The Guardian has a story today about how cuts to the Royal Navy have forced it to withdraw from the counter piracy mission off Somalia, citing the usual ‘MoD sources’
Counter-piracy is getting very difficult for the UK. We have two frigates that are supposed to look after contingencies in Falklands, the Gulf and piracy. Fort Victoria is a good platform but we cannot commit frigates to Somalia. They go in and out when they can, but reassurance work in the Gulf is more of a priority now. Many of the people who are good at counter-piracy are now involved in the Olympics, so they are not available either, and won’t be until the autumn at the earliest.
Is there more to this than a simple lack of resources to which the obvious answer is more money?
Or can we ask a few questions…
Has the Royal Navy, in pursuit of its high end platforms, understandably neglected this kind of mission and ended up with both no suitable ships and none of them to be effective in the counter piracy or maritime security role?
Is counter piracy worth the effort, given the legal difficulties, the self evident catch and release programme and the arguable impact on global shipping rates?
If the Royal Navy has emergent commitments like the Olympics, the South Atlantic or Gulf, unlike most of the other contributing nations, why should it not redeploy to meet changing requirements?
Do we think the UK is the world policeman and the MoD a bottomless bag of cash?
In short, should we be concerned?
Is a frigate the right platform for counter piracy? Is it a technically appropriate solution? Or justifiable on cost grounds?
Constabulary activity is certainly a legitimate role for the navy of an international trading economy – but we probably need different tools for the job. If not having enough frigates makes MoD look harder at OPV, Presence Ships or flexible use of RFAs then if may actually be doing us a favour in the long term.
Equally the legal framework isn’t helping. My personal preference would be to go back to treating pirates as outlaws but that might not be acceptable these days! Maybe some sort of special international court for piracy might be required to deal with pirates based in failed states who operate in international waters.
roll on C3.
eighteen high end escorts (6x T45 + 12x T26) to do the fighty jobs, and nine C3 (read: mhpc) to cover the other stuff.
There is a £1.4b budget line for it after all.
Should be able to get a unit price of £120m with a few hundred million to feather BAE’s nest (read: fund development).
I don’t think its the navy’s pursuit of high end platforms that is the problem here rather the comparable massive cuts in the RN vs the other two services over the last 10 years. We simply cannot talk of balanced forces when the navy now only receives 17% of the budget.
While everyone will likely got on about Neli and Dumbo the fact remains the navy has a very wide range of task’s to carry out. Many of these task require air power, carriers, air defence destroyers and SSN’s. Having 2 aircraft carriers six destroyers and 7 SSN’s is hardly extravagant. The simple fact is the navy does not have the budget to do the job that is required. No amount of ISO containers of Colonial Sloops is going to change that fact. We either need to drastically scale back requirements or increase the budget.
@ Jedi – 18 high ends and 9 C3′s is not enough to meet current commitments. Just to maintain the Current four mine sweepers in the gulf we need 12 or so.
OK then Martin: cards on the table.
If there’s no funding coming then which capabilities would you ditch? Constabulary or the High end?
Is it all about hull numbers? Might not one or two new hulls with better endurance, crew rotation patterns or more advanced equipment be able to do the work of 4 old ones? Or a new design manage to improve the old 12:4 ratio? Productivity isn’t a dirty word and there’s no shame in trying to do more with less.
“Just to maintain the Current four mine sweepers in the gulf we need 12 or so.”
“If there’s no funding coming then which capabilities would you ditch? Constabulary or the High end”?
The RAF
I am all for greater efficiency and also for a high end low end mix in the RN. But these can only go so far. If we look to have the ability to generate any form of task force then we are really at the bottom of where we can go. The navy has slashed the unit cost for the T26 in half but is likely to only get 13 at most. At £250 million each they are getting fairly close to the likely cost of a C3 type vessel at £ 150 million each. Even something like TD’s SIMS concept is going to cost more than £100 million. I just can’t see how with the current budget the RN has any hope of maintaining a fleet capable of meeting its objectives. With the removal of carriers and the need to escort them the RN is getting by with 19 escorts but once those carrier’s come back what then? If the government does not wish the RN to meet its stated objectives then simply come out and say that.
