Let me start by saying that I am not querying the coordinates (29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East) for the Indian merchant vessel given by the UK MOD. In the British version the incident took place at that vessel. They said that the Indian vessel was anchored at these coordinates for two days.
By contrast the Iranian government has given four different coordinates, allegedly referring not to a single incident but to the course of the Royal Naval vessels.
My point has been all along that the precise coordinates are a red herring, because the maritime boundary has never been agreed. There is therefore no clear “line” you can be one side or the other of.
But I have been contacted now by three independent people – two claiming experience as mariners – to make the following point. To the best of my ability I have checked it out, but I am not a qualified navigator. I am not claiming that the following is correct – it is put forward as a problem, not a solution. I am appealing for assistance from those technically equipped to throw any light on this problem.
The MOD claimed that the Indian merchant vessel was anchored “in the channel”. But these coordinates are over a nautical mile further West (ie towards Iraq) than the channel. That bit I am quite certain of.
The mystery is this. On British nautical maps, 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East is 100 yards above the low water line. That is to say it dries out at low tide. The vessel pictured by the MOD is a substantial merchant vessel. No captain of such a vessel would knowingly take his vessel to such a position, let alone anchor it there for two days.
In fact legally those coordinates are on land.
As always, it is a bit more complex than that. British charts use the Lowest Astronomical Tide – that is the furthest the tide normally goes out in a year. So on British charts the vessel is 100 yards above the low water mark when the tide is at its lowest. US charts, which show a more normal low tide, show it as being just below the low water line. But that still puts it in very shallow water indeed.
Consider this. There is very little tide in the Gulf. The highest tidal range there is a vertical fall of only nine feet, and that is closer to the Arabian sea. Perhaps someone can find the draught of the Indian vessel when it left port (Lloyds List should have this). But it was laden with cars. I cannot conceive of it having a draught of less than twelve feet, possibly a good lot more.
In short, unless I am missing something very important, it looks like it would be very hard to get that Indian vessel to those coordinates at high tide, and it would certainly ground at low tide, pretty well at any time of year.
Before we leap to any conclusions, I can see at least three other possible explanations:
The mud and sands have shifted substantially since the charts were made, or it has been radically dredged
Sea levels in the Gulf at the time in question were, for some reason, unusually high; perhaps with some very local effect from very high outflow from the rivers
Neither the people who contacted me nor I can read a chart properly
What I am looking for are technical contributions to explain the alleged problem. Until we have clarified that, I would be grateful if the political pundits could hold fire. I am not saying that the coordinates were wrong, or that the ship could not be in that position.
'In fact legally those coordinates are on land.'
Martin Pratt made precisely the same point a few days ago:
'The land boundary agreed between Iran and Iraq in 1975 extended to the mouth of the Shatt al Arab river at the lowest low-water line. The point at which the British government claims that the incident took place lies just under 1.7 nautical miles southwest of the agreed land boundary terminus, and it is arguable that the incident actually took place on what is technically Iraqi land territory: Britsh charts of the area show the low-water line (the normal baseline from which the territorial sea is measured) running around 100 metres south of where the British government says the incident took place.'
Spring Tide might explain the unusually high sea levels, particularly in the Northern Gulf. Just a guess, mind.
Craig, if you go to the MoD website they have a photo allegedly of the GPS position taken from a helicopter over the vessel in question.
Which gives a position of 29degrees 50.174minutes North & 048degrees 43.544 minutes East.
Unfortunately, I do not have a chart at hand to plot this position, being home on leave from my vessel. So perhaps someone else can help there.
Looking at the type of vessel in the MoD photo, I would say she is possibly a ferry, or landing craft type of vessel. So a draft of twelve feet or less is a probability.
But I do agree that as a prudent ship's master I would not have anchored in such a position. Even if I was just awaiting the tide, let alone for a couple days!
