Image: Aftermath of collision between Portuguese-flagged container ship Solong and oil tanker Stena Immaculate chartered to U.S. Navy. Source – social media via CNN
UPDATE: An AIS reconstruction of the Solong/Stena Immaculate collision seems to show no GPS spoofing or interference. AIS signals show the Solong directly approaching and then impacting Stena Immaculate. The captain of the Solong (a Russian) is being held by British authorities for manslaughter.
Click here for reconstruction of collision by VesselFinder.com
What’s new: A suggestion that the USS Harry Truman’s collision in February and the collision involving an oil tanker chartered to the U.S. Navy on the 10th of March both involved GPS spoofing and possibly other cybersecurity issues.
Why its important: The great powers are involved in low level electronic and cyber warfare. If these incidents involved intentional interference, the level of conflict could be escalated or escalating.
What else to know:
- USS Harry Truman was operating near the Suez Canal. An area of very dense traffic, though collisions are rare.
- Video of the most recent collision off the coast of England (see below from SkyNews) shows that visibility was reasonably good.
- The U.S. tanker was anchored. If the crew of the Portuguese ship had been maintaining a proper lookout the accident could have been avoided. We understand that, sadly, some commercial ship crews sometimes just couple the steering to the GPS and rely on the AIS system to warn them of danger.
- It has been revealed very recently (after the below post) that the captain of the Portuguese vessel that hit the oil tanker is a Russian national.
WE DON’T NECESSARILY ENDORSE THE POINT OF VIEW IN THE POST BELOW, BUT OFFER IT FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.
We do know of several adverse instances for U.S. forces that almost certainly involved GPS signals being jammed or spoofed. Understandably, the U.S. government has never said GPS interference was a factor.
flyingpenguin
Naval Integrity Breach: Chinese Hackers Crash Second U.S. Military Ship in a Month
The USS Harry Truman collision on February 12th appeared to be just an isolated incident. Now we know it was merely the opening act.
The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at approximately 11:46 p.m. local time, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea.
Barely a month later, a far more devastating crash has unfolded off England’s coast—this time targeting a chartered U.S. military fuel supply line.
Just before 10 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET), a Portuguese-flagged container ship called the Solong careered into the oil tanker, called the Stena Immaculate, which was at anchor in the North Sea about 10 miles off the English coastline, according to the ship tracking tool VesselFinder.
What demands our immediate attention: Weather reports from nearby coastal stations indicated misty conditions with limited visibility that morning, potentially making the ships’ crews even more reliant on their electronic navigation systems. The 2005-built Portuguese-flagged Solong was traveling at full cruising speed—16 knots—when it slammed broadside into the anchored Stena Immaculate. Let me be absolutely clear: such a collision at 8.23 m/s directly into the 183-meter length of a stationary high-sided oil tanker is beyond negligence—it represents a catastrophic systems-level breakdown or, more likely, deliberate external manipulation.
