[81alum]

I don't follow these events with the detailed knowledge of some of you, but this NYT article made an impression on me 3 days ago--making me wonder how well sanctions of any kind will work in the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/world...l-law.html

"...But over the past year, Windward, a large maritime data company that provides research to the United Nations, has uncovered more than 500 cases of ships manipulating their satellite navigation systems to hide their locations. The vessels carry out the deception by adopting a technology that until recently was confined to the world’s most advanced navies. The technology, in essence, replicates the effect of a VPN cellphone app, making a ship appear to be in one place, while physically being elsewhere."

This discussion of "manipulating the ship's GPS" is nonsense. It isn't necessary or useful. The AIS transponder receives data from an external source (NMEA bus, RS-232 etc). Any laptop can be substituted to supply fake location data. The ship's GPS is not involved at all, and there is nothing "advanced" about it. It has been going on for many years. There are other AIS spoofs as well, such as pretending to be a different vessel. One dodge that is a bit more sophisticated is to have an AIS transmitting the location of the spoofing ship as anchored someplace, while the ship transits either with no AIS operating or transmitting the ID of a different ship. Unless you can actually overfly the ship transmitting the fake ID, you are none the wiser, and even then it can be tricky if the fake ID is plausible, eg using the ID of a ship of the same manufacture and class.

The US used to have a large enough VP community that we could minimize this type of activity by monitoring "chokepoints" in maritime commerce and aggressively surveilling suspected violators when they "wandered off" someplace . It wasn't by any means airtight but it was somewhat effective. No more. Satellites  are now being used to receive AIS signals and some anomalies can be detected that way. However, they can't actually "see" the ships, so cheating is still easy. All those P-3s actually did something after all.

Goose, I have learned to respect your detailed and extensive knowledge on matters like this.  But I am not quite sure what you are saying.  When you observe that cheating is still easy, it sounds like you are endorsing the general thrust of the NYT article.  But you begin by making a well informed critique of the NYT article.  It sounds like the NYT article was written by someone with less knowledge and understanding than you have, but the ultimate conclusion is the same?  Sanctions don't work very well because maritime cheating is so easy?

[81alum]

I don't follow these events with the detailed knowledge of some of you, but this NYT article made an impression on me 3 days ago--making me wonder how well sanctions of any kind will work in the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/world...l-law.html

"...But over the past year, Windward, a large maritime data company that provides research to the United Nations, has uncovered more than 500 cases of ships manipulating their satellite navigation systems to hide their locations. The vessels carry out the deception by adopting a technology that until recently was confined to the world’s most advanced navies. The technology, in essence, replicates the effect of a VPN cellphone app, making a ship appear to be in one place, while physically being elsewhere."

This discussion of "manipulating the ship's GPS" is nonsense. It isn't necessary or useful. The AIS transponder receives data from an external source (NMEA bus, RS-232 etc). Any laptop can be substituted to supply fake location data. The ship's GPS is not involved at all, and there is nothing "advanced" about it. It has been going on for many years. There are other AIS spoofs as well, such as pretending to be a different vessel. One dodge that is a bit more sophisticated is to have an AIS transmitting the location of the spoofing ship as anchored someplace, while the ship transits either with no AIS operating or transmitting the ID of a different ship. Unless you can actually overfly the ship transmitting the fake ID, you are none the wiser, and even then it can be tricky if the fake ID is plausible, eg using the ID of a ship of the same manufacture and class.

The US used to have a large enough VP community that we could minimize this type of activity by monitoring "chokepoints" in maritime commerce and aggressively surveilling suspected violators when they "wandered off" someplace . It wasn't by any means airtight but it was somewhat effective. No more. Satellites  are now being used to receive AIS signals and some anomalies can be detected that way. However, they can't actually "see" the ships, so cheating is still easy. All those P-3s actually did something after all.

Goose, I have learned to respect your detailed and extensive knowledge on matters like this.  But I am not quite sure what you are saying.  When you observe that cheating is still easy, it sounds like you are endorsing the general thrust of the NYT article.  But you begin by making a well informed critique of the NYT article.  It sounds like the NYT article was written by someone with less knowledge and understanding than you have, but the ultimate conclusion is the same?  Sanctions don't work very well because maritime cheating is so easy?