Remember, too, that this ship was being stopped for suspected involvement in smuggling. Prudent semanship may not have been at the forefront of their minds, especially if they were trying to slip the net. I haven't seen many details about the ship in any stories – nayone outh there know?
And as this story points out, the ship had been spotted unloading cars onto barges moored alongside.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/sto…
Bit of a rum place to do it, no?
Hiya,
Just to give everyone an idea of the exact location:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=29.839333…
It's an image with a marker on Google Maps.
Quite clearly, this location is nearer Iranian soil than it is to Iraqi soil.
Nick,
I was thinking about spring tides too. The problem is that they don't just come in the furthest, they go out the furthest too. You would definitely ground in this location at spring tide if you anchored for two days.
Thanks to montazels – I hardly expected to find a ships master so quickly!
Craig
Might be worth bearing in mind that the suggestion was made (if I remember correctly, by the MoD) that the ship had dragged its anchor somewhat by the time that MoD photo was taken.
Speaking of technical points, I think there is one aspect being completely overlooked. The GPS system has become so ubiquitous that people tend to forget that it is designed and run by the US Military. There is an excellent description of it on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS.
The interesting point relating to this issue:
The GPS System used to intentionally add errors to the signal (so called Selective Availability) so that hostile forces could not use it for guiding long range missiles to accurate targets. At the same time, the US Military and it's allies had additional accuracy through encrypted codes. The Selectice Availability feature was turned off in 2000 after pressure from the FAA but the US military is believed to have:
"developed the ability to locally deny GPS (and other navigation services) to hostile forces in a specific area of crisis without affecting the rest of the world or its own military systems".
It has been reported that the US military had a massive training exercise going on in the area where it has deployed a large task force. It is reasonable to believe that such a task force would use such an ability in case of hostilities and therefore might even used it as a part of the exercise. It could even be suggested that the US might have much to gain by causing such an incident by manipulating the GPS signals locally (either to affect only military equipment or only civil equipment). After all, as a result of this incident, Britain and possibly more of Europe, would be much more likely to support a military action against Iran than before.
In any case, basing evidence on the GPS system, which is run by the US military (hardly an impartial player) is at best, dubious.
I may be missing something really obvious but the coordinates on the Garmin GPS handset photo on the MOD site are different from the MOD quote (E4843.544 vs. E4843.08). It therefore appears, that according to the navy's own data, the ship was actually 0.5 naut. miles further east (towards Iran) than stated. Assuming both were WGS 1984 then the MOD statement about the photograph and/or the position appears to be inaccurate – guess the drifting anchors come in here…
Any comments on this observation?
Also complicated by the fact that the helicopter in the photo is not dead over the ship – how far away it is would depend on the camera lens.
Reporter error is always a possibility too. But given how much hay the MOD are making out of the Iraqis giving two different coordinates…
If it was further East, it was probably in deeper water, which would solve that mystery, but of course also then be pretty well up on the MOD's alleged boundary.
What about the Israeli heliosynchonous Eos B satellite, this incident took place in daylight (10.00 is local time) – It is difficult to believe that they don't maintain a comstant watch and can (if asked) supply a hard aerial fix.
Anyway, the position is not very material, this incident was contrived, the Missing Lynx, the sleepy radar operators, are simply not cerdible.
Of course Craig has a diplomatic solution. Mr Blair and Mr Bush don't WANT a solution. They would in fact be extremely upset if Mr A, Mr K or the Ir Rev Gd took a fit of reason and promptly and secretly returned the party.
Incidentally the ship was reported as "flagged" Indian, and has been identified as Iranian in some reports but very curiously has never been named, nor the owners identified.
Mr Murray,
Very difficult to really say if there was illegal incursion by Royal Navy 15.
With judicious port starboard maneuver, classic exercise at sea, the two RN rubber boats might very well have been maneuvered/pushed into Iraqi waters by the more aggressive Iran Revolutionary Guards boats and promptly 'ambushed'.
