Nord Stream Sabotage: The Mystery of the Dark Ships Qatar-Germany Gas Deal Unlocked – 2 Million Tons a Year

Captain Ulrich Klüber has paid attention to many things under the waves during his years at sea. He searched for wrecks on the seabed and traced radioactivity, he measured the depths of the North Sea. When he and his crew are called aboard the ATAIR, specialists are summoned. Normally, the journeys of the most modern German research vessel are not exactly secret.

The situation is different with your current order in the Baltic Sea. That requires utmost discretion. A federal police ship is watching him from a distance. According to the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), whose fleet includes the special vessel, only the federal prosecutor’s office can provide information about what exactly the “ATAIR” is doing there. But the authorities in Karlsruhe are silent. Ongoing investigations are not commented on.

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Difficult mission in the Baltic Sea

In fact, the ATAIR mission is politically sensitive: According to information from t-online, it is helping to investigate the sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines. On September 26, explosions tore apart the German-Russian gas pipelines in Danish and Swedish waters. Enormous amounts of natural gas then penetrated the surface of the water, which was declared a danger zone for several kilometers.

Denmark, Sweden and Germany then started their own investigation. They quickly assumed an attack. The public prosecutor’s office in Stockholm found remnants of explosives on the rubble, which confirmed this. Since then, studies have been conducted using state-of-the-art technology. The special ship “ATAIR” concentrates on the seabed. In the meantime, however, there are also the first promising indications from aerial and satellite photos – but there is still no concrete culprit.

The hybrid war

From the beginning, one of the main suspects was the Russian secret service. The hybrid warfare approach against the West fits all too well. For decades, the Kremlin under the leadership of Vladimir Putin has used its gas exports for political blackmail.

Pipelines and power lines also exploded before the attack on Georgia. An attack on Nord Stream could be a warning that the vital communication cables on the seabed are also vulnerable. A number of suspicious incidents have also occurred there.

There is no question that the Russian Navy is better equipped than most other armies for covert operations on the seabed. In other words, the Kremlin would have motive, the technical capabilities and quick access to the crime scene through its ports in the Baltic Sea. A chain of circumstantial evidence is not evidence. Will the ATAIR find him? For the detectives, who cannot go to the crime scene themselves at a depth of 80 meters, it is obvious to rely on Klüber and his crew.

The deep look

The ship, costing almost 115 million euros, is one of the most modern of its kind: on board are laboratories, a decompression chamber and extensive diving equipment, multiple sonar equipment and a multibeam echo sounder for measuring the seabed. The analysts get a picture of the devastation on the bottom of the Baltic Sea: pipes dozens of meters long and almost 100 tons heavy are hundreds of meters away from the original pipeline route.

The Norwegian tech company Blueye Robotics documented the damage with underwater drones and sonar for the Swedish newspaper Espressen and the British BBC. The perpetrators must have used bombs containing hundreds of kilograms of explosives. But how did they get there? Who installed them?

Manhunt by satellite

In the meantime, researchers can no longer only look for clues below the surface of the sea, but can also focus on the danger zones in the Baltic Sea from far above. The authorities concerned have recently closely followed reports on a satellite analysis by the American company SpaceKnow, t-online has learned.

A few days ago, Wired magazine made headlines around the world for linking previously unidentified ships to the attacks. These ships were in the vicinity of the crime scene several days before the attack. But they had turned off their signals, which would otherwise transmit names, ship type and size, course, speed, and voyage dates in addition to location. That’s why they had gone unnoticed until now.

The company SpaceKnow has now succeeded in discovering the ships by applying special analysis software to the satellite images. It is a program that SpaceKnow has been running for some time with the European Space Agency (ESA), using state-of-the-art technology that opens up completely new possibilities. In the so-called SAR process, satellites can scan terrain with electromagnetic waves.

The dark ships at the crime scene

The resulting representations are comparable to photographs. Companies such as the Finnish company Iceeye make and distribute them on a daily basis. SpaceKnow, on the other hand, has specialized in the use of software to make so-called “dark ships” recognizable on the recordings. This should help, for example, to combat illegal fishing. Now it could lead to the trail of the pipeline terrorists.

Researchers can use a known system for this: to prevent collisions on the high seas, the so-called “Automatic Identification System” (AIS) is mandatory for ships of a certain size worldwide. It gives a signal that can be followed online not only by other ships and authorities, but also by interested parties. In this way, the whereabouts of most ships can be tracked in real time. When a signal is switched off, it is referred to as «Dark Ships».

For example, not a single case has become known in recent years in, for example, the German Baltic Sea waters, t-online learned from the trade association for traffic and the waterways and shipping administration of the federal government. The fact that AIS violations are relatively rare in the region could theoretically mean that the previously unidentified “dark ships” can still be identified.

Were the ships checked?

If other riparian countries, such as Denmark or Sweden, noticed deactivated signals in their waters during the relevant period, a chain of sanctions would have been set in motion, which a ship would find difficult to circumvent, even afterwards. A so-called port state control would be carried out in one of the next ports to be called in Europe and worldwide. Inspectors boarded. In the event of defects, for example, they could shut down the ship.

Since mid-September, more than 3,000 such checks have been carried out in Europe alone, which, however, can also be triggered by violations other than the AIS obligation. All checks are documented in a central ship database. Is this a reference to the mysterious ships that sailed the site of the pipeline sabotage?

The German Attorney General does not confirm that he has the analysis of the satellite images or that he is investigating port state controls caused by AIS violations. The Danish and Swedish authorities have not yet responded to such questions.

And what exactly Captain Klüber found with the “ATAIR” is still a mystery. The special ship is now anchored again in Bremerhaven.