5th Fleet Focus: Regional Status Report

The US Navy is preparing to go hot in the 5th fleet.

This is the required reading of the day. The press conference transcript by Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command, U.S. 5TH Fleet, Vice Adm. William Gortney. CENTCOM is a tough nut to crack when you are looking for information, they simply don't say much and they offer nothing, so this press conference Q&A with Vice Adm. Gortney turned into this enormous gold mine of information that really explains about a dozen different "the rest of the story" moments regarding the US Naval activity in the 5th fleet.

Starting out by noting a fact that might be new to many, the US Navy has 13,000 sailors on the ground in 5th Fleet (6000 IAs in Iraq, 2000 IAs in Afghanistan), but only 10,000 sailors at sea. In other words, the 5th fleet has more sailors on the ground helping fill the gaps for the war than at sea doing the work of the sea service. He also explains in detail the reasons why Adm Gortney established CTF-151. Here are a few quotes that I thought were worth highlighting.

In response to a question about the relationships between the various international Navies operating in the actions to curb piracy:

ADM. GORTNEY: It's coordination of effort, it's not a command and control, because there are so many different nations involved that don't belong in the Combined Maritime Forces in a clean chain of command. So we coordinate at the operational level in my headquarters at the Combined Maritime Forces with those nations that are there. The EU has liaison officers in my staff, embedded into my staff, and we coordinate at that level.

And at the tactical level or on the waterfront, CTF-151 is now responsible to manage that tactical deconfliction. And we do that by publishing our intentions and our effectiveness and our schedules. It's all unclassified. We share that through all unclassified means. With the Chinese, we're exchanging e-mails with them on the unclassified net. With the Russians it's a little different. We're transmitting that over bridge-to-bridge radio. So it's from the most basic form of radio transmission to -- for the nations that are part of CENTRIX, that are part of our coalition to a very networked operation.

Then we had an excellent question asked by an unnamed reporter, and a very revealing answer.

Q) Can you talk a little bit about the operation in more detail? And what do your forces do if they encounter suspicious boats, especially if they're not in the act of doing something? Do you have the authority to deal with those folks, in any way, in international waters? And what are your orders regarding any detainees that you might take?

A) ADM. GORTNEY: Currently I'm going to have to take you back just a few, take you back just a few days. But when the activity spiked in the middle of August, we sat down. We knew we had -- our current process wasn't working, and we had to take a new look at it.

We knew that the problem of piracy started ashore. And it's because there is not a rule of law. There isn't a governance. There isn't economic stability. There isn't a court system that will hold these criminals responsible for their actions. And so the ultimate solution is ashore proper.

So we had to focus on prevention efforts at sea. And we developed a campaign plan. We created, working with the International Maritime Organization, the Maritime Security Patrol Area, a place to channel the shipping, so that we can concentrate naval activity, to make our naval activity more effective, because we knew we would be ineffective alone. And we went off on three lines of influence.

The first one was to bring more navies into it, international navies, to bring more of the international community to help solve this international problem and to bring more navies into it.

The second one was to work with the shipping industry on best practices to, what can they do to prevent pirates from successfully getting onboard their vessel?

And the third line of influence was to work through the interagency process to find a way to solve what we call the persons under control: When we capture a pirate, where do we take him? Where do we hold him? Where -- what court system tries him and holds him? If they're found guilty, hold them accountable for their actions.

We've had great effects in the first two -- once again, 14 nations at that are down there. The shipping industry is having the greatest impact. They're doing a terrific job of sharing best practices, speed, maneuver and non-kinetic defensive measures that will prevent pirates from getting on board the vessel. And we have had great effect on that. And we've actually gotten -- in the last six weeks there's only been four successful piracy attacks.

The down side of that, though, is that the attacks continue. And if we're going to be -- whether there's -- the -- they're all -- all the rest have been unsuccessful, and if we're going to be effective, it's coming to closure on our last one, where we capture the pirates and take them to a court of law and, if they're found guilty, hold them accountable for their actions.

We're close with that. The State Department's close on finalizing an agreement with one of the nations out there. And once we get that authority, then we're going to change my orders. And my orders right now to the coalition are disrupt, deter, but do not capture. But once we get the authorities, what we -- that we need there and a place to take them, then we're going to go -- my orders will change to disrupt, deter and capture, and try and hold them accountable for their actions.

Wow, very interesting. Two major pieces of information that tell the story. First, it would appear the "strategy of do nothing to get the international community to do something" was planned after all, because apparently in August NAVCENT command developed the strategy to bring Navies into the region. As regulars on the blog know, ID tracked the action off Somalia almost daily while constantly observing the US Navy was intentionally noting the problem. In other words, all indications are NAVCENT's intentional inaction became the enabling tactic to insure a successful strategy of building international naval presence. I admit to being impressed, not only because the process worked, but that Adm. Gortney will admit that we have been working towards building international presence at a time the entire world was noting how absent we were from the process of curbing piracy ourselves.

Second part is just as important, we appear to be willing to admit that the RoE is to "not capture." Adm Gortney would never admit this in public if the process for capture wasn't already developed. Apparently, we are simply waiting for an official announcement? Clearly we know why, which I think also tells us which country?

So what is going to change? Later in the interview, Adm Gortney discusses tactics.

Q) Once you get the agreement with the country on where to prosecute these pirates, will that mean putting small boats in the water, doing more proactive things, boarding some of the pirates' vessels?

