The Workhorse of the Misrata Port

NATO still has a rather large armada of ships in the Mediterranean Sea supporting operations for Libya. This includes aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, amphibious ships, submarines, and all varieties of support craft.

Interesting who is making the big difference at the pointy end of the spear.

Aid ships have begun to enter Misrata after NATO ships cleared mines laid by forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi.

Humanitarian relief ship Red Start One has made it in to Misrata port according to The International Organisation for Migration and they are going to start evacuating 1000 civilians.

Aid ships had been prevented from entering the port after Gaddafi’s forces laid mines.

Royal Navy Minehunter HMS Brocklesby played a "key role" in clearing them.

Ah yes, Mine Warfare, the red headed step child of every Navy that no one actually cares about come budget time until the guy in the field can't do his job without the little minesweepers. The first vessel to standout as a critical enabler of operations off Libya was USS Florida (SSGN 728). The second vessel to standout as a critical enabler of operations off Libya in my book is HMS Brocklesby (M33).

Check out the photo gallery for the ship to get a sense of the technology being used. In addition to traditional MCM capabilities, it looks like HMS Brocklesby (M33) also deploys the Recce UUV, which is very similar to the REMUS 600 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).

Nobody in the United States wants to hear this, but observing several of the littoral activities we have seen from NATO off Libya, from Royal Navy MCM to Italian Navy humanitarian escort, I keep thinking to myself that the Littoral Combat Ship can do all of these missions, and more, very well.

With that said, it is important to note that Libyan anti-access operations focused on sea lines of communication have been very limited to date. How much more aggressive would Gadhafi need to be to scare NATO out to 25nm? I find it interesting that Hezbollah has proven to have more anti-Navy access denial capability from shore than Libya apparently does.

On Reinventing Our Security Architecture

Apparently I spend a lot of time thinking about how we could recreate the institutional architecture of our military and security services as if there were no obstacles to doing so...

While counterterrorism was certainly understood as important during the 1980s, it did not dominate defense considerations. After the attacks of Sept. 11, SOF again assumed a prominent role in counterterrorist operations. However, counterterrorism itself now became the primary "problem" of U.S. security policy. So while special forces played key roles in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly the former, counterterrorism was redefined in more conventional terms. Fighting terrorists no longer involved small teams raiding terrorist hideouts, but rather large military operations geared toward regime change.

We can't know how the debate over the response to Sept. 11 would have played out had the U.S. armed forces been designed differently at the time. Nevertheless, the inclination to understand major security problems in traditional terms may be a consequence of the enduring structure of America's Cold War-era security institutions. In other words, as counterterrorism became the major mission of the U.S. national security apparatus, the traditional services came to interpret this mission in conventional terms. A different structure, one that privileged the skills and capabilities of SOF, might have come to different conclusions about the appropriate response to the attacks of Sept. 11.

Piracy: Spain Sentences, Denmark Releases, The Netherlands Prosecutes

A Spanish judge has ruled in the case against 2 Somali pirates that were caught in 2009 after they held a tuna fishing boat and its 36 crew members for 47 days.

A Spanish court has sentenced two Somali pirates to 439 years in jail each for their role in the hijacking of a tuna fishing boat.

Maximum time to serve in Spain is 30 years.
The pirates have also been ordered to pay €100k to every crew member. Like that is going to happen.

This Sunday Denmark put 15 Somali men back on shore, after the Public Prosecuter found no grounds for prosecution.

The Dutch, on the other hand, have decided to prosecute 9 of the 16 men captured when they freed an Iranian fishing dhow. The 9 will be charged with piracy and the use of firearms.

The Dutch Military In Action...Against Cuts

For (most) foreign soldiers it's a strange concept, but in the Netherlands there are several military Labor Unions.

And when the plans of the current Dutch government became known, they started organising small scale action meetings to get attention for the consequences of those plans. The first was on December 10 on Volkel AFB.

After that came a surprise. At a demonstration in the Dutch seat of government, the Hague, for all employers in the public sector a lot of soldiers were present in uniform. That was something I had never seen before.

When the actual cuts were presented, different military unions (7) decided to join forces. They have organised 30 local action meetings and set up a website and twitter account.

And while soldiers aren't allowed to strike, they have decided they will stop with all the volunteer work they do. And they do a LOT.
Also, they will do rule-book slowdowns. This could have consequences for Rotterdam and Eindhoven airport, that are also military airports and civilian flights could be delayed because of it.

All this should culminate in something quite unusual: a large action in the Hague on May 26, before the House of Representatives will discuss the budget cuts in June.

Royal Navy Preparing for Naval Ship Fire Support in Libya

I am in full agreement naval gunfire support is needed off Libya, but the British press would be wiser to report such activities for their Navy after it happened, not before.

BRITISH destroyer HMS Liverpool was last night preparing to shell targets in Libya and quicken the downfall of tyrant Colonel Gaddafi.

Defence chiefs have ordered the Type-42 Destroyer to start pounding command and control centres and boost the ill-equipped rebels.

Until now Britain has only used RAF Tornado and Typhoon warplanes and a nuclear submarine.

But sources close to the mission told The Sun a major Navy assault will begin this week. The source said: "Final details are being hammered out now but they are looking to strike over the next few days. When they do, Gaddafi won't know what's hit him."

The Liverpool is a batch 2 Type 42 destroyer with the standard British 4.5 inch Mark 8 gun. There are some new rounds called the High Explosive Extended Range round which give the gun a range of about 27km, while a traditional round offers about 22km.

Either way, the NATO Navies find themselves in a major fight for Misrata, and the absence of fire from the sea has been problematic. Many of the aid ships have been chased out of Misrata's port, and the mines that have been laid in the harbor continue to be a problem.

While it is always dangerous to send ships closer to shore for combat operations, it is good to see the Royal Navy stepping up. Leveraging the type of sustained, persistent fires that offshore fire support brings to the fight, NATO can augment aircraft and remain continuously engaged with fires as needed in Misrata making it very problematic for the Libyan government to move their heavy equipment into offensive position.

I still don't understand why NATO hasn't captured the airport at Misrata. In any other humanitarian operation in the world the very first thing NATO countries would do is send force to the airport in the middle of the disaster zone. I see this as one more reason the political micromanagement of Libyan military operations through the UN directed tactical advisory of no troops on land is far closer to stupid than wisdom, and is why I won't be surprised if the best NATO can do is sustain a stalemate while Libyans continue to die.