Today a joker turned up on AIS behind Russian navy tug Umka, in Strait of Malacca.
The Fortuna pipe laying vessel is being towed. Most famous for laying down Nord Stream 2.
She has been behind Umka all along, from Murmansk or Baltics (unsure).
auonsson
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Pseudonymous osint. Focus but not exclusively Southern Baltics. Judge me by my tweets. To keep SNR ok I mostly follow signalists.
WC-135R Constant Phoenix nuke sniffer relocated from Souda Bay, Greece to Mildenhall, UK during the afternoon.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae048d&lat=43.519&lon=11.153&zoom=5.1&showTrace=2023-07-05
Umka and Bakhtemir list their destination as Khmolsk, Russian Far East. A medium port frequented by offshore supply ships and fishing boats.
Given that Russia spent 4 months moving Fortuna here one must assume there is a project involving very heavy submarine work planned in the area, but I know nothing about this part of the world.
Fortuna is a sanctioned ship with no propulsion of her own.
She is towed by sanctioned tug Umka and close by is Bakhtemir , spy/sabotage/support ship.
Satellite Sentinel 1 caught Umka and Fortuna south of South Africa in May, but besides that moment I have not found any satellite pics of the ships.
The Swedish air force is active. At the moment they are flying on average 150 hours a week which is twice what was seen in 2021.
The difference is statistically significant. (P 0.05)
The largest driver for the increase is training for pilots in the SB05 school jet. ISR is down.
The 5 Chinooks are on their way to RAF Northolt. According to others preparation for visit of president Biden.
Third day in a row that Polish government plane is holding over Poland for hours on end.
If we include two A400's that operate both as tankers and cargo airplanes (hence hard to know their mission beforehand) we are now at 12 tankers.
Only one of them, HOBO13, has flown in an obvious refueling pattern.
The rest are either moving to new bases/maintenance or possibly ferrying other planes. Ie helping fighters and similar with smaller fuel tanks to move far.
Nevertheless, its a very large number for a sunday.