Suffice to say that it would do a lot of good for peace in the region if Iran accepts UK apology for "accidental intrusion", after all those 15 who were actually being watched by troops on Iran vessels, could not have been mistaken for some kind of beachhead for an invasion of Iran.
All the hysteria will eventually die down. Best thing to do is to take things in stride.
Let's face it, short of Nuke potshots destined at making potholes in Tehran and rest of Iran, difficult for the UK not to be calm about some Iranian crackpots seeing how depleted UK is in terms of equipment and manpower not forgetting we're all over, i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan.
Best thing to do is to get those troops safely back, regroup and the rest will be up to Labour govt and Bandy (First Sea Lord).
vinurdora makes a couple of good points. Firstly in regard to the chart datum, it is not actually possible to accurately plot the position(s) using the co-ords that the MoD have produced without knowing what chart datum they are using, they haven't published this but yes it is probably WGS84 – but that is an assumption. I plotted one of the positions (the GPS one i think) on a vectorised chart (assumimg WGS84)last week and it was on the dries, the chart was based on very recent UKHO paper chart. And of course 48.43.08 (position at time of boarding) is west of 48.43.544 (the GPS position)- anchors dragged eastward if the position is accurate.
The vessel looks very big, anchoring on the dries would be very unorthodox. Also be aware that the handheld GPS is only receiving 6 satellites (view of the sky is obscured by the helicopter)you can't count on that position being very accurate.
I wonder whether the fact that the boat was in an unorthodox place attracted the attention of the Royal Navy in the first place. If you are a smuggler, you'd probably take an unorthodox route to evade detection, hence the boarding of a vessel that looked suspicious. I don't know, but this is just an idea.
Hi,
This is a little off point, but does anyone know why no one has identified the ship that was being searched? If the ship were owned by the estate of Anna Nicole Smith … normally details like this are reported whether or not they are relevant.
Just watched Craig on Newsnight. It was good to see Jeremy Paxman treating an ex-Ambassador of the UK with the respect he deserves.
Thank you, Craig, for all the excellent information you give to the world. That work will be remembered a long time after the likes of Blair have been consigned to history's dustbin.
vinurdora, regarding the US military's ability to "locally deny
GPS", this simply refers to local jamming and/or spoofing. As you
say, this replaced the "selective availability" (SA) scheme
discontinued in 2000.
GPS transmits on two separate frequencies called L1 and L2. The
L1 frequency carries both civilian and military signals. Civilian
receivers rely on the L1 frequency because the L2 frequency
carries only the encrypted military signal. (Some specialized GPS
equipment designed for surveying makes clever use of the L2
signal without knowing the encryption key, but they still need
L1).
But the US military has special GPS units that *can* operate
solely on L2. So to "deny" GPS in some area, they simply jam L1
and use their special L2 receivers.
The US went this way and turned off SA for two simple reasons: SA
impaired the civilian signal worldwide, and differential GPS was
rapidly circumventing SA anyway.
SA "dithered" the clocks on each satellite by adding a pseudo
random sequence generated from cryptographic keys known only to
military receivers. Pseudo random errors were also added to
the "ephemerides", the orbit positions broadcast by each
satellite. SA therefore produced time-varying satellite distance
errors that were the same for all the GPS receivers in the same
area, so circumventing SA was a simple matter of setting up a
differential GPS station. This is a reference receiver in a known
location that transmits to local GPS users the differences
between expected and measured satellite distances. Differential GPS
was originally designed to correct unintentional errors such as
ionospheric dispersion, but it worked just as well against
intentional errors like SA!
The US Coast Guard and the Federal Aviation Administration
operate networks of differential GPS stations that freely
broadcast to the public, so you had the amusing situation of one
branch of the US government taking something away only to have
two other branches give it back! Clearly SA was a silly idea that
had to go, so Clinton finally got rid of it in 2000.
vinurdora, you also wondered if the US military could "spoof" a civilian receiver, i.e,. make it read an incorrect position. (Jamming, as discussed in my last note, simply keeps receivers from working at all.)
