We will bury you (in data) - Russian Navy Yantar backgrounder and Summer 2016 Trip Report.

I read the modern propaganda being parroted on social media. Twitter accounts allege to have seen or heard things on the news, with no precise source, but claim it sounded "right", and according to their bias, they believe it to be true. This cycle repeats itself almost daily. It's disappointing, and disheartening, especially when the media is routinely misled by sources who so boldly mislead them. Some (even many) journalists aren't aware at the time, and sometimes are never aware that they've been lied to. Unsuspecting people will parrot the information they get from the media, who are just reporting what they were told, from sometimes-trustworthy and believed-to-be reputable sources, with no idea they're complicit in perpetuating a lie. Thankfully, this isn't the 1950s anymore, and the power to fact-check many topics that were previously exclusive to the government with spy satellites and covert operations is now in the hands of the people. Today, anyone can find someone in Vladivostok and ask them to take a picture of a ship in front of them using their iPhone. It's a whole different world, and the public needs to aggressively fact-check the stories that are being fed to the media by both military and political factions worldwide.

I would like everyone to fact-check the Canadians, fact-check the Russians, fact-check the Americans; fact-check every side. Publish your findings for everyone to read, with facts and references that can be checked. There is nothing more patriotic than proving to the world that your government isn't lying to you. But what if they are, and you expose it..? Well, that's not your fault, now is it?

One of my least favourite pieces of propaganda is the rumour being spread that the Russian Navy AGOR Yantar is tapping and/or preparing to cut/detonate commercial telecom cables that stretch across the Atlantic. I didn't want to get into exactly how this came about, but "anonymous officials" have been less than truthful. I believe US Government leaked statements, through "anonymous" officials, about the ship being capable of cutting cables; the DoD was concerned about their secret military cables that run across the ocean to remote deployments and bases. Somewhere along the way, with or without help from "government officials", the media switched the narrative to direct focus toward commercial telecom cables. "The Internet", they said, was what Russia was after, all of a sudden.

David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported October 25th, 2015 that the Russian Navy AGOR Yantar "cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay".

Green = >12.5 Knots, Yantar's top speed is ~14-15
Map Data from MarineTraffic.com
Illustration by Steffan Watkins
(using Google Fusion Tables & Google Maps API)

Slowly? While "slowly" is subjective, there is nothing subjective about the AIS data the ship was transmitting for most of the transit from near Halifax Nova Scotia to Havana Cuba, which shows the ship was at full speed, and with the wind at their backs they even got up past 16 knots. How did Mr Sanger and Mr Schmitt arrive at the conclusion the ship sailed slowly, anywhere? Anonymous government officials? Unfortunately neither Mr Sanger or Mr Schmit fact-checked these claims with OSINT data (to be fair, I didn't check in October 2015 either)

"Off the East Coast" is a frequently used term, that is hugely subjective. Everyone has a different interpretation regarding what constitutes "off the coast". Legally, sovereign territorial waters extend only 12 nautical miles, and the EEZ extends 200 nautical miles; so where was Yantar?  Until they approached Cuba at the end of their transit, their closest point was hundreds of miles away from the coast. Once again, government officials chose to mislead Mr Sanger and Mr Schmitt, rather than provide a verifiable number that could be fact-checked to give an illusion of their proximity to the US coast that simply didn't exist.

Maybe the anonymous government officials didn't want to give the New York Times "Top Secret" US Navy intelligence about the ship's location, but... I just gave you a map. How did I do that? The Russian Navy vessel Yantar is a research vessel, classified as an AGOR, a relatively ordinary, but new and advanced, Russian Navy oceanographic research ship; and while ultimately I'm sure Yantar is doing more than looking for whales, their location isn't a secret to anyone outside The Pentagon. They're broadcasting their location both to AIS satellite based receivers, and terrestrial receivers, for the entire world to watch. They beacon their precise location frequently, every few minutes to local marine traffic over Marine VHF.

Mr Sanger and Mr Schmitt correctly stated the vessel was headed to Havana, but they left fact-based reporting behind when they linked the Russian ship's movements to the Guantanamo Bay cable that comes ashore at the base in Guantanamo Bay. Yantar was never anywhere near Guantanamo Bay's cable demarcation point, or even the South side of Cuba, where Guantanamo Bay is, nor did they stop where the cable was expected to have been laid by USNS Zeus. I speculate this was either a misunderstanding, or deliberate misinformation being sewn by the "anonymous" government officials.

Mr Sanger and Mr Schmitt continued and quoted US Navy Admiral Mark Ferguson, commander of US Naval Forces in Europe. 

"Citing public remarks by the Russian Navy chief, Adm. Viktor Chirkov, Admiral Ferguson said the intensity of Russian submarine patrols had risen by almost 50 percent over the last year. Russia has increased its operating tempo to levels not seen in over a decade." [MISLEADING]

-Russian Ships Near Data Cables Are Too Close for U.S. Comfort, New York Times, October 25, 2015.

