Hybrid Warfare and Sabotage

[Kirkhill]

German warships ‘sabotaged by workers’

Prosecutors accuse two men from Romania and Greece of tampering with state-of-the-art corvettes in Hamburg

www.telegraph.co.uk

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of sabotaging several German warships.

The shipworkers, a 37-year-old Romanian and a 54-year-old Greek national, are accused of tampering with the vessels by pouring more than 20kg of steel pellets into an engine block, puncturing freshwater lines, removing fuel tank caps and disabling fuses in the onboard electronics.

Prosecutors said the vessels – two state-of-the-art corvettes – were docked ⁠at Hamburg harbour in 2025 when the suspected sabotage occurred.

It was discovered during pre-departure checks as one of the ships, the Emden corvette, was preparing for ‍its inaugural journey ‌to the port city of Kiel.

 

[Kirkhill]

Little Green Men, Shadow Fleets, Cyber Attacks and Social Media Info Ops - as well as physical attacks like this sabotage and drone attacks.

WW3.

Good news - unemployment should recover given the rising demand for watchkeepers.

...

Defence Forces tell gardaí they can't provide anti-drone security for EU Presidency meetings

Gardaí have been told by the Defence Forces that the military cannot secure locations outside of its airbase at Baldonnel.

www.thejournal.ie

GARDAÍ HAVE MADE a formal request for military assistance to provide anti-drone equipment for multiple locations during the upcoming EU Presidency but the Defence Forces have told them they will only deploy the equipment to protect Baldonnel airfield.

Sources have told The Journal that the move has left garda planners frustrated, and they now, almost certainly, will have to ask foreign agencies to assist in provision of anti-drone capability.

And in the same light I will repost this US article about domestic drone defences.

Pentagon expands counter-drone authorities beyond 'fence line' - Breaking Defense

The new guidance also grants service secretaries the power to designate what facilities should have special protections against drone threats.

breakingdefense.com

...

In addition to watchkeepers it seems we are way past the days where an ADATs and a couple of Blowpipes could be hauled out of storage every decade or so to protect the great and good at Kananaskis.

 

[Kirkhill]

And I forgot...

Political interference
Supporting disruptive protests
Supporting criminal activity
Supporting illegal drugs

 

[Kirkhill]

Economic warfare including fiscal and monetary attacks

And forced migrations...

....

 

[Kirkhill]

Hybrid warfare, although there are intimations of shadow fleets

2,000 Chinese fishing boats gather to form floating wall in E. China Sea - The Mainichi

BEIJING (Kyodo) -- Up to 2,000 Chinese fishing boats have gathered near the Sino-Japanese median line in the East China Sea at least twice since late

mainichi.jp

"The Tokyo-controlled Senkaku Islands, claimed by China, lie in the East China Sea. Beijing regularly sends its ships near the islets to press its territorial claim, referring to them as Diaoyu.

"According to data collected by ingeniSPACE using an automatic identification system to track vessels, about 2,000 Chinese fishing boats formed a U-shape measuring around 470 km in length and 80 km in width between Dec. 24 and 26 on the Chinese side of the median line between the two countries' shorelines.

"On Jan. 11, about 1,500 Chinese fishing boats lined up across more than 400 km in waters straddling the median line."

 

[Kirkhill]

The German army brigade in Lithuania is not under fire, but it is under hybrid attack. Soldiers report mysterious phone calls, and drones appear to be spying on manoeuvres. How should the Bundeswehr and NATO respond?​

No front line: Russia's hybrid pressure on German army in Lithuania

The German army brigade in Lithuania is not under fire, but it is under hybrid attack. Soldiers report mysterious phone calls, and drones appear to be spying on manoeuvres. How should the Bundeswehr and NATO respond?

www.euronews.com

 

[ytz]

The response is to ramp up hybrid warfare against Russia as one of the NATO GOFOs previously proposed.

 

[OldSolduer]

The response is to ramp up hybrid warfare against Russia as one of the NATO GOFOs previously proposed.

Bingo. Do it

 

[Kirkhill]

The response is to ramp up hybrid warfare against Russia as one of the NATO GOFOs previously proposed.

Bingo. Do it

Apparently it is being done.