If I had to make the choice between constabulary and high end I would choose high end. There are 180 or so countries in the world which all benefit from the sea and it should not be our sole responsibility to police the world especially when most of the vessels in it are registered in third world s**t holes to avoid paying tax. If vessels want protection then they should fly the red ensign. Having the ability to project power and defend the UK is and should be the key aim of the RN.
We all know that the prospect of any more money injected in-to the armed forces at the moment is less than zero.
This means that every deployment and capability needs to be closely scrutinised to make sure it’s both required in the first place and we get value for money.
I personally think piracy in the Indian Ocean is something that our navy should take part in trying to control and prevent. We should do our fair share alongside other wealthy nations that rely on this trade, but we obviously shouldn’t have pretensions above our station and think that we are running the show.
Is an expensive high-end frigate the best platform for this? I think most people would agree that the answer is no.
Equally RFA’s may be all OK as a stand in, but it’s not the job they were designed to do.
So I believe the conclusion is that the Navy needs a bigger slice of the budget and needs to spend it on a cheaper surface ship (what it could go for is another debate). Something that can fulfil the Caribbean and Indian Ocean ‘low intensity’ operations, leaving the big boys to the other work.
@ Challenger
So I believe the conclusion is that the Navy needs a bigger slice of the budget and needs to spend it on a cheaper surface ship (what it could go for is another debate). Something that can fulfil the Caribbean and Indian Ocean ‘low intensity’ operations, leaving the big boys to the other work.
Well said
“18 high ends and 9 C3′s is not enough to meet current commitments. Just to maintain the Current four mine sweepers in the gulf we need 12 or so.”
Happy to agree, but if the unit cost is £150m and the budget is £1.4b then we have a problem…….?
@ Jedi – We do have a problem. I cannot realistically see a way to avoid it other than pulling back commitments or spending more money. We are not talking a lot of cash here. An extra £ 2 billion over 10 years into a C3 type vessel could solve the issue but the navy has been cut right to the bone to fund the Afghan campaign. I am not saying it was the wrong thing to do obviously the money was needed else where but surely that should also mean that as we return the UK forces to a more balanced footing post 2015 the navy has to get more.
This isn’t news. Fort Victoria has been the UK’s primary counter-piracy platform since 2010. The Grauniad just doesn’t understand that.
Frigates have been dipping in and out of counter-piracy off Somalia for as long as it’s been going on.
@ Anixtu – I agree about the Fort however what we are seeing is a symptom of a larger problem. What if things kick off with Iran and we have to begin escorting tankers 1988 style while having to commit warship’s to the FI at the same time as providing air defence for the Olympics allowing or SSBN’s to transit in and out of Faslane with no Nimrods etc etc etc. The cuts have gone too deep on the RN and something has to give.
@Anixtu
And does it do a good job?
If you were designing an anti piracy/narcotics platform is there anything you would change to give it (a) more effectivness and (b) less cost.
“Fort Victoria has been the UK’s primary counter-piracy platform since 2010″
TD
In answer to your question – it is absolutley NOT worth the effort in the current ROE / legal environment.
Anti-piracy is NOT a military operation – a Navy is a military organization. Or should I say it is not currently a military operation, but of course it has been discussed recently by many EU / NATO nations that it should be, by going over the beach and hitting them inshore – but a frigate is not the right platform for that either (except some NGS).
The ideal platform for Anti-Piracty was the Bay Class, but we sold one quarter of the capability to the Aussies for peanuts. A “civilian” auxiliary capable of carrying the required fast boats / patrol boats in it’s well deck, and of hosting multi-agency LE teams or RM’s as required – deficient in aviation for sure, but other navies from around the world are providing of helos, and the temporary shelter for a Lynx was “good enough”.
As already noted, RFA have been front and centre on this for a while, and they have covered Carribean anti-drug work for decades.
