by Nat South for The Saker Blog US carrier making waves on social media A satellite image is doing the rounds of social media supposedly showing the US aircraft carrier ‘USS Ronald Reagan’ apparently ‘surrounded’ at a distance by at least seven Chinese warships (allegedly) on 24 September. More details are in this article by Sputnik. According to Chinese media, there were 5 Chinese warships, but this is all speculation
by Nat South for The Saker Blog In the first part of the series on the Arctic shipping and icebreakers,” Arctic Russian icebreakers – Kerfuffle over numbers, role and expectations”, (June 2019), I started by looking at the Bloomberg article, “Putin’s Arctic Plans Are a Climate Change Bet”. The article refers to the newest generation of Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers designed to work along the Northern Sea Route, (NSR). However, this
by Nat South for The Saker Blog British flagged ship with only 23 seafarers onboard of Indian, Russian, Latvian and Filipino nationality. UK flag, Swedish company. That’s a reflection today of commercial shipping industry for you. All but in name. Ship operators are already getting cold feet over Brexit, so these latest incidents are going to further undermine operators using the UK as a flag of convenience. Seizure of commercial
by Nat South for The Saker Blog I have taken the opportunity to look at the recent incident involving two outbound tankers in the Gulf of Oman. I have got some questions or two, (or three) about certain parts of the incident, from a civilian mariner’s perspective mostly. There are various conflating aspects to the event, and questions need to be asked, yet journalists do not seemingly wish to ask
by by Nat South for The Saker Blog (Part 1) I’d like to tackle the subject of Arctic icebreakers, by firstly looking at the Bloomberg article, “Putin’s Arctic Plans Are a Climate Change Bet” as a starting point to this analysis. The article starts off in an eye-catching fashion, using keywords such as “climate change”, “control shipping routes”. The article is about the new generation of Russian nuclear icebreakers currently
By Nat South for The Saker Blog This is the second part in a series that looks behind the scenes, at particular aspects of trade, shipping and transport involving Russia. This analysis was partially written back in spring 2018, before taking academia seriously for a while. Historically & to this day the US depends on the Mahan theory of sea route control and control of significant maritime chokepoints for power
Being bullish about Arctic shipping – the Northern Sea Route (NSR) by Nat South for the Saker Blog Part 1 The Northern Sea Route, (Северного морского пути) handled a record 9.7 Mn tons of sea cargo in 2017. http://en.portnews.ru/news/251959/ President Putin, in his speech to the Federal Assembly at the beginning of March, stated that he would like to see a tenfold increase of cargo transported along the NSR by