If those truisms sound familiar to you, I already went over how both the US Navy and Russian Navy have a symbiotic relationship regarding their bravado, threats, and posturing (here). In short; the Russians promote their successes, and the US increase their already ridiculous military budget to counter their claims, regardless of how hollow, validating the Russian Navy's ego, enabling further peacocking. It's true that the Russian Navy operations are at their highest since the Cold War. That's a truism because there were no submarine patrols when the Soviet Navy fell apart, and any number of patrols now is higher than none.
"Intensity" of Russian submarine patrols is up "Almost" 50% the Admiral said in 2015. That's likely a reference to days at sea, which I explain in the previous blog post too, and we already know those numbers are, at best, 20% of Cold War levels, using declassified CIA data.

Let me paraphrase then, using OSINT to fill-in the blanks that US Navy Admiral Mark Ferguson, commander of US Naval Forces in Europe, left out of his statement:

Russian submarine patrols spent 50% more time at sea, over the year before, raising the number of days spent at sea to almost 20% of what they were during The Cold War, according to declassified CIA assessments of Soviet Navy out of area deployments from the 1980s. -Steffan Watkins, paraphrasing US Navy Adm Ferguson

See how that statement loses a lot of air when you un-cloak the numbers behind it?

Over a month before the New York Times ran their much-quoted piece, seasoned journalist and senior editor of the Washington Free Beacon Bill Gertz published his bombshell piece September 3rd 2015, after being contacted by anonymous Pentagon officials about the same story. For unknown reasons there was no credit given to Mr Gertz in the New York Times piece, so let me review the truth (and un-truths) he was given by the Pentagon officials who were, evidently, trying to get the story out in the media.

"U.S. intelligence (is) closely watching a Russian military vessel in the Atlantic that has been sailing near a U.S. nuclear missile submarine base and underwater transit routes, according to Pentagon officials." [FALSE]&[TRUE]

-U.S. Shadowing Russian Ship in Atlantic Near Nuclear Submarine Areas, Washington Free Beacon, September 3, 2015

See map above; they could have been watching underwater transit routes to and from King's Bay, but they were (arguably) not "near" King's Bay as Mr Gertz' source stated; that's a stretch. Notice that the New York Times didn't mention reconnaissance of paths that US nuclear ballistic submarines transit in their piece over a month later?

"Defense officials (..) say the Yantar is believed to be gathering intelligence on underwater sensors and other equipment used by U.S. nuclear submarines based at Kings Bay, Georgia." [TRUE]

-U.S. Shadowing Russian Ship in Atlantic Near Nuclear Submarine Areas, Washington Free Beacon, September 3, 2015

That's another very important statement the New York Times piece seemed to miss; they are gathering intelligence on US sensors; SOSUS's successors, IUSS, etc.  That seems like the sort of thing any adversary would want to know; where are the hydrophone arrays?
What new technology is being deployed to detect Russian submarines?

"A major target of the program is the Department of Defense Information Network, known as DoDIN. Moscow is seeking to map the global information network that is vital for U.S. warfighters" 
[TRUE]

-U.S. Shadowing Russian Ship in Atlantic Near Nuclear Submarine Areas, Washington Free Beacon, September 3, 2015

Again, it seems the New York Times piece, published over a month later, didn't want to re-publish that the Russian Navy vessel Yantar was reported by Pentagon officials to be looking for US military cables and sensors. Bill Gertz' original piece, over a month before the New York Times published basically the same story, doesn't mention the Russians coming over to attack the Internet at all, so I can't see where they got that idea, unless an anonymous official wasn't trying to distract them from the truth that Mr Gertz published over a month before.

I understand that journalists do not want to accidentally become part of the story, but in my view, "the story" is now why the New York Times changed and omitted so much relevant information from Bill Gertz' original piece, published over a month before, about the exact same topic. I presume the New York Times reached out to Pentagon officials, to confirm the story, but Pentagon officials refused to confirm the most important details from The Washington Free Beacon's piece, so the New York Times didn't run those parts. They obviously read the piece on the exact same topic from their competing news outlet. Isn't it the original Washington Free Beacon piece we should be paying closer attention to, since it has the superset of information? I strongly suspect Bill Gertz was given a bonafied leak that the Pentagon didn't want out in the open. The NYT piece, even unknowingly, encourages speculation about "other" types of cables that aren't DoD related, and obscures the vulnerability of DoD undersea cable infrastructure that exists. I believe that's the crux of the whole issue; there's a vulnerability, the Russians know it, and they're mapping it out.

Russian Navy AGOR Yantar - Summer 2016 Trip Report

All of the above came as a result of the inaugural voyage of Russian Navy AGOR Yantar during their initial shake-down in 2015, where their stated purpose was to test their equipment.  Fast-forward to Summer 2016, when Yantar was operating for ~3 months in the Northern Atlantic and near the GIUK gap; which has provided  several new interesting places to investigate. My analysis focuses on where the Yantar stops. Ships don't loiter in one spot in the middle of a sea or ocean for a day or two on a whim. You can realistically assume that if a ship, which was built for, and carries Russian Navy's most advanced deep sea equipment, is stationary for more than a few hours, that something of note is going on. While Yantar is equipped with lights for night-time work, when reviewing the data, time of day is important to determine if they have stopped somewhere and are waiting for first light before conducting operations. Using GPS-based AIS-data to try and guess what a ship is doing is just that; guessing. I could be wrong with my assessment of any of these locations, but these are my best guesses based on as much information I could find. If you have a better idea, lay it on me!