Of course the beauty of a “real warship” if we had enough of them, is that it can also do low end constabulary stuff if required, as well as the more beligerant tasking.
Bottom line, if you want to be worlds maritime police man, you don’t need C3′s, MHPC’s or Rivers, you need Bay’s with hangers, and CB90′s (or similar) in their well decks.
Fort Vic’s absolute effectiveness seems to be splashed across every issue of Navy News. She has many advantages over a lone frigate in this particular role, though they are perhaps not all being fully exploited.
Cost-effectiveness is a different question. Fort Vic is being used because she is available and suitable.
If you look at NATO’s website http://www.aco.nato.int/page208433730.aspx you can see that the rate of piracy is diminishing. I would not say it is yet beaten, but Somali piracy does not represent in my eyes a pressing need to spend £1.4 billion on some new ships. There could be other reasons we need new ships, of course.
Without wishing to start a war on TD’s blog, I think that maritime power projection has had more than enough spent on it in the last decade and into the next few years. If the Sea Lords have stupidly spent all of their pocket money on the wrong toys, too bad (and investment decisions on the really expensive toys were rammed through in an era when the Navy held the key positions on the Defence Board and among the DCDS (EC) staff). Just think, instead of having a pair of carriers, the Navy could have had 30 or 40 patrol vessels, or a dozen modern frigates, which would have been far more useful for what the Navy actually does.
@ James – The annual equipment budget is nearly £9 billion per year. At what point did the navy ever get the lion share of that. Total for Astute, CVF, T45, T26 and C3 is around £22 billion spread over 30 years from an equipment budget that would be around £270 bn in today’s terms so please tell me where the navy gets this disproportional share in there.
James,
Except they wouldn’t have, anymore than the other services (except them Kevins wot ‘as Typhoons; the rest of the crabs fall under the rubric as well for which see A400 numbers and JFH.) Those dozen frigates would be dashed to eight and then six when something else is dangled as a budgetary hostage so HMT can cut costs or splash them elsewhere and what you’ve got left isn’t really enough to do the strategic job but looks shiny in print (not that a scenario like that would ever happen….) For which see non-Tiffy RAF lines, Army vehicle fleets, SSN numbers, etc. Spastic or not the carriers were a great bit of budgetary politics: fund a central commitment (like your main line fighter jet if you’re light blue, or your central armoured or mk 1 boot capability if you’re khaki) in small numbers so it can’t be salamied, get a number of defence-industrial stakeholders involved, and fund the ancillaries a few parliaments down the line. Its the only part of the carrier process I think Their Lordships did well.
On the much broader note of defence spending, pre-revamp mickp had a nice point in one of the Open Threads: a la DFiD, draft legislation that says defence will always get 2.5% of GDP, with responsibility to put some in the kitty in good years to maintain project coherence. Make HMT fund elective wars from a special line or leave them unfunded; stop the pollies raiding MoD; and present profiteerssorrycontractors like BWoS with a fix pot of public funds on which to calculate costs and risks to profit.
On Peter Elliot’s question, other than martin’s cheeky answer
I would say “the Gulf, in a heartbeat.” All this palaver over last century’s boomtown fuel is a bad road to nowhere. And frankly so is trading scarce oil and gas, in an energy-hungry world, on open and therefore unstable commodities markets. For some other goods that flexibility let’s you manage and hedge risk. Here it just offers chances to profiteer at every frequent hiccup, and increases the odds of governments doubling down by force to try and stabilize the price of global supplies. Recipe for terrible misadventure.
Martin, you are missing my point, which I clearly did not make apparent (my fault, not yours).
1. CVF is the wrong thing to be spending money on.
2. Spend the same amount of money on something useful, like frigates or other ships.
3. Don’t forget to include the cost of JCA under maritime power projection. That’s why I say that maritime power projection has had too much money spent on it as a capability, rather than the Navy over any other service.