No coincidence her first name is 'Blaze'

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

Thanks @daftandbarmy

 

[Kirkhill]

In keeping with this, moving this discussion to this thread

Irish naval ship monitored suspicious vessel off Dublin during Zelenskyy visit

The ship had been involved in damaging an undersea cable in the Baltic Sea earlier this year.

www.thejournal.ie

Modern Q-ships?
If it is legal to blow a suspected drug runner out of the water how about a suspected Q-ship ripping uo cables and commanding drones?

Or, for that matter, blockade runners.

Ukraine Strikes Russian Shadow Fleet Tankers in Black Sea - Naval News

On the night of November 28 the Ukrainian armed forces deployed so-called Sea Baby Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) in the Black Sea and specifically attacked two tankers, believed to be part of Russia’s alleged shadow fleet.

www.navalnews.com

....

Hegseth and Trump are silly enough to declare their actions.
Others are not so precious.

We have to rotate this ammunition stock anyways...

Just do it quietly, would you?

I got to thinking about the Yanks loudly taking out drug boats on TV while others are quietly overloading computers, shutting down power grids and pipelines, stopping civil flights with drone swarms, blowing up pipelines, tankers, refineriries, railways and bombers with drones, or assassinating people with pagers and drones through hotel windows.

It may be time to revert to SOE rules. The Special Operations Executive was considered most ungentlemaly, unsporting. But that didn't stop Churchill from instituting it and letting it operate. Canada has history in the field.

Bill Stephenson, Camp X, British Securty Corporation, SOE, MI6, ties to the OSS and CIA. That Canada operated in a different world than the one envisaged by the Trudeau acolytes. William Stephenson - Wikipedia

.....

Designated left field thought

Boost defence spending or Russia will win, warns Navy chief

UK is at risk of losing historic advantage over Putin’s fleet in Atlantic, according to First Sea Lord

www.telegraph.co.uk

Royal Navy set to debut autonomous ships and fighter drones

ukdefencejournal.org.uk

The RN is concerned that they don't have enough ships, and enough subs. They feel that they are over-matched by Russia's 83 subs. Setting aside the quality of those subs for a moment what would happen if those subs stopped returning to harbour. No fanfare. No TV coverage, just no subs at the pierhead and empty tables in Murmansk.

I think the British Bastion programme is poised to make that situation possible.

The Brits posit a surveillance system supplied bt commercial companies based on a field of self-propelled sono-buoys regularly reporting their surroundings via Link 16 to London and local task forces. The local task force could consist of one Type 26 destroyer and a couple of uncrewed escorts carrying remote sensors and spare weapons that can be launched remotely. They will sail in company with multiple UxVs - uncrewed helicopters, uncrewed submarines and uncrewed speed boats.

What if those uncrewed submarines were armed with readily available heavy torpedoes? Likewise for the speedboats, turn the into autonomous MTBs (Motor Torpedo Boats) and create an ever changing minefield of off-route mines. Self-propelled CAPTOR mines of a sort. Russian subs detected and sunk well out of range of the videographers.

...

Which brings me to the if-then bit.

If we can quietly make subs disappear without making the news the can we do the same for Q-ships, blockade runners and drug boats.

Can we jam navigation systems, blackout transmissions and quietly launch a torpedo so that the target simply disappears.

Lots of deniability.

...

It may not be sporting, or even lawful, but our enemies aren't being sporting and we have played by these rules before.

Are you suggesting that the West start secretly sinking Russian (and Chinese?) submarines?

That would

That would be illegal

You didn't answer my question.

And as we struggle with legalities and disappearing Q-ships

The Ghost Fleets and blockade runners of China, Russia and North Korea are suggested as models for meeting logistics demand in the Indo-Pacific and supplying forces shuttling between islands.

Another way to get supplies past the enemy: ghost-fleet tactics | The Strategist

The solution to maritime logistics challenges may not be a purely military one but, rather, one pulled from the playbook used by ghost fleets, smugglers and other illicit networks. Mobility, sustainment and logistics are the ...

www.aspistrategist.org.au

The Marines have already started picking up tricks from those Caribbean drug boats that the Navy is sinking.