While writing a piece for Jane's Intelligence Review I studied the entire 2015 tour (+more), and saw scant evidence that any of their stops were over commercial telecom cables, which throws shade on reports that the Yantar's movements are related to tapping or cutting commercial telecom cables. Did I mention those cables are already charted on nautical charts? They're already mapped and known to the shipping industry, in an effort to avoid them being caught by ships' anchors. On that alone people should realize the publicized "The Ruskies are coming for your Internet" story does not hold water. While Yantar is absolutely conducting operations on behalf of the GUGI, which is the department that would do deep sea covert operations. Any covert action would be done covertly with mini-subs, deployed from a stretched-submarine, that acts as a mothership - not Yantar - which is a big steel very-not-stealthy ship. I believe it's perfectly reasonable to believe the Yantar is tasked with reconnaissance to enable future undersea operations. Also, I don't think it's that hard for our military to tell the public those details flat out, rather than trying to make up excuses for why Yantar is an interesting ship to follow.

Using historical AIS-T (terrestrial) and AIS-S (satellite) data from MarineTraffic.com, we can see between May and July 2016 Yantar departed their home port in Olenya Guba|Оленья Губа and stopped in several places that were... interesting.

At each of the big red push pins the Yantar came to a stop. The more pushpins around the spot they stopped, the more times an AIS signal from that location was received by a satellite overhead. The colour of the dots indicates how fast they were going.

---

Vicinity of the Soviet Navy Submarine K-159
~69.36142, 33.93928

Several stops were made in the Barents Sea immediately outside Murmansk, and one of those was at a site where a Russian Navy submarine (K-159) was lost while being towed to be scrapped, with its two nuclear reactors aboard, killing 9 of the 10 member salvage team aboard the submarine. That story was reported by The Barents Observer here. The environmental survey / report is here.

Close to the site of the Kursk disaster.

They also stopped near the site of the ill-fated Kursk's destruction, despite it not being there anymore. Maybe looking for something they left behind? Were there pieces of the Kursk that were not recovered that they wanted to check in on?

Vicinity of the German Battleship Scharnhorst?
71.9814, 26.96789

Around 2016-06-23 Yantar slowed and may have stopped around 71.9814, 26.96789, which is closer to the wreck of the German Battleship Scharnhorst's official position than the other spot to the NW where they stopped on their way out. There are no indications the two locations are related, but the only item of note in the area that I know of is the Battleship. If it isn't related, then it could be a military undersea cable or sensor, but neither are mapped, suggesting they are not commercially owned.





Arrived: 2016-05-26 for ~12hrs
Location: ~72.54836, 25.08537

Off the Northern coast of continental Norway, this area is composed of sand, clay, and stone, with a depth of around 800-900ft. There are no known cables or wrecks that I was able to find mentioned. The closest bathymetric survey was a German, somewhat nearby, in 1993 (M26-2).

I'm pretty confident it isn't anything pipeline, gas line, or telecom cable related.

---

The Southern tip of Svalbard, Norway, showing the area the Russian Navy Yantar stopped and examined. Nothing charted.

Three distinct places where Yantar had stopped and hovered.

Between 2016-05-27 and 2016-05-28 ~76.31613, 15.17415 Yantar stopped just outside Norwegian territorial waters, off the Southern tip of Svalbard, and concentrating on three distinct sites; what was it they were focused on? The depth is around 900ft/275m at those locations.

There are no wrecks, cables, pipelines, or geological features there that I could find any reference to. I can find nothing note worthy to stop and look at, but they most certainly didn't stop for a "swimex". As the nautical chart shows, no remarkable undersea features are known to be there. NATO comms cable? Cable running to an undersea sensor? Maybe undersea sensors themselves? I don't know. This is selection by elimination.

Yantar then moved over to the middle of the Fram Strait between Norway and Greenland(Denmark); the very middle. Same story. Granted, the three sources of nautical charts I have on hand don't have a lot of data in that area, but there is nothing that suggests a commercial telecom cable would be in that area, or gas line, or any civilian infrastructure, obstruction, or geological feature. However, that location is in the middle of a choke point, and would be a perfect place to put a sensor; hydrophone or otherwise. Can I prove there is a hydrophone array between Svalbard and Greenland? Of course not. If it isn't a sensor of some kind, what was it? Secret cables? A wreck, or three? At least 3 of their other stops were in proximity to sunken nuclear subs, so I wonder, what submarine losses could have happened covertly? Could these be older wrecks? Could they have been looking for some good crab fishing while they were in the neighbourhood?

