Swedish International Corvette Force (IKS) To Fight Pirates

With the UN giving the international community the green light to engage piracy off east Africa, Sweden is preparing to send its International Corvette Force (IKS) to answer the call.

The Swedish navy has its corvettes ready to hunt pirates along the African coast.

That is the answer the Armed Forces has offered in response to a question on the matter from the government.

If the Swedish International Corvette Force (IKS) is deployed, it would be for duty in September or October outside of Kenya's and Somalia’s coast and within the framework of the French Operation Alcyon.

The IKS totals 200 people, two corvettes and a support ship, as well as the amphibious regiment’s boarding forces.

The mission is one way to use naval ships to protect trading ships from pirates.

I know what people are thinking, VISBY! Not quite, last we heard the Swedish International Corvette Force (IKS) is made up of the remaining two Göteborg class corvettes in service, HMS Gävle (K22) and HMS Sundsvall (K24). As I understand it these corvettes were supposed to get Link 16 in 2008. It is unclear if this has already taken place or will happen prior to the deployment.

We are very interested in this development. The ships deployed separately in response to duty with UNIFIL, and operated within the framework of other forces so that deployment in 2007 was different than what we are seeing here. This deployment puts 2 corvettes, around 187 ft long each, with a range of only 2000nm positioned with a support vessel (read mothership) for piracy operations. Readers to this blog might recognize why this model holds our interest.

At 187 ft, the Göteborg class is about half the length and a sixth the tons of the Lockheed Martin version of the Littoral Combat Ship.

Observing what the Swedes are planning to do has us thinking about what the US Navy should contribute. We have plenty of suggestions, but we don't want to discuss until someone gives a better idea regarding the ROE. The difference in ROE would be the difference between using Cobra's and Cutters. That incident with Canada yesterday preventing a pirate attack is getting a lot of publicity, but we aren't impressed, in fact we find it a bit disturbing. We don't like that the pirates who had put RPGs into a commercial ship were allowed to sail away to harass another day. Given the chance to sink a pirate boat, the Canadians didn't... Why?

I'm just hoping the reason wasn't because of a lawyer. Justice would be irreversibly broken if the international community can no longer stand up to piracy because of concerns regarding legal consequences.