The answer is yes, you can spoof — but not without risking detection. You can easily generate your own GPS signals to make a receiver display any position you want, regardless of the user's actual position. But if you're not careful, he might get suspicious if the indicated position or velocity doesn't match information from other sources, e.g., a speedometer or an altimeter.
You also have to be careful in how you get your spoofing signals to your victim. They have to overwhelm the satellite signals, yet you don't want to affect nearby users for fear of arousing suspicion. This requires either a highly directional, carefully aimed antenna or planting the spoofing device near the target GPS.
There are countermeasures against spoofing (e.g., warning the user when the GPS signals are much stronger than they should be) but civilian receivers generally don't implement them.
The military's answer to spoofing is to encrypt their own military GPS signals so that they can't be imitated without knowledge of the encryption keys. The civilian GPS signals are openly documented and unencrypted (as they have to be) so any good radio engineer could build a spoofing device.
I did some research previously and discovered the following.
Here are some MOD map overlays with the coordinates and MOD border clearly shown.
http://blackaceproduction.com/Images/Loc2.JPG
Here is a second map overlay taken from the Iranian map shown on the broadcasts.
http://blackaceproduction.com/Images/Loc5.jpg
The Iranian border on this map differs greatly from the border on the MOD map.
It is quite clear to me that these borders are different and it therefore explains the intransigence of either side to admit they were in the wrong.
Thanks Blackace – that is very helpful indeed. It underlines the point that until the boundary is properly agreed and defined, nobody can know where it is for certain.
My concern is that it is not simply that this ship was in an unorthodox position, it was in an almost impossible position. It is very strange that it hasn't been identified -and perhaps even stranger that the media hasn't tracked it down and interviewed the captain, who was a neutral eye witness to an event that has gripped the World's media.
Hello Sirs,
I writ from Spain, and here we look this incident from another more "human" perspective.
No questions about the UK & USA intentions over the world, are obvious, and is obvious too that they lie every day.
No questions about GPS service, if will be operated by ARAB satelites SURE that will be the most questionated point.
No questions about the prisoners treatment. All this people upset are joking dont?. Sometimes the Anglosaxon sense of humor escapes from my undertand. Just some words: FOX, CNN, GUANTANAMO, CIA FIGHTS, CONTAINERS IN AFGANISTAN, FALLUJA, CAMP X-RAY, ABU GRAIB, SOF FIRING FROM HELIS, SOLDIERS CHANGING PHOTOS FROM DEAD IRAQUIS FOR XXX STUFF, 700.000 DEADS,…
Sometimes the things are more simple, stupid and the reallity is extrange than the fiction.
I know the UK people thinks that they got the betters navymen of the world, but…
—-
Royal Navy says sorry after Spanish arrest SBS pair
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:40am BST 02/06/2004
Two members of the Royal Marines Special Boat Service have been arrested while driving on the Costa del Sol carrying military equipment.
The lance-corporals were driving a van along the sea-front in Malaga in the early hours when they were stopped by police officers who suspected they might be smuggling drugs.
The area is a common entry point for traffickers bringing hashish into Spain from Morocco in fast dinghies.
advertisement
The officers' suspicions seemed to be correct at first because the men's van contained an inflatable semi-rigid Zodiac dinghy and two powerful outboard motors.
But the pair, who also had diving equipment and boxes marked with Royal Navy emblems, said they were members of the Royal Navy on their way to exercises in Gibraltar. They were released after being held for four hours on May 18.
Spain's press said they were going to take part in exercises featuring the nuclear submarine Trenchant.
The MoD denied the vessel was involved in the alleged exercises, saying it was making a courtesy call in Gibraltar. The Spanish interior ministry said its National Centre for Intelligence was investigating the men's presence in Spain.
Defence sources said it was unlikely that their presence was related to an exercise. British special forces routinely test routes into and from areas around the world from where British citizens might need to be evacuated.
