“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

The level of detail about the operation is basically, some divers from the US Navy attached bombs to the pipeline during a military drill that were detonated with magical sonobouy signals according to some professor who said that might work.

Another red flag: The vast majority of the article was about a political narrative, which really is focused around hurting Russia, and not who is benefited by the destruction of the pipeline. The US government does not own our energy industry and is often at odds with the gas and oil industry here, and this article assumes a level of integration that does not exist in the US political system.

The article itself said that Norway would benefit from the destruction of the pipe line.

This does not make the article more credible, in fact, it detaches the beneficiary one more degree from the actor.

I am not really qualified to judge on the verity of the article, but the statement that's there is no strong "integration" between the US government and the gas and oil industry (and other ones for that matter) is absurd. The US fought wars over access to cheap oil (Gulf war 1) has put extremely lucrative deals for their own oil companies into place after forcing regime change (gulf war 2), has highest officials transition to highest jobs in industry (Cheney), has shown multiple times that it will use intelligence apperatus for industry advantages (the spying scandal in Germany, airbus vs boring contracts...). Many (most) US military operations over the last 30 years can be directly attributed to economic motivations.

Meanwhile, the US controversially transferred SEALS to Germany earlier in October 2022[1].

USNS William McLean left a German port 5 September 2022[3] (there are also port call records) and headed to meet the USS Arlington on 10 Sept 2022[2] to transfer cargo.

USS Arlington loitered around docking in Lithuania and only reaching the straight near Denmark on 22 Sept.[2]

USS Arlington then meets the exact same USNS William McLean for another cargo transfer 20 days later and just 6 days after leaving port.

Where USNS William McLean went after I don't know. I know it docked somewhere close as there's an entry for 26 Sept 2022, but I don't feel like paying to know the exact location.

If you were conducting a SEAL operation on the high seas, a San Antonio-class ship would be a perfect launch vessel. A cargo exchange would be the perfect cover to swap ships. Delayed bomb detonation isn't dangerous and could explain why only 3 of 4 pipelines were impacted (aka, something went wrong with one).

I'm not saying it 100% happened (and is somewhat at odds with the anonymous source in this story), but to me, it seems like the US had the motive, means, and opportunity.

[0] https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/31497...

[1] https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-10-20/seals-gre...

[2] http://www.uscarriers.net/lpd24history.htm

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3pp-ehkS2o

Something that wasn't made clear in the article is that US energy companies have been massive beneficiaries of the Nordstream destruction. The US is now the world's leading exporter of liquid natural gas. That wouldn't have happened if the pipeline(s) were still operational.

It's like no one had ever heard of encrypted digital signals.

This part made me question a lot more.

For someone who is not American, this statement is amusing. The US govt and US military are fully in bed with the US energy industry, when it comes to actions outside America.

US still occupies the Syrian oil fields btw. No one talks about US territory grabbing there - it never even makes the news.

It has a range of roughly 20 miles necessitating carrying it near the location. That "giant assault ship" is exactly what you use to carry one of these. It also explains how you haul a few hundred pounds of explosives down a hundred meters for planting.