"They've sortied their whole bloody fleet"

cyrusdvirus

Sorry, was slightly reminded of a scene from "The Hunt for Red Octiber" when i read this story today.....

Russian warships and nuclear submarines have been scrambled to carry out an Atlantic sea search for a missing cargo vessel that is thought to have been hijacked by pirates or gangsters.

By Bruno Waterfield
Published: 1:07PM BST 12 Aug 2009

Arctic Sea: According to the Itar-Tass news agency, up to five Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels have been sent to the Atlantic on a hunt for the Maltese flagged ship Photo: AFP
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, has ordered the search for the Russian owned and crewed Arctic Sea, which disappeared two weeks ago after it reported being attacked by armed intruders near the Swedish coast.

"All Russian navy ships in the Atlantic have been sent to join the search for the Arctic Sea," said Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, the Russian Navy commander.


According to the Itar-Tass news agency, up to five Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels have been sent to the Atlantic on a hunt for the Maltese flagged ship, which is officially carrying a cargo of Finnish timber to Algeria.

Russia's corvette ship, the Ladny, has passed the Strait of Gibraltar and is currently sailing to the area where the Arctic Sea was last sighted near Portugal 11 days ago.

Russian submarines in the Atlantic Ocean have also joined a search supported by satellite surveillance of Africa's West Coast.

"Two of our nuclear submarines have been given the task to begin the search for the Arctic Sea vessel, already they are implementing it," said a Russian defence official.

The Arctic Sea vessel was last spotted off Portugal's Atlantic coast on August 1, two days after its navigation system appeared to have been switched off in order to evade coastguard agencies across Europe.

The ship was last contacted by British coastguards as the vessel entered the English Channel on Jul 28, four days after Arctic Sea crew members had reported a 12 hour long hijacking by an armed boarding party near the Swedish islands of Oland and Gotland.

There are fears that the 3,988-tonne ship was under the control of pirates when contact was made with Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

The ship's AIS navigation device, which enables vessels to be tracked, was then apparently switched off on Jul 29 and an Interpol alert was issued on Aug 3.

Swedish authorities were told by the Finnish shipping line operating the vessel that on Jul 24 it had been boarded by up to 10 armed men masquerading as anti-narcotics police officers.

Twelve hours later, according to crew reports, the intruders left the ship on a high-speed inflatable and allowed the vessel to continue on its passage but with its communications equipment damaged.

Theories over the ship's disappearance include the possibility that Russian gangsters were using it to smuggle arms or that the 15 Russian crew members have been caught up in a violent commercial dispute over the vessel's ownership.

iceage

One ping Vasily.

Fratton Fred

Looks like the hijackers will get the same "lesson" the Georgians did.

It does make you wonder if it is indeed just timber on board.

Tabnabs

Passing Thor's Twins, sir.

Very good.

Morlar

Crazy Ivan's.

Manach

<Scottish burr>We sail into history!</Scottish burr>

Hard Larry

You American Ass!...You've killed us!

tricky D

Hard Larry wrote: »

You Arrogant Ass!...You've killed us!

fyp

cyrusdvirus

Conn, Sonar, new contact bearing zero-niner-seven, designate new contact number sierra three five

lucky-colm

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!!

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!!

:cool::cool:

oncevotedff

Yes. Scrambling the fleet conveys a sense of urgency that is rather spoiled by the fact that the ship disappeared a fortnight ago. :rolleyes:

MickJB1989

Still, if this was merely a private venture then surely they'd let the "Capitalist Pig" TM Insurance companies deal with it. Afterall, the Russians aren't known for their compassion, I doubt they'd be this bothered about a cargoship and its crew under normal circumstances. Or, going down a different, yet equally cynically line of reasoning, maybe they just want to look good for the world press, and that's why they've only got involved after the public became aware of it.

lucky-colm

they found it

right where it was supposed to be funilly enough:pac:

Victor

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32417645/ns/world_news-europe/

prinz

lucky-colm wrote: »

they found it

right where it was supposed to be funilly enough:pac:

Try a map Algeria v hundreds of miles west of the Cape Verdes...

Burnt

Isreali's are claiming they told Russia they knew the Arctic Sea was carrying
S-300 missiles destined for Iran/Syria and gave the russians chance to save
face, rather than interception.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090831/wl_time/08599191934200

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8247273.stm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_%28missile%29

concussion

Thanks for the links Burnt - I got an RSS feed to my phone the other day and I couldn't find it when I needed to post, thought I was going mad! S-300's (or, if certain rumours are true, more S-300's) cause a lot of problems for potential Israeli air-strikes on Iran.

Captain Chaos

Shows why Israel wants in on the F-35 program and the ability to add it's own systems to the aircraft which it has done on it's F-15s and F-16s but the US will not give them access to the computer software source code to allow this to happen after Israel leaked sensitive information to China.

Its like what happened in the 70s when Israel lost alot of fighters to the then new Russian SA-6 SAM system set up in Syria, it took them a bit of time to modify their F-4s to detect and counter this missile threat.

Ping Chow Chi

This S-300 missile rummour seems a little fishie to me.... surely there would be an easier way to transfer the missiles than ship them half way around the world?

OS119

Ping Chow Chi wrote: »

This S-300 missile rummour seems a little fishie to me.... surely there would be an easier way to transfer the missiles than ship them half way around the world?

looking at a map it looks like the Caspian sea would be a better option - ok its not the most stable area in the world...

i think flying it all in would be a no-no, assuming its an assembled system the only thing big enough to fly it in usable quantities would be the big antonovs, and them disappearing off the commercial markets would raise eyebrows in NATO - primarily because NATO is hiring them for every flying hour it can get its hands on.

OTH, shipping them through the major sea lanes would be a good way of hiding them and making the journey look entirely innocent. best place to hide a tree is in a forest etc...

Victor

OS119 wrote: »

best place to hide a tree is in a forest etc...

How about ex-trees?

I think flying them would have been perfectly sensible and practical.

Burnt

Chavez is making no secret of his acquisition of Russian hardware in the near future. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8251969.stm

Tenger

iceage wrote: »

One ping Vasily.

One ping only!




Still a great yet mad film!