A) ADM. GORTNEY: We are going to aggressively go after the pirates that are conducting pirate activity. And it's going to be a mixture of surveillance and then rapid action once we observe them, because we have to -- you know we're going to have to adhere to rules of evidence. And so what's very clear in the UNSCR is if someone is in the act of piracy then they're pirates. And if we maintain a positive ID on them while they watch it and then we track them down and we coerce them into surrendering and then we'll arrest them and take them to that particular country that will hold them accountable for their actions if they're found guilty. So the rules of evidence is very, very important to us.

If we come across a vessel that has what we call pirate paraphernalia, which -- this is what we're seeing right now. They're very small skiffs and they have small arms, AK-47s, RPGs and ladders. And although from a distance they may be small skiffs being towed by another mother ship, they look just like any other fishing vessel out there in the region. It's the most -- kind of some of the best fishing area in the world. So they're all over the place.

But when you come upon them and you look into their skiffs and they have AK-47s, RPGs and ladders, they're not very good for pirates. I mean to -- I mean, that's not very good equipment to fish with. So then we take it; we document it; we throw the pirate paraphernalia overboard and then we let them go. And we will arrest them once we get those authority. Once we come across them like that we'll arrest them, see if we then have the rules of evidence that the country will try them.

We'll discuss tactics in detail once the policy changes.

Later in the press conference, a question is asked about the mythical pirate-terrorism nexis, and it is confirmed yet again, no such nexis exists.

Q) Can you target -- do you yet see any links to radical Islamic movements inside Somalia? Do you see clan links here? Do you see links to the Islamic Courts Union?

A) ADM. GORTNEY: Thanks for asking that question. No, we look very, very carefully for links to terrorism and -- any form of terrorism -- and we do not see that link right now. And the reason we watch for it is terrorism is fueled by money. And so anywhere that there -- people are making a lot of money, we think the terrorists will go. But right now we do not see that linkage.

Al-Shabab, which is operating in the south -- the al-Shabab and the pirates, they hate each other. The clans and al-Shabab hate each other right now. We'd want to be very careful that whatever we do, we don't drive them together.

But we do not see that link now and we -- it would be a significant game-changer if we see it develop.

In the absence of the nexis, the US Navy has been able to do nothing about piracy as a way to encourage other nations to take action. This was always a precondition to the US strategy of doing nothing. Later on, the subject of terrorism comes up again, in the form of a question regarding CTF-150. Interesting, CTF-150 has become a drug busting and anti-smuggling operation.

Q) Yes, sir. Could you give us the updated information on the older taskforce CTF-150? Has there been any late detention or capture of the suspected terrorists?

A) ADM. GORTNEY: We haven't picked up a terrorist in CTF-150 in quite a few years. Probably, I think the last one was when I was an airwing commander on Kennedy in the opening days of OEF.

We've focused our efforts now on understanding the smuggling networks that the terrorists might use, and we now are focusing on the smugglers that are moving hashish out of the Makran Coast and smuggling it down into Somalia and into Yemen for further transit into the West, into Saudi Arabia and then into the Western European nations.

And I think this last year we busted over -- got 68 tons of hashish. We haven't found the opium, and that's what we're looking for. But the real purpose there is to understand that network, because we know that network feeds the Taliban. Drugs are the fuel for terrorists, and they're poisoning our youth, and we're focusing on that to get a better understanding of that network.

Then we get two brilliant questions.

Q) What's Taskforce 151 going to look like in a year? As I understand it now, it's a coalition, but of three United States ships only. So who do you expect to join, when, and what's it going to -- what's it going to look like full force?

A) ADM. GORTNEY: Yeah. The only reason 151 is U.S. only -- and now U.K. will be signing up for it -- is because the nations have to get a mandate. Their forces have to get a mandate to serve with the CTF. So it takes a while for that process to work. And we see great -- a great deal of interest in people joining, the nations joining 151, because they now have a mandate to do the counterpiracy. It's CTF that gives them the authorities to do that.

So we see, either working within 151 or an associated, we see Saudi, UAE, the U.K., Pakistan, Australia has made interest into it, Turkey has made very positive signs into it. So there's a number of countries, a significant number of countries, to be frank, that we -- I think six months, a year from now, once they're processed and they get the authorities, will be a part of CTF-151, as well as CTF-150.

Q) Any interest from the Chinese?

A) ADM. GORTNEY: Not to join the coalition, but we are sharing information with them. I've seen that -- we've seen that in there. We're exchanging unclassified e-mails and radio transmissions. We're receiving their reports of what they have done. We look forward to being able to get reports with what they're going to do, what their planned events are going to do, because we share that with them so that we can better coordinate our activities down there.

What a huge success it would be to have Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Pakistan in CTF-151 with the mandate requirements membership requires. I do not hide that I'd love to see the US Navy somehow get China to sign up, and maybe they will sometime in the future, but there is tremendous value in having an active military coalition with 4 Islamic countries in the Middle East as well.

I did not cover all of the press briefing, not even close actually. A lot of stuff about Iran, a lot of stuff about the Northern clan in Somalia that has increased the piracy in that region, a lot of talk about fishing for those looking to read more about that, and even a "what if" briefing for the President Elect regarding the situation in the 5th Fleet maritime domain. What a content rich briefing, a must read for anyone looking to see what the US Navy is doing in the Middle East.

So what did we learn? Apparently, in less than a week the State Department will work out the remaining issues in the legal framework to fight piracy, and as a result the US Navy is going to change tactics towards piracy.

When that happens, we will soon start hearing about a little fighting.