The Royal Navy has apologised for breaking an agreement preventing British troops from moving military equipment to Gibraltar via Spain. The Ministry of Defence said it was an "administrative error" which it regretted.
—-
AND MORE:
—-
Monday, 18 February, 2002, 15:12 GMT
Spanish smiles over invasion gaffe
British Royal Marines landing during an exercise
Red-faced Royal Marines have been forced to beat a hasty retreat after storming a Spanish beach resort instead of the fortress rock of Gibraltar.
A map-reading glitch sent the 20-strong invasion force onto the beach at La Linea, the town on the frontier with the British colony, to the surprise of Spanish locals.
The marines were greeted by two local policeman who watched in amazement as the heavily armed troops rushed ashore from two launches on Sunday morning.
The mayor of La Linea, Juan Carlos Juarez, said: "They landed on our coast to confront a supposed enemy with typical Commando tactics.
"But we managed to hold them on the beach."
Dominique Searle, editor of the Rock's daily newspaper, The Gibraltar Chronicle said: "What a boob."
"We don't know who was in command of the invasion force but the feeling is he should brush-up on his map reading.
"But to be fair he was only a couple of hundred yards from the right spot."
Spain and Britain are Nato allies but are locked in a long-running dispute about the sovereignty of Gibraltar.
Spain magnanimously spared Britain's blushes by accepting the landing had been a genuine mistake.
HMS Ocean
The marines were sailing on HMS Ocean
"We are not going to protest. From our point of view the matter is closed," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
The British Ministry of Defence said it was a situation it would "rather not have taken place".
"Two landing craft from HMS Ocean accidentally entered Spanish territorial waters and in bad weather one landing craft landed on the beach a few yards over the Spanish side of the border," a spokesman explained.
"About 20 Royal Marines disembarked for about five minutes and then the error was recognised and they all withdrew."
The gaffe came at an unfortunate time as talks between Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his Spanish counterpart, Josep Pique, aimed at ending the centuries old dispute over the rock have stirred up animosity in both countries.
Gibraltarians and their political leaders are furious at suggestions that sovereignty of the peninsula could be shared.
A deal on its future is likely to be reached in the next few months.
—-
Well, really and we have amateur videos of this too.
And now, put it youselfs in the skin of the IRAN military man, with all this pressure over IRAN at today.
Youre quiet in your place tired of looking along your border waters with IRAQ, with a cuarter of the NATO doing "Naval execises" in front of you, when sudenly 15 big boys from ye olde britain, cross over your nose.
?What can be happened if 15 Iranian guards in two ships will crosed 100 meters the IRAN/IRAQ border in the noses of the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, and its battle group of destroyers and guided-missile cruisers?
Yours trully
Ferran Brooks
PD: I apologise for my B@D english sirs.
I have just been reading about another dispute over Iraq/Iran water borders back in 1988 when the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger plane.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/ir655-ni…
…it makes fascinating reading with hindsight and current events all at once and shows the way the situation was manipulated and arranged according to each government. Not sure if it will help, but fascinating nonetheless.
Namaste,
Tina Louise
Comparing Black Ace's overlays you can even see on Google Earth how the Shatt-al-arab waterway veers more southerly than the British map would have it.
ecolophant,
Yes the problem is that the channels and banks move, quite a lot. Witnin the Shatt-al-Arab, before you reach the sea, the boundary is agreed as being the centre of the deepest channel (or "Thelweg") but as that moves, it isn't easy.
Sorry, its actually even worse – its the centre of the deepest flow within the deepest channel, so if a channel has a wide shallow area off the main flow (occurs very frequently) that isn't counted.
Just a short note attn of Mr Ferran Brooks
I served in the Royal Navy and quite aware that UK's oldest military service enjoys an excellent reputation worldwide but you're right to infer that perhaps internation/public impression of RN is sometimes over the top.
While the Royal Navy work with the highest professional standards, I do believe that people in the Navy are also human – and some can and do make mistakes.