They stopped at at least three locations in the same vicinity, and travelled in slow deliberate lines. I believe the red dotted line we're seeing is a search for a cable, rather than a geographically known single point or object, like a sensor or wreck. Cables have a little play and travel, since they get pulled up to be repaired and laid down more or less in the same place again.
Let me use an analogy for the search that explains why the pattern of movement is important; If you had a carpeted living room, with an extension cord hidden in the pile of the carpet, you could walk barefoot where you believe the extension cord is, and find where it is with your toes. To find the cable quickest, you'd walk perpendicular to the cable's presumed direction.
At least, that's what I think that's what we're seeing from the transponder's path. Notice the line of red dots, and the crescent of red dots? It was not a full criss-cross zig-zag like a search pattern for something lost on the bottom.

I believe they are looking for multiple undersea cables that are not charted. I suspect they know cables go from A to B, and are therefore searching in a perpendicular line to the cable's run, in the vicinity they expect the cable.  Hopefully that makes sense without a better graphic to explain it. Compared with the pushpins where the Yantar went directly to a location, and seemed to stop over something, it seems like they're doing more of a sweeping search path for something at those three pushpins in the trench on the map.

In the vicinity of ~71.1265, -10.5407

Jan Mayen is a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean, but I do not know if it has a current military significance, like providing power for local hydrophones or sensors, but the Yantar stopped on 2016-06-04 at ~71.1265, -10.5407, which is only ~60km from land, and seems to be northeast and very close to a significant sea mount that raises the depth from thousands of feet to only hundreds. Rumour has it hydrophones were positioned in geographically favourable positions for their acoustics. Mounts, cliffs, etc. were reportedly used to position hydrophones at the correct depth to get the best acoustic "view". While it's complete conjecture, it is interesting that NE would be the direction you'd expect Russian submarines to be coming from.

Stopping at a pinch point,
where conventional wisdom would put a hydrophone.

Iceland is one of the founding nations of NATO, and critical to the security of the North Atlantic. At least one set of SOSUS hydrophones was placed NW of the island, and at least one set was placed SE of the island, according to Soviet Navy sources.

Iceland is an island (in case you're unfamiliar with it) and Yantar slowed down and stopped on opposite sides of the island, seeming taking an interest in the NE shore, the shore that faces where Russian Navy subs might potentially be coming from, over the top of Norway. The places they stopped were locations between Iceland, Greenland, and continental Europe; almost like a fence. At the NW side of Iceland they slowed and eventually stopped over an area again ~800-900ft in depth. I'm getting the impression the depth of the water is significant to this investigation.

Right in the middle of the Davis Sill,
a great spot for a hydrophone or sensor?
63.41641,-56.30731

After Iceland, the next stop was getting close to home. Yantar stopped over the Davis Sill; a rise between the Davis Strait and the Labrador Sea, that arguably forces deeply submerged submarines closer to the surface, or sail closer to the bottom, depending how you look at it. This is both a pinch-point, and a location of reduced depth; perfect for identification of submerged submarine using hydrophones, or other sensors. IMO. However, they stopped over a spot which had a depth of ~1400m, but no bathymetric surveys seem to have been done at that exact point, so I'm unsure if there could be a sea mount making the depth less than the surrounding area. Pure speculation. What's in the middle of the Davis Strait that the Russian Navy sailed all the way there to check out? They're a long way from home, and it's undeniably specific; that was no "while we're here" pit-stop. Historically they are very close to a former Cold War sub-hunting base on the West coast of Greenland. It would be an excellent place to put a sensor, I'd think.

Unknown significance
~70.2537,17.2082

Unknown significance
70.25372,17.20824

On the way back from the Davis Strait, Yantar stopped in the Norwegian EEZ, where there is a sandy bottom and a depth of ~820ft. I can't see any significance to this location; no cables, wrecks, etc.

Location of Soviet Navy Mike-Class Submarine K-278 Komsomolets

Finally, something I can put my finger on. They stopped at the location of the Soviet Navy Mike-Class Submarine K-278 Komsomolets, a known wreck that still may have two nuclear torpedoes, if the Americans haven't stolen them, and a fueled reactor. From what I read, the Norwegians are quite concerned with this wreck, and regular surveys are performed by environmental agencies.

I understand that the US Navy, NORAD, and NATO are rather sensitive about publishing where they put their undersea sub-hunting sensors, so I thought... what about the Soviets? Thankfully, there's a lot of expertise out there, and a lot of old documentation from the Cold War that the "Soviets" don't really care about anymore. One such graphic has shown up via two online sources, but I'm very interested in finding the original (for a better scan) or to find more Soviet Navy intelligence files regarding NATO SOSUS/IUSS sensor locations. Why? Because things don't change. From my experience, a mountain top today is just as high and has just as good a view for a long range radar as it did 50 years ago; applying the same idea to the ocean, I would think an old fashioned SOSUS hydrophone array might be obsolete now, but they were all positioned in geographically advantageous positions; I expect those places would be re-used for new sensor systems, which is why I'd like to monitor them for surface activity going forward. Better still, I don't think I'm alone in this pursuit; I'll continue to monitor Russian Navy auxiliary movements and see if they give away the locations of cables or sensor networks, as suggested by their stops at otherwise uninteresting spots.

