Intergalactic Summit

Well, that came out of nowhere. Speculation on the source?

Well, I don't see this ending well.

Executor Heth's last known moments in High Security State space were in Otsasai. He fled to low-security space from that system and has not been seen to return since. The system was initially used as the staging ground to pursue him into low-security space.

They hi-jacked entire carriers? Either these guys are crazy powerful or the Caldari Navy is completely incompetent. I'd imagine something like this is hard to do unless it was security team skip night or something.

Not as hard as you might think, Fred. Load up some blockade runners (which are scan immune and running legit IDENT) with assault teams, gear, and prize crews, dock up, disperse gas, neutralize any security that you have to, take what you want. A single transport can hold thousands of troops (more over short durations), and you don't need a full crew to just fly something like this away. Just man the bridge, and the key engineering stations, and you can walk off with a ship... You won't be conducting flight deck or combat operations, but you can navigate just fine. Lockouts can be hacked, and non critical systems can be bypassed.

As for anyone being complicit... Honey, I guarantee you, if anyone was, and it's uncovered, they'll wind up with a slug in their head.

Sure its certainly feasible, but I'd imagine reinforcements would arrive in time. These carriers are the size of cities, especially the Wyvern. Unless the tens of thousands of crew members were in on it, this would be difficult to pull off without being slowed down or identified.

And that said, sure, maybe these guys accounted for everything. But surely a heist of this scale can't be pulled off without their identities being revealed. Odds are one crew member was able to send a transmission.

First, so we're clear, I'm not arguing with you here, Fred. Merely presenting the viewpoint of someone who served in SPECFOR, and trained both to plan and execute operations like this.

The reinforcement angle depends on a few factors; whether comms were cut beforehand, or subverted. And whether there were crews at all. If they were in dock, they'd be on skeleton crews, I'd imagine. Maybe even vacated for maintenence. Under those conditions, it's as simple as subduing anyone in the critical sections, and locking anyone else in place until you're well away. Also, I'm guessing that any local reinforcements, such as dock security, were already neutralized by the gas, or assault teams.

But, to be fair, the article is a little short on those details, so it could be either or.

In the end, these sorts of ops aren't about flying a ship at full capability, but merely controlling it. No maintenence crews, deck crews, fighter pilots, or any other slots would be filled. Man the helm, comms, and sensors, and get some guys to monitor the reactors. Call it a few hundred per ship, to run a few other systems, and you've got enough crew to fly a baseline carrier for a few hours. Not fight, not use... Just fly a simple course. I hear about you and yours flying without crew over short durations. Similar concept. All they need to do is get them somewhere to take on a full crew, which could have been waiting in system for all we know.

Lets say you have a reason to want a full crew though... Fill the aforementioned transports to the brim, and send several. Those things are, as you know, big empty cans with engines. Put enough seats in one, and you've got Carrier Crew in a Can. I've never seen a theft this big... But it has been planned and scenarios run, both in simulations, and exercises aboard actual hulls... It's more than feasible. It's downright scary.

Hero Tibus Heth is dead now.

As for "other faction", how about it being, say, Ishukone, who infiltrated Navy facility and sold ships to their Gallentean masters? Eh?
It definitely was an inside job, since breaking into Navy facility without internal help is practically impossible.

The ships had to have been uncrewed, undergoing deep maintenance. Possibly they were undergoing decontamination, thus would not have been crewed at all, not even a skeleton crew.

But surely they would have been in cold shutdown, which would have taken a while to restart all the power systems, to get underway.

News said there were no fatalities or abductions, so...

I expect the situation to be resolved in no more than 4 weeks.

In fact, it was Aivonen solar system, where he with his fleet fought against Sansha's incursion headquarters.