The Royal Navy is a professional military component of Britain's defence institution and as such have always done and will always do more than their best to meet British defence expectations in spite of or despite certain shortcomings from governments that have led Britain, i.e., budget cuts, downsizing, etc.
blackace's images are very interesting. Although the problem of the Indian ship raises one question the main problem for the MoD so far is what they have not produced anything meaningfull in terms where the boundary lies. The Iranians have produced proper navigational charts both paper and vectorised, with buoyage, spot depths and bathymetric features, the MoD have produced a "map" with non of this required detail, who here would like to navigate up that waterway with shifting sandbanks etc using the crude image that the MoD have produced? Whether or not the boundary that is marked on the Iranian charts has any current legal status or is what the boundary will look like once agreement between Iran/Iraq has been settled is irrelevant from a navigational point of view. Iran is a host nation of the waterway and for the purposes of maritime safety and management of traffic have delineated a boundary on the charts that they are using, merchant vessels using the waterway will have these charts, the boundary is going to be used as a customary one for the purposes of traffic management. Why have the MoD/RN not produced anything resembling a navigational chart, and why do they appear to be completely ignorant of what Iran is using for the purposes of safe navigation?
It may also interest you to know that the soldiers are being held in the Notorious Evin prison.
Not even the press have realised this.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42739000/jp…
http://news.gooya.com/politics/archives/images/02…
I think that in all of this the politicans on our side have jumped in feet first with-out checking the depth – sorry for the pun!
I would imagine there is a lot of ripe language coming from the RN directed towards the MoD and others.
But being the gentlemen they are, it's all muttered behind the MoD's back.
Regarding GPS out there, I would have thought with the length of time we have been in the area, the Services would have set up a differential GPS station.
I know when we were working off Namibia we had such a system set up. Often having to send a helicopter ashore when a errant Bushman took a fancy to one of our stations!
As for the query about the co-ordinates, well if it's anything like on my ship with five different nationalities on board, none of whom seem to write numbers down the same way. I can quite understand how mistakes might arise.
Let's hope it can all be put down to a slight miss-understanding, and we can get our service personnel back quickly.
montazels, yes everyone is going to be using differential GPS on their main vessels (maybe not the RNs RiBS)You can guarantee that the Iranian apprehending patrol will have differential meaning that the crews can guarentee within 5M 100% of the time, trust me i work in marine navigation technology. The initial vectorised chart that Iran published (viewable at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/6502805.stm)
Is a screen grab from a vessels charting system it shows points with flags plotted on it representing the UK RiB(s). The patrol boats would of got a visual/radar fix on them and then acquired them as a tracked target on radar, When the RiB entered the Iranian side one of the Iranian crew members hit a button on his radar (the one marked TLL) and the radar transmitted the location of the target that represents the rib to the charting system, each point will time/date data embedded in. Apparently there were several Iranian boats in the area so it may be that they several such records marking other points on the RiBs route, all differentially pinpointed. One of the 2 RiBs had a GPS chartplotter on board and there was at least one handheld GPS, both of these devices will have a track recorded as well as crew entered waypoints all logged with time/date. These 2 independent systems that recorded the location(s) of the RiBs corroborate each other enough to convince any marine incident investigation, the Iranians will know this. The Iranians have said that they want the UK to acknowledge that their vessels were in their waters, but so far the UK has said it is not prepared to do this. The Border dispute is an issue in this but so is safe navigation, the working border used by Iran is an integral part of this. Managing that waterway is not going to like keeping on eye on 12 year olds on pedlos at a waterpark, as the British seem to have it with their ludicrous illustrations, there are going to be thousands of vessels going in and out everyweek including fully laden tankers, vessels being instructed by both Iraqi Iranian port authorities to take up holding positions at specific and precise locations. Someone needs to take responsibility for all that and that task becomes very hard when a foreign navy operating nearby does not recognise your working boundaries.