6th Fleet Focus: African Partnership Station Initiative

The USS Fort McHenry (LSD 43) deployed today on the second US Navy Global Fleet Station deployment. Admiral Henry Ulrich has given the GFS a name, the African Partnership Station Initiative. In his press conference on Monday, Adm Ulrich laid out the details describing 4 pillars of training emphasis that will be utilized in the deployment.

• Maritime Domain Awareness
• Maritime Professionals
• Maritime Infrastructure
• Maritime Enforcement

Stars and Stripes has the summery of the press conference.

The USS Fort McHenry was expected to leave Norfolk, Va., on Tuesday, on a mission to deliver training teams to western Africa next month, said the head of U.S. Naval Forces Europe on Monday.

The Fort McHenry and the High Speed Vessel Swift are expected to begin a seven-month deployment to the Gulf of Guinea in November as part of the Navy’s Global Fleet Station program, according to the Navy.

The mission will allow training teams aboard the Fort McHenry to assist western African nations develop their maritime security capabilities, said Adm. Henry G. Ulrich III.

The training teams will have between 80 and 100 people, and will consist of both civilian and military personnel, Ulrich told reporters Monday.

The teams will include representatives from European and African countries’ militaries, U.S. government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, Ulrich said.

Their missions will include civil engineering, port security, humanitarian assistance, and search and rescue, according to information provided by the Navy.

This is the first major initiative of AFRICOM, and will likely get a lot of attention and create the framework for what the US intends to do with AFRICOM. The details from the first Global Fleet Station deployment have not been publicized, and it is unclear if the press will pay any attention to this deployment either. A few thoughts.

Oil bunkering in this region is currently costing the region around 3 million dollars a day. That is on top of other problems, including illegal fishing, which probably sounds like nothing to a laymen but is actually a billion dollar industry in that region. Additionally there is piracy, insurgency, terrorism, and other security problems that require stronger domestic maritime security forces to deal with. In all, the African Partnership Station Initiative can impact the economics of the Gulf of Guinea region in a number of ways.

I've recently found myself reading Thomas P.M. Barnett, and found a specific blog update the other day very interesting. I haven't done my research well enough to comment extensively, but I did order Blueprint for Action after I read it.

Barnett was commenting on this report out of Reuters.

Wars stripped about $284 billion from Africa's economies between 1990 and 2005, roughly equal to the amount of aid money given to the world's poorest continent, according to a report on Thursday by Oxfam International.

In the study "Africa's Missing Billions," the British aid group said the 23 conflicts engulfing Africa in the period had shrunk economies by an average 15 percent per year at a cost of almost $18 billion a year.

Oxfam based its estimate on a calculation of the various costs of conflicts and violence, including higher military expenditures, loss of development aid, rising inflation and medical expenses of those injured or disabled.

It said, however, that the tally was probably on the low side, when considering the impact of civil wars on the economies of neighbouring countries as well as the long-term effects of higher military spending on individual economies.

Barnett, whose blog has become a daily visit for me, threw me off when he advocated military action as part of the solution to the problems in Africa the other day. His blog entry makes a case in and of itself, but I think I'll reserve extensive comment until after I read his book. One thing I would add though, I included the link to the "Africa's Missing Billions" report, which I tend to agree went low on the costs. Make sure you read it before you criticize Barnett, because the report does tend to support his position, even if it is counter intuitive.

While Global Fleet Stations is a service oriented operation as opposed to a military campaign, it seems to me if you were to engage militarily in Africa, the only way to do it would be with smaller forces on the ground taking on the centers of gravity of other smaller forces on the ground, while also interdicting arms shipments by land and air. All three of those roles fall into the capabilities of the Navy and Marine Corp combined with SOF, and in such an action, a "full spectrum" support team similar to the one used in the GFS concept makes the most sense regarding post action activity. Food for thought.