“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

Not a few hours later, 17 hours apart. No military is going to arrange for two pipes in the same general area to be destroyed 17 hours apart. 17 hours to find the second floating sonar device. 17 hours to get caught with your pants down.

I'm saying this as former US military here. the Idea that in the middle of a OPORD, of any kind, POTUS would come in last minute and change a detail, like an explosive on a timer (fairly simple,) to what is effectively some new technology no one has ever heard of, that allows for remote sonar detonations is Tom Clancy stuff.

In the United States Military, there's this thing called the Chain of Command.

This exercise was under the U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, which is under the United States European Command & United States Africa Command.

The "work" that being described here would have been under SOCOM (United States Special Operations Command), which is the only command that could do this kind of work, they are the only ones that even have the assets to do this kind of work and theres absolutely no mention of that in this piece.

It's complete conjecture and should absolutely be treated as such until theres hard evidence.

SOCOM does actually get a brief mention, but in a way that makes the whole story even less plausible. At the beginning, Hersh claims that the divers used were chosen because they were just "Navy only" and not part of SOCOM, which is allegedly a legal loophole to avoid having to report the activity to the Gang of Eight in Congress, apparently done because of concerns about leaks.

Setting aside how legally questionable that premise sounds, especially because the entire rest of the article is full of references to the involvement of clandestine organizations beyond "Navy only", Hersh then goes on to describe an operation apparently involving an absolute clown car full of a bunch of other people including 3 foreign countries, at least some people running a major NATO exercise, and what sounds like half the Norwegian Navy. Operations so secret you can't tell 8 Congressional leaders (as required by law) but you can tell Norway, Denmark, and Sweden about do not sound like a thing.