't effective in hiding their movements. I follow the ships I do to remind the public and journalists that we (the people) can and should track our military with the transponders they broadcast their location to their adversaries with, and are aware they are using, so we can know as much as they do. Why should the Russian Navy know where Canadian ships are, when the Canadian public doesn't? If "they" know, *you* should know.

One day when the RCN makes disclosure of Operation Watkins the public will learn that their Counter OSINT Training Program was solely based around one man playing along while command officers learned that someone was paying attention

— Derrick Snowdy (@jdsnowdy) April 17, 2019

On April 27th 2017 the Russian Navy Moma-Class AGI Liman|Лиман had a really bad day.

Photo Credit: Alper Böler‏ @alperboler
October 21, 2016

FACTS:
On April 27th the Togo-flagged livestock vessel "Youzarsif H" (also referred to as "Youzar Sif.H"), IMO 7611547, and the Russian Navy Moma-Class AGI Liman|Лиман collided, between 08:30Z and 08:43Z, in thick fog, outside Turkish territorial waters, in the Black Sea. A breach below the water line caused the Liman to sink, reportedly after several hours. All crew were rescued in an orderly fashion from the pictures that were released by the Turkish coast guard. It was reported that the Youzarsif H headed back to port to check for damage and out of concern for the livestock; sheep.

Pretty much everything beyond that is speculation.

You should really read this excellent in-depth analysis by Tony Roper, a frequent contributor to IHS Jane's publications, before reading further, to get up to speed.
https://planesandstuff.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/full-analysis-of-the-sinking-of-liman/

Sharing speculation; refuting, proving, discussing, and arguing points, makes for very good banter on Twitter, Reddit, or any social media platform where you can get people with different views together and crowd-source information and experience. I'm not sure if that friendly banter and respectful exchange of ideas was lost on Mr Roper, but for professing to not be an "Expert", he sure does seem to condescend when he portrays those who would speculate about the ships' purpose, and circumstances of it's demise, as idiots, conspiracy theorists, stupid, ignorant, and stubborn. Well,

SPECULATION & UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: 

• Any ship could have an accident while at sea, in the fog, early in the morning. But, this wasn't "any" ship; just by being a Russian Navy AGI (a "Spy Ship") it makes me +1 suspicious. There is no good rational basis for that suspicion, except it's a Russian Navy AGI, it definitely has sensitive gear aboard, and having it sink leaves a gap in whatever task it was doing, on the deployment it was on.
  This is a seemingly inadvertent win for NATO, and a loss for the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
• There have been no reports regarding who ran into who; or if it was a mutual effort. The news media is making it sound like they were both moving and collided in the fog. I'm not sure that's correct.
  Was this a "T-Bone" collision while both were moving?
  Was this a T-Bone collision, while the Liman was stationary?
  Was this a glancing bow-on-bow strike?
  We know the Youzarsif H was moving at 11kn before the collision, and suffered superficial damage to its bow, but we don't know if the Liman was stationary or not, since it conducts its operations without using an AIS transponder.
• While the Liman does not transmit its location with an AIS transponder, can it receive AIS?
  Could it not "see" the other ship coming?
  AIS-T uses VHF marine frequencies
  87B (161.975 MHz)
  88B (162.025 MHz)
  Could these frequencies have been "jammed" intentionally, or accidentally?
  Likely not; any disruption to those frequencies should have affected all VHF maritime communications in the area. No such issues were reported, and most ships were beaconing fine on AIS.

