“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

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.

The US is too competent to do such a bad job (17 hours apart and only 3 of 4 pipes destroyed)?

Does this imply we have a rogue actor or insufficiently equipped one to blame? Who?

Let's say I am a Ukranian patriot, with few million in the bank. I bet given few month I could put together a team of divers to plant some C4 with a simple timer and blow this thing to hell. Or Polish patriot, or Polish government or any of the Baltic states. It is an existential struggle for all of them, and russkie understand one thing and one thing only, this was a very clear communication straight to Putin.