It is possible, but unlikely and I'm not sure why they'd go through the trouble. The way Sentinel-1's Sun-Synchronous Orbit works means it will typically pass over the region either right around 0600 local or 1800 local. /- a few minutes either direction. Sentinel-2, the optical imagery satellite, makes its pass around 1100 local and another at 2300 but obviously optical imagery at 2300 is useless. Mike's article seemed to indicate that these alleged transits are both East-to-West and West-to-East, with the two timed up separately to deconflict, which would make sense given the tight quarters, lack of navigational lights or emissions, and the swirling current on the East side. That alone gives me pause because it is a 4-6 hour transit time. With the number of ships being discussed, anywhere from 5 to 25, by the time a Westbound convoy completes the transit, there is no way an Eastbound convoy would complete it by daybreak or vice versa. That would be, on average, a 10 hour process with almost exactly 10 hours of darkness. Meaning we should be seeing one of the two convoys exiting one side of the Strait or the other on the 0600 SAR imagery every day. So for example, this is the Thursday morning imagery. Taken at 0606 local and it was a full pass so we get a complete mosaic and I zoomed way out just for some scale. I always try to show both RGB and the Vertical-Vertical Polarization because VV is much better about showing surface roughness, like a wake. I would expect to see ships that recently completed a transit in the inshore lane to show up in one of those two boxes on the 0600 pass. You're the ship Captain but I can't imagine they'd be making better than 10 knots through there for a ~50 nmi journey so I'll call it 5 hours each way, 10 hours total. If they really hauled ass then you could expect to see ships where those ships marked with arrows are, but in this case those ships marked were on imagery from 4 days ago, so they're likely anchored. It just seems like if we're talking about anywhere from 5-25 ships making this transit per day, we'd catch something. Not necessarily right in the middle of the lane since there isn't a midnight SAR pass, but we'd surely see something exiting the lane in a somewhat orderly fashion. Those STS transfers are a sign of something, but so far I'm not really clear what they're a sign of. I could buy one or two ships getting through the inshore lane, conducting a STS, making the return trip that night and repeating the process the next day. But 5 just doesn't seem possible to me.