So now, let's examine why what you assume you know is wrong, and why most people beyond their depth can't think their way out of a wet paper bag, and don't know what they don't know.
Above is the USS Kearsarge, LHD-3. The US Navy lists it as an Amphibious Assault Ship. And it is, for reasons we'll get into. It was the USN ship (head of an amphib task force, actually) nearest the recent difficulties with the NordStream I & II pipelines, and that rough proximity has induced every internet window-licker to point at the US and say "J'accuse!". But let's get serious now.
It's a fucking aircraft carrier. If any one of twenty other nations deployed it, it would be called an aircraft carrier. Starting with the obvious: it carries aircraft. QED.
It's 843' long. For reference, it's the size of a WWII fleet carrier, like the USS Enterprise (only 827' long). The biggest aircraft carrier of WWII, the IJN Shinano, was only 872' long. So if you think Kearsarge isn't an aircraft carrier for all intents and purposes, Zombie Admirals Spruance, Halsey, and Nimitz would like to kick your balls up around your cerebellum for a bit, while they discuss the finer points of naval architecture.
Is has a crew of 1200 squids. They act funny, and they eat too much, but generally, onboard the ships of the Gator Freighter fleet, they're pretty damned good at their jobs, which is taking the Marines where they want to go, and putting them on the beach. They've only had about 250 years of practice at this skillset, and they've definitely gotten the hang of it.
As the above photo shows, it embarks a complement of MV-22 Osprey VTOL a/c (9 of which are visible above). You can also see 4 AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter gunships, 3 AV-8B Harrier II strike fighters, and a UH-60 Seahawk helicopter. For the math-impaired, that's 17 aircraft. Plus whatever's one floor down on the hangar deck. The standard deployment pack is 6 Harriers, 12 Ospreys, the same 4 Super Cobras, 4 Sea Stallion heavy-lift helos, plus 3-4 Uh1s or SH-60s. That's 30 aircraft. Carried onboard, and launchable from the ship while underway.
Aircraft. Carrier.
And 2-3 LCAC or LCU amphibious hovercraft, and/or a dozen amtrac amphibious assault craft.
That's the air component of a MAGTF BLT: a USMC air-ground Battalion Landing Team. If you think a mere hundred fifty or so paratroops from the 82d AB or Rangers in a C-141 are a can of whoop-ass, try on 1900 of Uncle Sam's Misguided Children for size. Rangers seize airfields. (And they do it very well.) BLTs seize capitols. And countries. You could look it up.
That's just the Kearsarge. Also present in the same task force were two other USN ships, with another complement of squids, plus another 2000 or so Marines, plus a company of tanks, a battery of artillery, a Force Recon element, and an entire Marine infantry battalion that's been drilled and checked off on Special Operations.
And because of all that, they're the absolute last guys anyone would use for blowing up an undersea pipeline.
Because what they usually don't embark, at least 99% of the time, are a complement of Navy SEALs.
And blowing up pipelines at 240' depth is not a job for Force Recon. Nor Air Farce PJs. Nor Army SF. It's what SEALs are for.
Onboard a BLT task force like the Kearsarge group, with 3000 guys embarked, there's always a hundred swinging Richards on deck, on the catwalk, at the hull openings, on the hangar deck, on the well deck, and wherever, on duty and off, seeing every damned thing going on. And at least one of the little shits, from the green side or the blue side, is going to write home, or phone home on port call, or these days, whip out his cell phone and video the goings on, or do some other sillyass thing, and OPSEC goes out the porthole or down the shitter.
You don't use BLTs for Sneaky Pete missions. You use them to kick down the door, with embarked CNN camera crews, blow the shit out of some assholes who desperately need it, topple a communist dictator, rescue American hostages, and/or such other duties as the president may direct, televised live to the world. Since fucking ever. It is the antithesis of a clandestine operation. It's a no-knock SWAT raid on an entire city or a country, FFS, with everybody watching.
The fact that the Kearsarge TF was within a hundred miles is how anybody knows we didn't do it.
