Haiti and the Royal Navy
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15 Comments
Whither the RN in Haiti’s time of need ….?
Reduced to impotence – unable to rapidly respond due to lack of ships, lack of maintenance on those ships, lack of spare parts, lack of ‘jolly jack tars’ to man them, because of an incompetent MOD, and ignorant government and a completely disinterested populace.
Thank goodness for the U.S., Canadian, Dutch, Italian, French and other navies eh?
For a group that thinks the Armed forces shouldnt be the paramilitary wing of Oxfam, we seem awfully concerned we arent delivering supplies to the needy.
I have been a little surprised not to see some UK military presence in Haiti, the odd Herc or RN ship, but then reality sunk in. The cupboard is bare!
Will this make our esteem leaders think again about Defence cuts? No of course not, will the floods in the UK (which are bound to follow the snow thaw) No.
Will anything stop them funding the bonuses of the big city cats or eastern European economic migrants or single parents with multipe children by multipe father No!!!
This country makes me dispair!!!
Revolution anyone?
The thing that worries us is the either/or argument.
There is nothing wrong at all for using the military as an enabler for an aid operation if it is in the nations interests to do so but this should not be at the expense of core capabilities i.e. armed violence
I worry that the combat strength is going to be depleted in order to be more like an armed development force, its cheaper you see
I understand we are sending a super rapid reaction team (12 blokes and a pair of rovers) and Largs Bay, or RAF Largs Bay if you are the duffer in Number 10.
Dominic you have a fair point it is a bit hypocritical of me to on one hand say that we should not be a paramilitary aid organisation but I’m not wholly against it. What I am against is the long term slugging it out in parts of Africa for decades doing something that has dubious benefit. The chances are after you leave the work you have just spent time money and possibly blood doing will be undone. When it is advantageous to be involved such as in disaster relief where it usually generates positive press results. It may sound cynical but that is one of the reasons for disaster relief and doing it so visibly. Look at Haiti have you noticed all the press agencies are there from various nations? How did they get there? The chances are they flew into that same airport aircraft full of aid supplies cannot get into land at because it is so busy yet political figures get landing clearance and so do press aircraft. I just watched a BBC video there as I was typing this do Business Jets carry much aid?
Even from a less cynical perspective this is the Caribbean and we have overseas territories over there so it is essentially our backyard so to speak so should we not keep an eye on the region and be ready to help. What message does it send to them that we have not and possibly cannot respond to such a horrific situation in the region when many others are and have responded what if it happened to them? We also have British citizens in Haiti who could do with help both to ensure that they are ok and look after them keeping them safe and well. The other option would be to evacuate those who wish to leave either back to the UK or somewhere safe that we can organise an aircraft from crab air to collect them. Wherever British Citizens need help after disasters I feel this country must be ready to aid them as in my mind that is one of the primary roles of a Government or Armed Forces. While we are there rescuing our own people which should be the priority, sorry if that’s too hardnosed for anyone but grow up. We should also do what we can for everyone else who needs help starting possibly with rescuing allied nationals and them moving on to help the wider populace.
I think at least APT (N) should always be there year round or we could even build a patrol/support vessel to be forward deployed all the time wandering around showing the flag and being ready to help those in need. However if keeping a frigate on deployment was such a hassle then a new ship would be out of the question with this current bunch and maybe beyond the next bunch. Sure Gordon Brown has promised money but can money pull me from the rubble, can it give me a nice cup of tea, can it say in a British accent everything is ok your ok. The thought that springs to mind is that it’s like watching someone drowning and saying to them I’m going to give some money to the RNLI. For all the rhetoric the UK or this Government at least has in my eyes well and truly been outed for the crumbling block of cheese it is.
EDIT: Just refreshed the page before posting, I agree with the first comment by admin it’s not an either or for me if it’s worth it in various aspects then it’s an ok. Ooo! Largs Bay after 8 days and apparently another magnitude 6 earthquake good response that is very good. I would also add Spain has deployed SPS Castilla a Galacia class ship which is a cousin of the Bay class although smaller it has those odd useful things called Helicopters. Although I have no idea if it is carrying any currently so it may be a moot point. However we are behind most people in making a move maybe it was shame that finally caused something to happen or No.10 had it’s door kicked in by the RN saying were sending a ship.
Dominic said: “For a group that thinks the Armed forces shouldnt be the paramilitary wing of Oxfam, we seem awfully concerned we arent delivering supplies to the needy.”
Hey, I never said that, I grew up with Thunderbirds, I am quite happy with idea of using an RAF C17 as ThunderBird 2 ! Or even better a Bay class RFA :-)
We should not be the military arm of Oxfam, but during my 10 years in the RN, I was involved in more rescues and aid work than I was exchanges of fire with any enemy !
Hi. I must confess I know little about the workings of the Navy because my background is Army with a bit of RAF thrown in.
Dare I suggest you get a few of you together and start a blog concentrating on the Navy? I started mine just a year ago (it’s not all military posts) and now I have over 5,000 folk read it every week. I don’t do heavy technical writing, plenty excellent blogs do that. My aim is to talk to the people who never think about our armed forces. It seems to work.