The problem is not with the total spend spread over expected service lives, which you make sound almost reasonable**, but the fact that it is concentrated into so few years. A bit like a python trying to swallow an ox – it rather blocks up everything else. It does eventually go down, but nothing else does while it is being swallowed.
** I am unsure if your figures are acquisition only costs, or acquisition plus cost of support. It seems to me to be acquisition cost divided by service life, which is not a realistic way of enumerating the full cost of ownership. But unless you break it down a little more, it is unclear.
As I type this there are precisely 14 assets in Direct Support of the 3 western controlled anti piracy groups. The German contribution is an oiler. The Uk contribution is an AOR which is the Flagship of TF 151. The nation with the biggest contribution is the UD but then they have escorts in the AOR which are employed on anti piracy but are actually in area for contingency ops. Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands etc join in. Spain, Portrugal, Netherlands and Italy do not maintain a presence in the Gulf and do not have FF DD level tasking issues that the RN has. Daring and Westminster are both currently in the Gulf which along with 4 MCMVs and Lyme Bay make quite a presence. In short this is really a story about nothing.
We require, urgently, a surface fleet that is capable of maintaining a global presence.
We require some form of low-end corvette, along the same lines as the LCS, with no area defence requirement, no anti-aub requirement and no land attack requirement. This thing needs to be fast, big enough to deploy troops and have enough space to upgrade its armaments in case we declare war on the Chinese.
This thing’ll need maybe a Mark 110, a few 40mm and 20mm cannons and some CIWS.
No missiles, no torpedos.
We need gunboats.
End of.
Could we not use DfID money to haggle a good deal on the 3 laid up Brunei corvettes? Ideal for hunting pirates, I would have thought.
Mind you, no point hunting pirates til we toughen our rules of engagement & limit asylum to the law abiding.
@ James
Yes instead of CVF we should spend lots of money on cavalry to chase pirates……
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/PT_76_7_DOW_TBiU_12_3.jpg
Regardless of how funded, the Nakhoda Ragams are unsuitable for counter-piracy or other MSOs as conducted in distant waters by UK units. They have no provision for embarked helicopters.
Exocet, Seawolf, medium calibre gun and torpedoes are all superfluous for counter-piracy as practiced. What is required is helicopters, boats and marines.
Anixtu, exactly, It is about footprint. In 2006 when off Somalia Bulwark was able to deploy 2 boat groups consisting of 2 LCU 1 LCVP and 2 Rhibs manned by RM, they operated Independently from the Ship with the LCUs affectively mother ships. 2 lynx helos were also used by the Ship and it retained its own sensors and boarding capability. The footprint covered was huge.
No interest in getting into a CVF debate, but I think the current policy is nuts. There’s only one, tried and tested way of fixing a pirate problem: a LHA or CV to steam in, identify their bases, then raid them. Combatants not killed in the process should be hung, and all the property razed. If we’re not willing to do this, there’s no need for the RN to be involved, barring the provision of a multiple of RM’s on particularly important ships.
@Martin
Thanks!
@Roosevelt
‘We need gunboats’
I couldn’t agree more. It should be cheap, it should have a small crew and it can be light on weaponry but we really need something!
While I agree with the solution I don’t think Western democracies can achieve it any more. The ‘legal encirlcement’ from human rights law and the general squeamish trend of public opinion has gone too far for such solutions to be applied.
The Chinese however have no such qualms. Presumably if we fanny about for long enough they will eventually send a task force round that will sort the problem in the very old fashioned way suggested and then we can all go home with our liberal scruples intact.
“a LHA or CV to steam in, identify their bases, then raid them. Combatants not killed in the process should be hung”
Peter Elliot, both the Chinese and Russians have units operating in the area. They generally form and escort convoys through the IRTC.
What we need is an international coast guard to police piracy and narcotics traffic. We don’t need warships like T26, just some good long-range motherships with a well deck and a couple of RHIBs for interception (oh, and a Lynx or similar)… Someone’s already said it… RFA Bay!
This is sort of inevitable.