Soviet diagram of SOSUS locations (original Soviet source unknown) 

Ultimately this circles back to the stories that are being told in the media about Yantar's purpose, claims that it's after telecom cables, that it's after the internet, that the Russians are going to cut the internet and destroy the financial markets. None of the places Yantar stopped in the Summer of 2016 have any connection to the internet or telecom cables. While Yantar could cut cables with the claws of its ROV, it's an overt vessel, and ill-suited for covert operations - cable cutting or tapping would both be covert operations. Yantar's pattern of movement and operations show no signs that they're tapping telecom cables. I believe strongly that they are conducting underwater reconnaissance; helping allies like Iran and Syria with their cable issues, surveying NATO sensor arrays, surveying covert secret cables that are lying around the ocean's floor, checking on lost nuclear weapons on the ocean's bottom, etc.

"Muh, NATO said.."
If you still think Yantar is looking for telecom cables, The Internet, I challenge you to go back and read the quotes from the NATO/NORAD/DoD/USNavy sources to do with the Yantar specifically, and pay particular attention when they speak of Yantar and cables. No military source mentions commercial telecom cables; they all mention cables (wink wink, military cables), and they mention communications (wink wink, NATO/DoD comms), but they do not mention the Internet. The internet story is something the New York Times published in October of 2015, and as far as I understand, misunderstood from the get-go, or were deliberately misled by officials who wanted to cover up what Bill Gertz' article revealed. The September 2015 leak by Pentagon sources to the Washington Free Beacon said nothing about "internet" cables, but did speak of the threat to Secret DoD cables, which makes the earlier article more reputable and accurate.

Credit:

I could not have done this analysis without the help of MarineTraffic.com, and I am very appreciative of the help they have provided. Thank you.

References:

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/181564/files/LABA_COVERPOSTER.pdf
https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/bathymetry/
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/gazetteer/

Sorry Australians, there was no Chinese "Spy Ship" following HMAS Adelaide around.

Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) News - original here

The Australian news media ran a story the other day that caught my eye. The collection of articles published by different outlets can be summed up like this;
An Australian warship arrives in Fiji, shadowed by a Chinese Spy vessel, and while the Australians were told there would be a Chinese fishing vessel beside them, they were surprised to find this Chinese "fishing vessel" was actually a SIGINT vessel, with all its attention focused on the Australian ship.

I can't tell if I'm disapointed or pleased with this, since it gives some validity to the belief that the Australian news media push a "red scare" narrative, just like the American news media; but they have different "Reds"! In America, it's the Russians who are coming. For Australia, it's the Chinese. On a certain level there's some truth to both, but nothing like what's being portrayed by these misleading articles. While it's true that the Chinese are exerting their influence in the Pacific, this story isn't about that, it's about a Chinese Spy Ship tailing the Australian Navy, and that just didn't happen.

HMAS Adelaide (IMO:9608972|MMSI:503000021) was the ship the Chinese were supposedly focused on, and one of the largest warships the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) has; she's a Canberra-class landing helicopter dock (aka LHD). She's their crown jewel. That may be why the 2nd ship, the HMAS Melbourne, an Adelaide-class guided missile frigate (FFG), garnered no attention at all.

Here are the facts. HMAS Adelaide departed Townville, Australia on 2018-06-01, arrived in Suva Fiji 2018-06-08, and left again 2018-06-11 heading to Togo, per the information broadcast by their publicly available AIS transponder data.  There is no reason the Australian press needed to ignore any of this data, and unfortunate the Australian MoD didn't put out a press release specifically debunking the misinformation that was running rampant.

Size Comparison
Royal Australian Navy

Yuan Wang 7, the "Spy Ship", which is actually a Chinese PLA(N) satellite telemetry ship, arrived and moored in the port of Suva Fiji right before the HMAS Adelaide docked, but the Chinese vessel didn't dock as was reported, they stayed moored in the harbour for days. Yuan Wang had been operating to the North, and came from that direction, while the Australian Ships came from the West, or as they call it, Australia. At no time was the Yuan Wang 7 "chasing" or "tailing" the Australian ships. That detail is simply impossible, they were not in proximity of each other until they both arrived in Fiji. The Australians left Fiji 2018-06-11, and the PLA(N) Yuan Wang 7 left 2018-06-15, both in different directions even. None of these facts line up with the overall Australian news media's depiction of the events, and that's a little disappointing.

There is hope for the Australian news media, so they don't get punked by unreliable sources in the future, and I'm here to serve it up for them as easily as I can possibly make it. Point and click. Here are all the Yuan Wang vessels, with their corresponding links to MarineTraffic.com, where you can see them (for free) if they're near a shore based AIS-T receiver feeding into to their service. With a paid account you look up more history, and can purchase satellite-based AIS coverage, so you can see the vessels when they're farther out at sea.

If you're thinking to yourself that it would be ridiculous for a cloak and dagger "spy ship" to have their transponder on all the time, there might just be hope for you yet. SIGINT collection vessels, AGIs, don't usually have their transponders on at all. What hasn't been mentioned either is every ship is a "spy ship"; it's every Navy's responsibility to gather intelligence when the opportunity arises, and I'm quite sure Yuan Wang 7 was collecting some intelligence from both of the Australian warships it found itself in proximity to, but it's far more nuanced than the Australian news media portrayed it.

