War Is Boring

by DAVID AXE

ABOARD THE USS DONALD COOK — The Royal Navy Type 22 frigate HMS Cornwall appeared as a distant gray shape on the Gulf of Aden, passing several miles from Donald Cook, a U.S. Navy warship assigned, like Cornwall, to Standing NATO Maritime Group 2. For nearly a year, NATO warships have patrolled East African waters to protect commercial ships from Somali pirates.

Cornwall‘s Lynx helicopter lifted off her flight deck and headed towards Donald Cook, delivering Royal Navy Commodore Steve Chick, SNMG-2′s commander, to the destroyer for a friendly meeting with American Captain Derek Granger on September 24.

The two officers had reason to celebrate. In the three months beginning July 2008, Somali pirates hijacked 17 vessels in the Gulf of Aden. Over the same period a year later, there was just one successful hijacking. Piracy, which grabbed headlines in 2008 following a string of spectacular attacks, appears to be waning.

Chick attributes the decline to three things: better law enforcement on land where pirates have their bases, the wide adoption of improved self-defense practices by merchant crews and, finally, the presence of some 40 warships, from more than a dozen nations, in Somali waters.

The international pirate-fighting fleet comprises Chick’s NATO flotilla, a 14-ship E.U. force, the American-led Combined Task Force 151 with five ships, three Russian vessels, two each from China and Japan, plus ships from South Korea, India and even Iran — an “amazing mixture of nations,” in Chick’s words. In the 18 months since this fleet began assembling, it has captured around 300 pirates and deterred many more, the commodore told WIFR.

The Royal Navy, providing a disproportionate number of staff officers and warships, is the glue holding together the naval coalition — and has been since the beginning. The war on piracy has demonstrated once again that the Royal Navy plays a vital role in protecting world trade and encouraging global political stability. Despite this undeniable proof of its utility, the Senior Service faces the possibility of further cuts to its ships and manpower. Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth warned in a recent speech that the cost of the war in Afghanistan will “major shifts” in military spending.

But the Royal Navy is already under-equipped and under-manned. To provide a frigate to the E.U. counter-piracy flotilla, when that force first deployed in December, the Navy had to pull HMS Northumberland from her regularly scheduled South Atlantic patrol, leaving the Falklands without a warship’s protection. In 1997, the Ministry of Defense concluded the Navy needed 32 frigates and destroyers. Today the sea service has just 22 of these useful warships — and numbers will undoubtedly decline further, to a potential low of just 14, as the Type 22s and Type 23s begin paying off in around five years’ time.

The world will discover, as the Royal Navy bottoms out, just how much it has relied on British warships and staff officers to safeguard world security. Northumberland, for her part, was the first warship on the scene in December when the E.U. flotilla opened up a southern flank in the war on piracy. Earlier, pirates had seized the supertanker Sirius Star, laden with $100 million in crude oil, in unprotected waters south of Mombasa, Kenya. Northumberland‘s presence made a repeat of that bold hijacking unlikely.

Elsewhere last year, Royal Navy officers began instilling a sense of discipline and cooperation in the ad hoc naval coalition steaming into African waters to battle pirates. In the beginning, it had been a free-for-all. “It’s encouraging that everyone is here, but everyone’s got their own rules of engagement … their own commanders,” said Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a U.S. Navy spokesman. By January this year, the assembled warships had settled into a loose but effective command structure, with the NATO, E.U. and U.S. task forces taking turns in charge. Not coincidentally, each of the three international flotillas included a British warship, and British officers dominated the organizational hierarchy, uniquely occupying key staff positions with NATO, the E.U. and CTF-151.

The counter-piracy coalition has only become more British over time. By the time of Commodore Chick’s visit to Donald Cook in late September, there were four Royal Navy vessels among the 40 warships in East African waters, with another en route. And in addition to Chick’s post as NATO commodore, British officers also head the E.U. flotilla’s ashore headquarters and fill the at-sea deputy command position for CTF-151. Chick calls the preponderance of British people and assets a “coincidence.” But it’s not, really, according to Royal Navy Captain Malcolm Cree, formerly commander for international naval forces in the Persian Gulf.

“Our ships are not necessarily better than those of other navies,” Cree told WIFR. “The one thing that we do have, the jewel in the crown of the Royal Navy, is our operational sea training … As a result, Royal Navy ships and staffs provide a consistent level of professionalism capability that others know they can rely on.”

But that “professionalism capability” on which the world relies so heavily does not form in a vacuum. It is a product of a healthy, active organization anchored by modern, sea-going naval vessels. With fewer and fewer warships on which to train and deploy its officers, the Royal Navy’s unique strengths are in jeopardy. And when these strengths finally fail, the whole world — and not just the U.K. — will suffer the consequences.

(Photo: David Axe)

Related posts:

1. World Politics Review: In Somalia, Security Gains Mean Piracy Decline
2. VoA News: Officials Say Somali Piracy is Declining
3. Skull & Bones: Captain Derek Granger Video
4. Logistics Concerns for Missile-Defense Warships
5. Skull & Bones: Iranian “Ship of Interest” Video
6. Regaining the Initiative against Somali Pirates
7. Skull & Bones: Behind the Piracy Decline