If we follow The ‘Were not floating Rozzers’ school of RN thought, then we end up with no realistic anti piracy/narcotics/terrorist, capability.
We end up with handful of realy great ships.
T45 Is the Mutts nuts
T26 will be the best anti sub unit afloat.
Nellie and Dumbowil be the best carriers outside the USN.
They really do guarantee our position as ‘wasawpyk..
All true.
However:-
If you are a british diplomnat trying to push British power, when there are pirates of shore that you can do nothing about…
When you are a british ship (wherever registered) and you want some protection fromm floating crooks…
When some local arsehole govt wants to put the screws on it’s neighbours, with ‘militia’ hassling fishing boats and trade…
When you are a govt struggling to keep control of your ofshore to keep the drug runners out…
Whoyagonnna call. Might as well call ghostbusters, cos for the first time in 300 years don’t bother calling the Royal Navy.
The problem with that is that whilst your basic high concept war floating Ferraris, can do anti piracy etc. The inescapable consiquence is that we end up without the numbers to do anti piracy so it’s a capability we loose, or in fact have now apparantly lost….
@martin
I’m confused on your budget wranglings. RAF/RN receive a similar slice of the pie at the moment. The bulk is spent on the Army because it’s the people that are expensive – all those support costs and pensions and what not.
I’m sure I saw some RUSI research recently looking at MoD stating that it cost roughly 2-3times as much as a person’s salary to employ them. A cut in personnel of thousands saves billions per year – which is what we’re seeing happening.
@ IXION
‘or in fact have now apparantly lost….’
I think as above the navy have been involved in the anti piracy op and numbers of attacks are on the way down. I don’t think they are out of the business yet.
IXION, what happened to, its not our problem? Let someone else deal with it? well guess what we are letting the Danes, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians etc do some low end Anti Piracy stuff whilst still contributing the Flag ship of TF 151 via good use of Fort Victoria. Allowing us to have Westminster, Daring, Lyme Bay and 4 MCMVs inside the Gulf! Surely this must be music to your ears?
The reason Westminster was moved into the Gulf was to participate in exercise Arabian Shark. Doing valuable combined work with Gulf States whilst at the same time getting invaluable in contact shallow water ASW time against a 688 and a T boat! Of course the guardian would never report that.
The only effective anti piracy strategy is to burn their ports.
Nothing else has ever worked.
Or will.
Seriously, whats the land equiviliant to an anti piracy patrol?
@APATS
I agree that its no dramas at the moment. By inlcuding suitable platforms like the RFAs and Amphibs and being a bit imaginative we are just about managing to square the circle.
Neither am I convinced by @Martin at 16:35 that once QE comes out in 2016 we will suddenly need to find more ships. We support Ocean/Lusty with escorts and RFAs when required. In terms of peacetime roulement we will just be swapping one capital asset out and replacing it with another. If a serious war does come along we cancel all the training, diplomacy and pirate chasing and send everything that floats. Our EU allies can chase pirates perfectly well without us for 6 months while we are off saving the world.
While I would like to see more in the way of RFAs over and above MARS (we have discussed both an upsized Argus replacement and some sort of enhanced over-the-beach logistics connector on recent threads) these can be fitted into the budget as and when. There is funding in place for some sort of C3 which will plug some (but not all) of the needs identified for SIMMS/Colonial sloop.
So no dramas – just sensible evolution needed to round out the capability in odd areas. Just so long as we avoid silly cock-ups like building major warships without aircraft hangers we’ll probably be OK.
In hindsight the number of fighty hulls available from 1945-1982 and again from 1991-2010 was probably anomolous.
First we had lots of spare steelwork of the wrong type left over from WW2 and used it as best we could. Then we had lots spare left over from the Cold War + Falklands building campaign of the 1980s and did likewise.
Only now for the first time since about 1905 are we seriously having to decide how few warships we _really_ need, and can _really_ afford. It feels unfamiliar but its probably healthy if it drives us into being seriously efficient and adaptable.