Chinese PLA(N) Yuan Wang Satellite Tracking (and support) Vessels:

ship name	mmsi	MarineTraffic.com link:
Yuan Wang 21	412380260	https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/mmsi:412380260
Yuan Wang 22	412380270	https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/mmsi:412380270
Yuan Wang 2	412958000	https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/mmsi:412958000
Yuan Wang 3	412962000	https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/mmsi:412962000
Yuan Wang 5	413289000	https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/mmsi:413289000
Yuan Wang 6	413326000	https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/mmsi:413326000
Yuan Wang 7	413379290	https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/mmsi:413379290

There is only one loose end. The Yuan Wang 7 started to sail toward Fiji, at relatively high speed, on 2018-06-05 ~14:00Z. It seems the Royal Australian Navy "for OPSEC reasons" doesn't transmit their location using AIS-S, so I don't know if on, or around, 2018-06-05 they also started heading towards Fiji, or gave the Chinese some other tell that made the Chinese make a sprint for Fiji at almost 20kn (pretty fast for such a big ship). Some sarcastically suggest it's "quite a coincidence" that they all arrived around the same time, but the PLA(N) Yuan Wang 7 restocks in Fiji regularly, so it isn't as wild a coincidence as it may seem to someone unfamiliar with the vessel's previous movements.

To reiterate, I'm not suggesting any Chinese Navy vessel wouldn't collect intelligence on the Australian ships, of course they would, but the reverse is true too. Both countries are regional powers with significant naval presence. Unfortunately, the stories about this encounter got almost all of the facts wrong, and they really didn't need to. All of the location information I've referenced above would have been at their fingertips if they'd known where to look on June 9th before the story was published.

References:

Yuan Wang 7 moored in the harbour 2018-06-08 ~20:00Z,
and didn't dock until days later.

HMAS Adelaide (IMO:9608972|MMSI:503000021)
Arrival 2018-06-08 ~22:00Z

HMAS Adelaide (IMO:9608972|MMSI:503000021)
Departure 2018-06-11 ~04:00Z

Yuan Wang 7 departed 2018-06-15 ~04:00Z

Why are the Russians intercepting USAF planes over International Waters?

Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint - 62-4131 (same as was intercepted)
Photo taken: October 25, 2015 - Mildenhall Air Force Base
Photo Credit: Simon Mortimer / JetPhotos.net

Blair Gertz's article on aggressive Russian posturing should make people wonder, what the hell are they doing?  There has been little (no) editorials written (that I've seen) about what would make Russia harass the US Air Force or US Navy in or above international waters.  Where are "International Waters" anyway?

"Territorial waters, or a territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state." -Wikipedia

On April 14th 2016 an RC-135W, call sign HOWL77, registration 62-4131, (reportedly) had its transponder on, and was met by at least one Su-27 over the Baltic Sea.  I presume the plane was near, and clearly targeting, Kaliningrad Oblast with it's sensor suite, or was on a flight path that made the Russian expect they would be.  After all, why else would you fly a spy plane in the Baltic?  As a reaction, the RuAF sent a fighter or two to intercept and shoo away the Americans.

Kaliningrad Oblast, is part of Russia, although it does not have a land bridge to Russia.  Kaliningrad Oblast extends about 250 km inland; I've marked 22 km on the map below so the distance can be appreciated.  That doesn't look very far, because it's not.

Consider this; due to the curvature of the earth, the higher up you are, the farther you can see before the horizon limits your view.  If you had a 100 Meter tower, you'd be able to see ~35 km from the top of that tower to the horizon.  If you had two 100 Meter towers, you could see between the tops of the towers ~70 km away from each other.  This is how terrestrial microwave repeaters work; you take two towers, put directional antennas (dishes) on them that point at each other, and you can beam a signal ~70km away.  If you keep putting towers up in a line, you get a trans-continental microwave network like the one built across Canada in 1959... but that's another topic.

So what are the planes the US are flying in "International Waters"?  The RC-135, part of the 95th Reconnaissance Squadron flying out of RAF Mildenhall, England, has been hitting the news, but I wonder if the E-8C JSTARS flying out of  Geilenkirchen NATO Air Force Base in Germany are also flying around.

"The RC-135 Rivet Joint is an Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) collecting reconnaissance aircraft that has the ability to detect, locate and identify emitting mobile targets with its Automatic Emitter Location System (AELS)" - US Air Force School of Advanced Airpower Studies (link)

"The E-8C JSTARS aircraft is a battle surveillance platform that employs its on-board AN/APY-3 system to detect and track mobile ground forces. The AN/APY-3 is a SideLooking Airborne Radar (SLAR) that incorporates SAR and MTI capabilities. Its MTI/Wide Area Surveillance (WAS) capability detects, locates, and classifies slow moving vehicles. The MTI technique that is used allows differentiation between wheeled and tracked vehicles. The MTI/Sector Search (SS) mode provides enhanced image resolution and attack guidance. Other operating modes may include an enhanced SAR for ‘super’ resolution imagery and an inverse SAR for target recognition" - US Air Force School of Advanced Airpower Studies (link)

Both of these quotes are from the year 2000; it's hard to find information on reconnaissance aircraft for some reason.