"You can build a case that the maritime commons are becoming more lawless. China hasn’t cared about the rules for years, neither has Russia or Iran. The Black Sea is an active war zone. The Red Sea is quiet, but ships continue to go around Africa to avoid it. The US is pushing the rules in the Caribbean and exceeding them in some cases."

The Telegraph

Tom Sharpe
Trump’s tanker seizure is a radically different approach. Is it the key to beating Putin?
Sanctions haven’t worked so cracking down on Russia’s dark fleet could be a way of drying up oil money funding Ukraine war

Tom Sharpe
Tom Sharpe
12 December 2025 5:54pm GMT

Trump's equivalent of the RN's old West Africa Squadron?
Abolition of slavers was a great excuse for boarding ships and controlling trade.

.....

"Caracas screamed piracy. They’re technically wrong on the definition, but the optics are undeniably wild.

"The Skipper wasn’t just some random tanker that got unlucky. She’s been sanctioned by the US since 2022 for running Iranian crude to fund the Iranian Revolutionary Guards al-Quds Force – the overseas terrorism arm of the Tehran regime. Ownership traces through Marshall Islands shells to a Swiss-Ukrainian fixer. She had no valid flag (Panama stripped the registry years ago), no class certificate since May 2022, no protection and indemnity insurance, and she was flying a fake Guyanese flag. To stay under the radar, the crew engaged in aggressive Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder spoofing – transmitting bogus location data to make it look as though she was off Guyana while actually loading at Venezuela’s José terminal and then conducting a ship-to-ship transfer of more than a million barrels to the tanker Neptune 6, probably bound for Cuba.

"The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) allows warships to board a stateless vessel. Caracas has little grounds for complaint. This wasn’t piracy; it was a state executing a judicial warrant against a lawless hull. Of course this is maritime law, which is never simple. For me though, this boarding looks legitimate.

"As an aside, the difference between boarding a stateless vessel without loss of life and blowing up a suspected narco boat without so much as a demand to surrender are so stark that comparisons are largely irrelevant. Sure, both actions took place on the water, but that’s about it. It’s as pointless as comparing the narco strikes to drone strikes in, say, Afghanistan (or Iraq or Pakistan). Many are doing all of this, but largely because they want to score political points or because they don’t understand.

"There are already 30-plus sanctioned or dark tankers loitering off Venezuela right now. Several have switched off AIS altogether (illegally) or cancelled loadings since Wednesday. With US carrier-based air cover in the overhead and one third of the active US navy in the operating area, it’s safe to say that hiding will be nearly impossible. It also means there are plenty of assets in place if this is just the start."

....

As Trump Jr said, with his dad, it's hard to know.

Given the treatment meted out to a few unfortunate drug runners do anyone reckon that a vessel hailed by the USCG won't heave to?

Russians Planned Explosions on Planes Flying to the USA from Europe

European intelligence agencies have found that a Russian sabotage network was preparing to blow up planes flying to the United States.

militarnyi.com

At what point do we reconsider the niceties?

No....

Further to the hybridization of the seas

Little Green Men on board shadow tankers.

Swedish Navy Finds Russian Military Personnel Aboard “Shadow Fleet” Tankers

The Swedish Navy has confirmed the presence of Russian military personnel aboard tankers from the so-called “shadow fleet” in the Baltic Sea

militarnyi.com

And in the Black Sea

"The market price of a Magura V5 boat is around US$250,000. Thirteen emphasises, however, that his unit acquires them at a significantly lower cost."

The war at sea rages on: Defence Intelligence of Ukraine explains Russia's counter to maritime drones and its effectiveness

Russian forces are hunting Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessels at sea and from the air. Meanwhile, US and European actors are scrambling to get their hands on the technology, as evidenced by discussions in offices, at exhibitions and during trials.

www.pravda.com.ua

"Russian forces are hunting Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessels at sea and from the air. Meanwhile, US and European actors are scrambling to get their hands on the technology, as evidenced by discussions in offices, at exhibitions and during trials.

"The force behind this success are Ukrainian-made unmanned Magura boats – inconspicuous, fast, manoeuvrable and deadly to the enemy. In just two years, they have rewritten the rules of modern naval warfare."