• The Liman was not a "stealth" ship, and as far as I understand, should have shown up on the navigational radar of the Youzarsif H; isn't that why navigational radar exists?
  How didn't the captain or navigator of the Youzarsif H see it?
  ...or did they, and dismissed it as noise because it didn't transmit AIS?
  Shouldn't there be a collision alarm built into the system?
  They were in thick fog, only navigating by instruments, and didn't see a ship directly in front of them on radar?
  Isn't that weird?
  I don't think it reflects well on the Youzarsif H's crew, unless the operations of the Liman were causing issues for the radar of the Youzarsif H. Yes, that's wild speculation, because it makes no sense how a ship doesn't notice a giant hulk of floating steel in front of it on radar. Make up your own crazy theory! It's better than what we have now, which is nothing.
• The Youzarsif H's AIS signal was being received by terrestrial based AIS receivers, which Mr Roper described in his blog post with excruciating detail. The signal was very spotty before the collision, and crystal clear after the collision. This is the thing that really draws my eye and triggers my curiosity; it is the basis for much of my suspicion regarding this event. On the day Mr. Roper and I were discussing this he specifically dismissed my speculation that the issue could be related to the sender and insisted the gap in reception must be related to the receiver, or environmental conditions.
  "This totally depends on the receiver not the sender! The receiver may have been off."
  -Tony Roper, 6:29 PM EST, May 4 2017
  I tried to convey that my interest was less with the gap before the collision, and more with the immediate change to the signal quality (seemingly crystal clear reception) instantaneously after the collision, which Mr Roper had no explanation for at the time. It seems after reflection, he now theorizes the sender, may have had their antenna(s) facing away (blocked by the ship's superstructure?) from the shore-based receiver when travelling Southbound (toward the Liman) and immediately after the collision turned around and faced their AIS antenna(s) toward the shore-based AIS-T receiver. This is fantastic speculation, and would explain how the signal went from terrible, to perfect, immediately, while other ships in the area had AIS-T signal all along.
  Can we prove this theory with the available data? Well, it's certainly not as clear as I would like it to be. It is still crystal clear that immediately after the collision the AIS transmissions went from random times between successful transmissions to a steady stream at 3-4 minutes. (please refer to the spreadsheet snippet below)
  
  

  Date	Receiver	Speed	Longitude	Latitude	Course	Delta
  2017-04-27 06:55 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	11.4	41.82308	28.98331	177
  2017-04-27 07:02 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	11.4	41.79881	28.98457	177	0:07
  2017-04-27 07:05 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	11.3	41.78935	28.98486	178	0:03
  2017-04-27 07:26 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	11.2	41.72423	28.98452	182	0:21
  2017-04-27 08:20 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	11.1	41.55295	28.97452	185	0:54
  2017-04-27 08:22 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	11.1	41.55295	28.97452	185	0:02
  2017-04-27 08:30 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	11	41.52769	28.96805	194	0:08
  2017-04-27 08:41 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	9.5	41.49945	28.95921	194	0:11
  2017-04-27 08:44 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	0.7	41.49731	28.95823	199	0:03
  2017-04-27 08:48 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	0.2	41.49696	28.95755	253	0:04
  2017-04-27 08:51 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	0.5	41.49689	28.95732	241	0:03
  2017-04-27 08:55 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	0.7	41.49654	28.95673	228	0:04
  2017-04-27 08:59 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	0.7	41.49685	28.95632	19	0:04
  2017-04-27 09:02 (UTC)	Terr-AIS	0.9	41.49718	28.95667	45	0:03
• When did the collision occur?
  At 08:30Z, as you can see, the Youzarsif H was moving at 11kn on a course of 194 degrees.
  At 08:41Z, 11 minutes later, it was doing 9.5kn, still on the exact same course of 194 degrees. Could they have hit the ship, and shoved it aside, keeping the exact same course? I don't think so. They had significantly reduced speed by then; did they see the Liman coming and reduce speed, or were they in the middle of colliding with it at that moment?
  At 08:44Z, only 3 minutes later, they had dropped to 0.7kn and changed course to 199 degrees; the collision had already happened.
  I suspect the collision happened between 08:41 and 08:44, based on the course and speed.
  You'll notice the AIS-T problems cleared up at that exact moment too; they were at 3-4min intervals from then on.
  
  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The left hand line of dots (and gaps) are the locations where the AIS-T signal from the Youzarsif H was received by a shore-based receiver while headed South, the right hand line of dots represents the return trip where AIS was crystal clear. You might notice there was a spot where it turned around and didn't seem to have any problem transmitting it's position too. Proof of anything? Not really. (data courtesy of MarineTraffic.com)

Photo Credit: Yörük Işık‏ @YorukIsik
October 21, 2016

There is supposed to be an investigation underway by the Turkish authorities regarding this incident, and I look forward to hear what their conclusions are.