Sorry to interrupt your comment link.
I think in our perfect world we would want a couple of Bay Class ships hanging around the area most of the time wouldnt we?
So since they’re there, I’d have no problem with them using their equipment to help land supplies, might as well land the doctors and stop and search terms to protect them and keep some semblance of order.
I just dont think it should be up to us to rebuild the country, or specialy deploy a significant portion of our navy.
China isnt, India isnt, Brazil isnt, Venezuala isnt.
Rescuing our own citizens is a different issue of course, along with citizens from any nation thats agreed to rescue ours.
The problem with Largs Bay as with ALL of the Navy’s new amphibious ships is that they do NOT have helicopter hangers, as they were removed as a cost cutting measure. So this very capable ship is devoid of one of the most crucial assets. Yes it has a large landing deck and can operate helicopter but it cannot take any with it or maintain them once there. What a stupid short-sighted decision, mind you, we probably don’t have any spare helos to deploy anyway. Someone in authority must wake-up and get the Defence the budget it needs. The situation is not that bad they were can’t afford to maintain a credible Armed Forces. No other major power is proposing cutting its armed forces, certainly not to the same degree, in fact many our looking to increase funding!!!!
Phil – the RN assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark might have had their hangers removed as a cost cutting measure, but as far as I am aware the Bay’s were never supposed to have a hanger – they are ‘logistics’ support ships and as such they are equipped with large cranes which can service a vehicle park area at the forward end of the flight deck. Contrast this with the Dutch and Spanish LSD’s to which they are related – they both have large hangers and no such cranes because they are multi-role amphibs.
Such cranes for off loading cargo are also why they would be of use in Haiti, where the dockside environment in Port-au-Prince has been wrecked / destroyed.
They can have a temporary shelter for deploying with a Lynx which they have done before, but as I have suggested in my yet to be published piece on the RFA, we should get DfID to pay for two larger Schelde Enforcer class vessels – with the hangers !
:-)
and a shed, don’t they normally have a wooden shed on the deck.
I think as Jed says, the Bay class arent really designed for operating helicopters, operating in the sense of hangars and maintenance facilities etc.
Most of their stores would be offloaded by the LCU’s or Mexeflotes. I guess the preferred mode of operation would be for them to dock and use the ramps and as a further mode of operation, by helicopter
My position on the role of the Armed Forces is that they should principally be an armed force they should not be, as sometimes used as, a cheap source of skilled and organised labour to be used when a Government fails to plan. I don’t have any objection to the Armed Forces doing reconstruction work or disaster relief but I am against Nation building which is a role for all the do-gooders. What I mean by nation building is the long term decade’s long commitment to a nation where we stay for years and years trying to solve all the problems we can find trying to be near perfect. Essentially acting as a de facto government in some foreign nation it’s acceptable to a point in the short term e.g. the US in Haiti. Short term immediate help after a disaster e.g. the Haiti earthquake is a role that the military can do after all they have the equipment or at least they should have and they have the training.
Dominic in many cases I also favour a non-interventionist foreign policy however for me that does not mean not having a presence or the ability to act when the unpredictability of the world generates a scenario. That is one reason why I’m a bit of a Navy nut; you can have ships sitting off someone’s coast in international waters seeing what they are doing for a long period of time without their permission. We are also an Island nation and to protect supply routes we need ships as men cannot walk on water and aircraft do not have the persistence or presence, what type of ships is open for debate. Furthermore just because that route of foreign policy makes the chance of having to use a military force a fainter possibility does not mean we should not be ready and willing to swing the hammer when needed.
Jed is correct from what I know the Bay class were never meant to have helicopter hangars however that choice by whoever is flawed as we simply don’t have enough aviation capable ships to justify the decision. However as pointed out there are currently not enough helicopters so we would no doubt have no support helicopters to put on an aviation equipped Bay class but helicopters take less time to get hold of than ships. Going forward if the MARS program is done properly as in they are designed with large aviation facilities to support a couple of Merlin and are built in numbers. Then this should not be as big a problem as the RFA support ships could carry and support the helicopters in some scenarios. Of course the RFA would need to stick close to its partner to provide the aviation capability which is a problem as RFA’s from my understanding usually roam around.
Euan.Jed, according to both Wiki and Naval Technology the Bay-class are based on the Royal Schelde Enforcer design, similar to Dutch and Spanish LPDs (see links below).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcer_%28Landing_Platform_Dock%29
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/bay_class/
An according to these websites the Schelde Enforcer design did have hangers for helecopters. Our version is different in that the top super structure is shorter, because it did not get the hangers.
Further to my last post. The RN site also states that and I quote
“The flight deck can accommodate two Merlin or Chinook helicopters, and a hanger could be fitted in future if required.”
Link to page:
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/operations-and-support/royal-fleet-auxiliary/rfa-flotilla/bay-class-landing-ships/