{Doing something with a USN aircraft carrier amphib task force on top of it would be doing it while wearing a rainbow wig, flashing LED bow tie, and size 32 clown shoes, while jingling a stick with 27 cowbells on it. Briefly detail all US clandestine operations from 1900-present that fit that profile. (If the word clandestine has you stumped, click the link).}
Because with a task group like that, those of us embarked assumed (correctly in the 1980s, but now...??) that along with our Gator Freighter/Aircraft Carrier, the BLT, an LST with the tank company and LAVs, and a fleet oiler floating gas can, there was probably an SSN out somewhere in front of us, breaking trail, snooping and pooping, exactly like an undersea cav scout. That's their entire mission set, along with finding and, when directed, servicing enemy targets, like other subs, before they found and sunk us.
That SSN might have an embarked SEAL detachment, which is where you'd want those guys.
So let's talk about that possibility.
SEALs could have taken those pipelines out, with childish ease.
Because the bubbleheads of the Silent Service, unlike the blabbermouthed embarked Marine supercargo and squid crews on an amphib ship, keeps their fucking mouths shut about everything they do. For, like, decades and decades. The crap they pulled in the 1950s and 1960s is just now trickling out. Redacted and sheep-dipped all to hell, btw.
But they have Operational Rules. Like, "If there's no one around for hundreds of miles, but your shit starts exploding, that was us."
So they wouldn't do this with a BLT amphib TF within sonar range of a loud fart when this happened. Just like the predictability of the Air Farce kicking in Saddam's front door was at O-dark-thirty, the one proof the SEALs did something is that there are no US forces visible within an entire time zone, and no one has any idea who pulled it off, or how.
Secondly, they like to use Draeger rebreathers. Pure oxygen, no bubbles. Problem: oxygen gets all fatal to the operator at depths below 30'. So 240'-deep pipelines would be a no-go for their go-to rebreathers. Using scuba or mixed gas rigs would work, but anyone on the surface could see the bubbles, and the lock-in lock-out decompression would be prohibitive at that depth, assuming they had a decompression chamber (big enough to accommodate the entire team) emplaced on the deck of the sub involved.
Thirdly, while 240' is deep for free divers or minisubs, it's pretty fucking shallow for the full-sized ones. The Kattegat, and for that matter, the entire Baltic, is a small, heavily travelled, and effing shallow pond to be operating inside of. Both NATO and the (formerly) neutral countries take a dim view of subs that stray into territorial waters, and more than a few Russian sub captains have been hounded right the hell out of the area. And to surface combatants, all subs are hostile until proven innocent. (And if you think Norway, Denmark, or Sweden would just sign off and become co-conspirators - and keep that secret to the grave - on us slipping in to blow up the gas supply of the rest of NATO, I have a bridge to sell you, cheap.)
That's before we talk about the SOSUS network(s) in the Baltic, which probably comprises both ours and Russia's, and sees anything larger than a Bayliner cabin cruiser coming and going.
Finally, the whole point of a clandestine operation is to do something in such a way that you can plausibly claim "We didn't do it. No one saw us do it. You can't prove a thing."
Instead, the lumpenproletariat internet idiots worldwide assumes just the opposite. Because Biden babbled about what we could do (not what we would do, short-attention span midwits). Because the Kearsarge TF was within rock-throwing range of the pipeline rupture sites. Because the TF was publicly acknowledged beforehand to be practicing "undersea mine clearance". Because we'd already warned the Germans and other NATO Euros that something was rumbled as about to happen, so presumably they would be watching it too.
Us doing this under those conditions would be dumber than OJ buying a knife, a ski mask, and black gloves, the week before cutting his ex-wife's head off.
And just because he was that stupid, and Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants I is that stupid, you don't get to bootstrap this into "the entire US defense and intelligence establishment would go along with something so blisteringly stupid, even though doing this would poison NATO forever, drive Europe into Putin's arms, destroy the economies of 14 of our closest allies, give Russia the Victim Card, and open the entire Western society and infrastructure worldwide to whatever retaliation, including via ICBM, Vlad gets it into his silly head to undertake".
Call me when you pull 200 blackjacks in a row at a Vegas table. Then we'll talk about how many moronic stupidities in a row you'd need to line up to pull this one off the way you think it went down, if your excuse is "but the Navy was doing ops there".
And knowing that, anyone pointing to Biden's blather, or the presence of the US dotMil nearby, as being any serious rationale for American involvement, rather than 57 arguments against us doing it, plus the perfect opportunity for Russia to attempt to pin the tail on the scapegoat, to then be swallowed by a world where 50% of the population has an IQ under 99: Put your thinking cap back on, and try again.
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| Put on your cap, pick up the chalk, and get busy. |
