Jul 7, 2009 1:38 PM

Sat Marks the Spot, Uncovers Pirate Weapons Haul

A couple of magazine writers have used a commercial satellite to locate a mysterious pirate arms shipment bound for Sudan. Back in September, Somali pirates boosted the MV Faina, a Ukrainian cargo ship laden with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft guns, and T-72 tanks. The pirates then scored a major ransom in return for the arms and […]

digitalglobe-kahawa-barracks

A couple of magazine writers have used a commercial satellite to locate a mysterious pirate arms shipment bound for Sudan.

Back in September, Somali pirates boosted the MV Faina, a Ukrainian cargo ship laden with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft guns, and T-72 tanks. The pirates then scored a major ransom in return for the arms and the vessel.

But one mystery lingered: the true destination of the Faina’s cargo. Kenya's government said the weapons and munitions were for its military, but observers speculated that they were intended for the breakaway government of South Sudan.

With the aid of some satellite analysis, Jane's Defence Weekly has the answer: The weapons were part of a series of weapons shipments bound for South Sudan. JDW Middle East/Africa editor Lauren Gelfand and Jane's imagery analyst Allison Puccioni drew on extensive satellite imagery to track the movement of the T-72s from the port of Mombasa, Kenya; while Jane's does not conclude definitively that the tanks from the Faina ended up in South Sudan, the analysis does show a pattern of tanks making their way north to Sudan. Jane's also confirmed previous arms shipments from Ukraine.

It's yet another example of how commercial imagery satellites are allowing private citizens to gather intelligence in ways that only government-funded spies could do before. George Mason University doctoral candidate Curtis Melvin uses such snapshots form space to plot out North Korea's military bases. The *News *of Pakistan found pictures of U.S. drones parked on Pakistani runways — in a Google Earth cache.

Images captured by DigitalGlobe satellites in March 2009 showed 33 tanks parked at Kahawa Barracks northeast of Nairobi (pictured). In parallel, satellite imagery captured from southern Sudan showed tracked vehicles, parked under camouflage, at a Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) compound northeast of Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Jane's observed that SPLA attempts to conceal the location "were deliberate and masterful, but dimensional analysis, tracked-vehicle scarring and the staging of three vehicles in a tactical perimeter established the concealed vehicles as tanks."

All told, Jane's estimates that South Sudan has ordered around 100 main battle tanks. Observers have worried that an arms race is now under way between the Khartoum government and the government of South Sudan. A comprehensive peace deal was reached in 2005 after two decades of civil war, but that agreement has recently frayed. A referendum in 2011 opens the possibility that South Sudan may secede.

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