Isn’t RFA Diligence out their as well?
And aren’t we soon, to send out HMS Illustrious with a Task Group to start operations, against the Pirates on Land as well as the Sea?
Apart from launching a full blown invasion of Somalia, to end this problem once and for all. What more would the Guardian expect HMG and the country to do?
They would be the first ones to complain if we were to launch another military campaign, no matter how worthy the cause!
Especially as we won’t interfere/intervene in Syria!
@ DomJ re “Burn their ports”
I believe the USMC have a song about that.
Diligence is on her way home and should be back next week.
“Has the Royal Navy, in pursuit of its high end platforms, understandably neglected this kind of mission and ended up with both no suitable ships and none of them to be effective in the counter piracy or maritime security role?”
YES yes and again, yes!
The RN – rightly – prides itself on the kit it has, shiney new grey and black boats… but much like the Army did in 2003 (or even 2001) and to an extent the RAF as well…is that all the high end kit counts for nought when your in a more littoral/basic environment/operations.
I think if we (I mean Europe) is serious about any piracy, then its their ports – as mentioned already here – not simply burning them, but also the people…like Iraq, its another ‘hearts and minds’ game with a degree of destruction as well.
There’s so much a lack of co-ordination between so many assets off Somalia that its a joke… Chineese, Pakistani, Indian, Russian, Various African and Mid East vessles and the EU and US forces… all around there in certain capabilities… there should be some over-arching control of them, at least in de-conflicting them. Obviously, UN led to avoid the rumblings from the Indian/Russian/Chinese areas.
That or support the Kenyan Army and sort this mess out at the root – the people and ports.
” Malaysia co-opts container ship for anti-piracy role
Dzirhan Mahadzir
The container ship Bunga Mas Lima was operationalised as a Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) auxiliary vessel on 1 June following modification for counter-piracy escort duties off Somalia.
Owned by Malaysia International Shipping Corporation (MISC), the 699 TEU container ship has been fitted with a helicopter deck, small-boat facilities, light weapon mounts, military-standard communication systems and a medical centre.
The work – which also included a repaint in RMN colours – was carried out by MISC’s heavy engineering arm, Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering, in Pasir Gudang.
Although the navy has escorted MISC shipping in the Gulf of Aden since two of the company’s vessels were hijacked there in 2008, senior naval officers have been pushing for MISC to provide a ship for this task.
The RMN was concerned about the financial cost of the escort missions, which totalled MYR48.5 million (USD13.91 million), and wear and tear on warships that rotated between Malaysia and the Gulf for deployments lasting a month at a time.
Navy chief Admiral Dato’ Sri Abdul Aziz Jaafar told Jane’s that the Bunga Mas Lima would leave for the Gulf on 3 June and is expected to operate in the area for three months.
The ship’s company consists of 21 MISC employees and 36 RMN personnel. The former have undergone naval training and are now part of the RMN Volunteer Reserve, while the latter consist of naval special operations personnel and an aviation detachment, which will operate the embarked Super Lynx helicopter. A Malaysian armed forces medical team is also embarked.”
http://www.klsreview.com/HTML/2009Jan_Jun/20090622.jpg
http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/reply/130121/RMN-to-use-container-ship-for-antipiracy-role#.T6mEZVIkYpd
and my recent post:
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/03/a-ship-for-all-seasons-or-the-return-of-the-auxiliary-cruiser/
@ Peter – “Neither am I convinced by @Martin at 16:35 that once QE comes out in 2016 we will suddenly need to find more ships.”
Martin is mostly right in effect, if not for the right reasons.
The choice was there at the SDSR; we wanted to remain a world power and therein lay a choice.
To have useful effect on the ground we needed to be able to support the [height] of herrick in perpetuity, in dusty places or otherwise.
That needed eight brigades, to support two in theatre at all times, and a commando brigade for contingencies. Needless to say it meant the end of ‘grand’ fleet and naval power projection.
The alternative path to influence was something closer to naval raiding with a heavy focus on intervention forces, and naval power projection assets to support them in theatre. Understandably, that didn’t sit well with the big army crew.