The RC-135 has a ceiling of 50,000 ft according to the US Air Force.  Even at 40,000 ft, the horizon would be 715 km away; making Kaliningrad Oblast, all of it, in full view if you looked out the window of the plane.  Back in the Cold War, the U2 spy plane flew over Russia with downward facing wet film cameras; that was the technology of the time.  The U2 was also famously shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960; it was clearly in the Soviet's right to do so, as it was over their territory.  But what if you flew high, and angled the camera diagonally, staying over international waters?  You could achieve almost the same effect, but get better resolution than a satellite flying high over the objective, without the distortion of the atmosphere, and with the moral high ground that you're not flying over the sovereign territory of the country you're spying on; you're over "international waters".

In 1991 during the Gulf War, the E-8C's AN/APY-7 radar could track 600 targets and cover 50,000 km2, at a range of 250 km in a 120 degree field of view.  I'm going to guess they've improved the technology since 1991, so consider that the worst it could do. (data based on "Activity-Based Intelligence: Principles and Applications" by Patrick Biltgen, Stephen Ryan)  The capabilities of the system continue to improve.

The RC-135 is a SIGINT/ELINT platform fitted with all sorts of antennas to be able to listen to, and tell what direction any electronic emission is coming from.  Listening to everything transmitting wirelessly in all of Kaliningrad would be the objective of flying near Kaliningrad, I'd think.  As a reconnaissance aircraft that's spying (diagonally) at their territory, I'm not very surprised the Russian Air Force is playing mind games with the US Air Force and "buzzing" them with fighter jets.

How about the Russians?  Aren't they flying near the US with their bombers and long range reconnaissance planes?

Why yes they are, once or twice a month, but the closest they've come in decades is 39 miles from the California coast, on July 4th 2015, off the coast of California, over International Waters (there's that term again...).

"two U.S. F-15 jets intercepted the Russian bombers on July 4 as they flew as close as 39 miles from the coast of Mendocino County, north of San Francisco." -Blair Gertz, Washington Free Beacon

39mi is 63km, which is almost three times farther as the RC-135 was from Kaliningrad in April.

Why is it when empty Russian bombers are antagonizing the Americans off the coast it's war games, and when the US is antagonizing the Russians off their coast with bleeding edge spy planes, listening to, and exploiting emissions, it's just a little good fun?

The language of the outrage used in US vs Russian press releases, and biased news reports, needs to be critically studied constantly in order to see through the spin.

Revisiting the 2014 Nikolay Chiker (Николай Чикер) Trans-Atlantic Tour

Nikolay Chiker - ShipSpotting.com - Cees Bustraan
Photo Taken 2014.03.03

Remember back in the spring of 2014 there was a Russian "Spy Ship", a Russian Navy AGI, the Viktor Leonov (Виктор Леонов), floating off the East coast of the USA for weeks, and a Russian Navy SAR/Salvage/Tug, Nikolay Chiker (Николай Чикер), in the same area, at the same time, zig-zagging around?

If you don't, here is Bill Gertz's article about the Russian Spy Ship and Tug.  Here are my previous posts on the topic too.

I wanted to fill in the blanks on the map I had made previously with the *complete* trip the Nikolay Chiker made using historical data from a commercial AIS provider... but it would cost hundreds of Euros to get what I was looking for, so I decided against it.  Without a corporate financier, it seemed a little extravagant.  So, the map remained cobbled together with whatever free copy & pasted coordinates I could find at the time, and Tom's coordinates that he was tweeting from the moorse code they were sending back home over HF.  It did the job, at the time.

Open Source Map of the Nikolay Chiker's Movements in 2014

Seven months ago I realised the Terrestrial Automatic Identification System (AIS-T) receivers along the US Coast are operated by the US Coast Guard, so I asked the Coast Guard for a copy of their historical AIS data of the Nikolay Chiker's positions (IMO: 8613334 / MMSI: 273531629) from March 01, 2014 to May 13, 2014; when I knew it should have been near American waters in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and more importantly, within range of US Coast Guard AIS-T receivers.  I submitted my FOIA request in November of 2015, and received the information in June of 2016.  I guess I can't complain regarding how long it took; I didn't pay anything for the information, and I'm even a foreign national!  I'd like to give a big thank you to the folks at the US Coast Guard for providing the information, it was very much appreciated.

New Map of Nikolay Chiker locations, as logged by the US Coast Guard via AIS-T

AIS Data Courtesy of the United States Coast Guard

What are we looking at here?

The AIS transponder on the Nikolay Chiker beacons to anyone who's listening.  When she is close enough to shore, US Coast Guard (AIS-T) shore-based receivers pick up her location, speed, heading, etc... Click on the red dots to get the information relayed via AIS at that location.  Some dotted lines fade out as the ship edges out of range of the shore-based receivers.  The ship can also turn off it's transponder at any time, but I'm unclear if regulations or conventions restrict when they can do so.  Please note, there are no timestamps on the locations; I didn't figure out how to preserve the timestamps from the US Coast Guard FOIA I filed.

