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Unless the planes have been flying out without transponders all the time, a plane flying out without one or turning it off would be suspicious.
Especially if a plane did something this uncharacteristic around the time a pipeline blows up.
Especially as American ASW planes are capable of blowing up a pipeline by themselves.. although at present they probably have to fly low.
How do random witnesses know whether the transponder's on or not, is the point? If you seriously think that the military can't get a plane in the air without people knowing, I don't know what to tell you.
Oh come on now -- this won't work on things like pipelines (see Dean's posts on this, which are also an example of actually useful counterarguments to the Hersh scenario) and in any case wouldn't provide the desired delay in the explosion.
No, it would. Modern torpedoes are homing weapons with large warheads that could easily destroy a pipeline.
They're designed to dive to about the same or slighty higher depth and use sonar to find large cylindrical objects, namely submarines and then hit them and explode.
Of course, as it was said elsewhere, it'd be much easier for a military to do something else, like I dunno, drop off specialised charges from a small submarine or just send down divers with diving scooters to carry the charges, etc.
In any case, the serious theories we're supposed to believe is that the Russians did it, which is kind of a stretch seeing as they're engaged in war, Baltic is a NATO sea, very shallow, and doing funny shit involving 2 tons of explosives next to the German coast a 1000 km away from their nearest naval base, right under the noses of half of NATO navies isn't probably within their competence envelope. Seeing as Russian navy isn't good, and in the same year lost a big naval vessel because they neglected to turn on their air defenses.
Hersh's article has problems, but the mainstream position is just completely idiotic and insulting.
Especially weird given that they could've just had a pumping station blow up and declared they can't repair it bc sanctions, which would be the literal truth.
Yeah. In Alaska somewhere. Or out of Area 51, at night. Maybe in less populated western US states.
If you think US military can fly a plane out of a German airfield and be reasonably certain no one knows a plane has taken off..
Consider e.g. https://www.spotterguide.net/planespotting/europe/germany/ramstein-air-base-rms-etar/
Spotting guide for probably every military airforce base in Europe-
https://www.spotterguide.net/tag/military/
They are designed to home in on things that are noisy and/or moving around, and not normally partially buried in the seafloor.
Agreed.
The planes in question were supposed to be Norwegian -- Northern Norway is pretty much Alaska with fewer rednecks, is why I linked the map of their ASW base.
Modern torpedoes have active sonar. They can home in on anything that reflects sound waves in a different way.
I'm fairly sure a steel/ concrete pipe reflects sounds way, way differently than silt.
Do we know they're flying their ASW planes only out of there ?
I imagine they can fly them from wherever they want -- probably without anybody knowing, even.
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