We ended up with carriers and amphibs, five persistence brigades and two intervention.
Which choice do you think was made?
@Jedibeeftrix
Not sure if I follow you completely – I read @martin as saying that we won’t have enough escorts from 2016. So are you therefore saying we ended up funding neither option? Neither a big army for dusty interventions nor enough ships for a credible global fleet? Maybe true.
For me however there’s a difference between a global fleet, which implies a permenant presence East of Suez, and global reach, which implies the ability to put a strong force anywhere for a limited period if we choose to. I see us as a regional power (Atlantic + Med) with the ability to project E of S from time to time when the circumstances demand.
Mike, Sorry to disassemble you post but I feel a little bit of Clarification on how the anti piracy is run is in order. There are currently 3 Western orientated task forces in the AOR. TF 508 with forces generally provided by a Nato standing Group although with additions. Current Flagship is TCG Giresun of SNMG2, SNMG 1 scheduled to take over later this year. They are run from Northwood by NATO.
Next we have TF 465 Op Atalanta an EU run operation although it is run from the Uk as well. Current Flagship FS Marne, they also currently have responsibilities of Gulf of Aden(GOA) and Internationally Recognised Transit Corridor (IRTC)coordinator.
Finally we have TF 151 a bit of a rest of the world select allowing non european and non nATO countries to integrate. Yypically Korean, Pakistani and Ozzie units alongside RN and US. Current flag ship Fort Victoria, they have responsibility as Somali Basin (SB) coordinator.
So as we can see we have different TF s due to Political considerations but the AOR is divided into 3 separate areas with a coordinator for each.
Often due to national tasking, e.g French assets visiting reunion or RN assets transiting to and from gulf assets will find themselves operating in an area that another TF has responsibility for. The coordinators ensure that maximum affect is gained.
The various TF commanders liaise with the relevant Chinese, Russian and Indian units to ensure that convoys etc in the IRTC are not double banked with escorts and most efficient use is made.
This approach that has become more effective over the last 12 months has seen the number of pirated vessels, incidents and hostages falling.
Also Kenya is just one of many countries the UK helps train in CT and other areas.
“Isn’t RFA Diligence out their as well?”
Apart from possible stealth capabilities, Diligence is a joke for MSOs.
“I read @martin as saying that we won’t have enough escorts from 2016. So are you therefore saying we ended up funding neither option? Neither a big army for dusty interventions nor enough ships for a credible global fleet? Maybe true”
Nearly there.
The big fleet east of suez isn’t the objective.
The objective is sovereign and strategic power projection.
Which is not say that we must be able (and willing) to fight an elective, division-scale conflict by ourselves.
What it means is that HMG wishes to be able to have sufficient input to inject its preferences into the output, in elective conflict.
This might be holding a theatre (helmand say) in a protracted war, or it might be contributing a spearhead brigade with carrier support for a more limited amount of time.
Both are valid choices.
However, one is always done with the US (the former as X will repeatedly tell us), whereas the other is more in keeping with the Britain’s remaining enthusiasm for short, sharp victories (as i have pointed out on occasion). Arguably, HMG gets more choice with the latter, and puts up with less public dissatisfaction.
We will get both carriers, and we will keep two intervention brigades, so the choice appears made.
Yes, the SDSR is a cludge, but that was always going to be the outcome of choosing maritime when afghanistan is ongoing, but how will things look when the army is down to 82,000 and the second carrier is reprieved?
@ APATS
Is a convoy system running out there? I remember reading it wasn’t very popular with civ ships for various reasons. How hard is it to put them into convoys is it? Or is it more of patroling the corridor as ships pass through it ?
@Jedibeeftrix
Also nearly there:
So do you see us needing more than 19 escorts to operate QEC + Amphib in the one-on one-off cycle that we seem to be heading for?
[i.e. one QEC+ one Albion at high readiness, and other QEC + other Albion in refit or extended readiness]