What don't we see?

We don't see any satellite, aerial, sub-surface, Coast Guard ship-based, gypsy-with-a-crystal-ball, sonar, or radar data.  I mention this because there are a lot of gaps in the data, and I don't want to give the impression the ship was hiding at all - this is not a comprehensive view of what the US Coast Guard and US Navy can "see" and are situationally aware of.  This is just one unclassified public solution used in maritime shipping globally, where unclassified data meets classified operational information.  Also worth mentioning is that all of this information is served up by an AIS beacon, which the Captain of the Nikolay Chiker knows is broadcasting for all to see.  Keep in mind we don't see the position of the Viktor Leonov AGI, but we know from eyewitness accounts that the Viktor Leonov and Nikolay Chiker were very near each other on March 21st 2014, just outside US waters, right near Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay.

Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay is home to two Ohio-Class SSGNs, six Ohio-Class SSBN submarines, has a stockpile of 107 Nuclear SLBMs, and I suspect even more warheads.  These submarines were initially commissioned between 1979 and 1994, and are living reminders of the Cold War.  They are still in use, have been extensively refitted, and their mission often consists of lurking in the depths of the ocean, trying to stay undetected by the Russian Navy.

Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay

Behaviour

Clicking through the data, you'll see the Nikolay Chiker laid anchor at least a couple of times off the coast near King's Bay, then Daytona Beach seemed to attract her attention, and eventually Cape Canaveral where there was a SpaceX launch taking place.  If any ship was just "passing through" it would be unusual for it to lay anchor at those locations, I'd think.  No commercial shipping would normally stop in those locations, none of them are particularly attractive to stop and stay for the night (or day).  We are, unfortunately, only seeing half of the scenario - the Viktor Leonov AGI was also off the coast, and if it was leading the way, the Nikolay Chiker could have just been killing time.  A Naval AGI asset's whole purpose is to collect ELINT / COMINT (SIGINT) on a target.  What targets were they listening to?  Civilian comms infrastructure or military comms?  Were they just getting samples of data from each location along the coast, or listening for one thing the whole way?

Speed

Please notice what speed the Nikolay Chiker was travelling while examining her positions on the map.  I speculate when she is travelling alone she travels at full speed; 12-14Kts.  When she is with the Viktor Leonov, I believe she limits her speed to the same as the Leonov; a slower ~8-9Kts.  Further, I can't explain why she would trawl at 3-6Kts, unless she was towing a sensor array, or something similar.  Unfortunately I have a limited data set, but hopefully over time I can compile more examples of Russian Navy Auxiliary ships doing strange loitering off the East Coast of North America, and draw further conclusions.

Conclusions?

I can't draw any conclusions from this data, but I can throw out more speculation.

• It's likely the Nikolay Chiker's mission was multi-faceted.  I would be surprised if they crossed the Atlantic from the Mediterranean solely in case the Viktor Leonov had engine trouble and needed a tow.  While that is part of Russian Navy doctrine (always travel with a tug), I wouldn't think having a tug deployed and travelling in circles while they waited for an emergency wouldn be an efficient use of resources.
• The Nikolay Chiker has a moon pool (to allow diving from the inside/bottom of the ship) and decompression chambers that allow for deep water operations.  This is a "special set of skills" that not many ships have, and would lend itself to covert underwater operations.
• I suspect the Nikolay Chiker was surveying the ocean's bottom for ASW sensors and undocumented military underwater cables, but I have no way to prove that without knowing where the sensors and cables are - and their locations are... you guessed it.. Secret.
• The Nikolay Chiker has several extremely strong winches and cranes, to facilitate both towing and Search and Rescue operations.  Those same features could be used to move/lift/drag objects on the ocean's floor, or lift them to the surface. 
• On the old map you'll notice that several long straight lines were sailed, back and forth, in the Caribbean.  These are similar to the back and forth that was done off the coast of Georgia.  But what were they doing?  I remember someone called it "loitering", but it seems very purposeful to me, not just random paths.
• While I try to discern what military purpose these paths on the map might allude to, I also realize that there may be human factors, that are less military or professional, that could be at play.  Maybe the Captain of the Nikolay Chiker was following some wales, so he could take pictures of them?  Maybe the Nikolay Chiker and Viktor Leonov met at sea not for replenishment operations, but to have a long promised poker game?  Maybe the Nikolay Chiker made a bee line from the Caribbean to King's Bay at a high rate of speed to get out of the way of an approaching storm?  By only seeing the AIS data from the Nikolay Chiker, without context, and without the path of the Viktor Leonov, I do admit any conclusions I draw will be wild speculation.

So, if you have any ideas what they were up to, and have any additional information, please let me know.

Parade Standard of the U.S. Coast Guard
(Wikipedia)

Credit

• I'd like to thank the United States Coast Guard, who don't get sufficient credit in this age of international military interventions.  They do great work, at home.
• I'd like to thank Andre van den Berg for his help; Andre is an expert in the field of AIS, a consultant, and the CEO of Maritec.

CNN, February ~27th, 2014