by DAVID AXE

Part two of U.S. Navy journalist Martin Cuaron’s video from the amphibious ship USS Nashville‘s humanitarian and training cruise in West Africa in early 2009. Part one is here.

(Video: Martin Cuaron)

by DAVID AXE

U.S. Navy journalist Martin Cuaron was aboard USS Nashville when the now-retired amphibious ship sailed down the West African coast in early 2009, delivering training and humanitarian aid to U.S.-allied governments. The so-called “Africa Partnership Station” is one of several “Global Fleet Stations” established in recent years in Latin America, Africa and Oceania. The goal, to stand up an increasingly persistent U.S. naval presence in previously neglected regions, focusing on helping other nations help themselves towards better maritime security.

Cuaron has finally edited together his footage from the cruise. It’s pretty awesome. Check out part one on Facebook.

(Video: Martin Cuaron)

by DAVID AXE

The crew and mission staff aboard the Austin-class amphibious ship Nashville (pictured), commissioned in 1970, were in for a surprise when the 570-foot vessel approached the tiny port in Libreville, the bustling capital of Gabon, in West Africa. Despite earlier assurances from Navy planners and local officials, it turned out that the waters around Libreville’s Port Mole weren’t deep enough for the 17,000-ton-displacement Nashville. While the ship draws only 23 feet, fully loaded, she needs extra clearance for her pumps to draw in the seawater required by her old-fashioned steam power-plant. Nashville simply wouldn’t fit at Libreville.

That discovery put a wrench in carefully laid plans for the Navy’s second, roughly annual “Africa Partnership Station” deployment, calling at Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, Nigeria, Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe. APS, the brainchild of former 6th Fleet commander Vice Admiral Harry Ulrich, is meant to “enhance and develop maritime safety and security capability and capacity in West and Central Africa,” according to Captain Cindy Thebaud, commodore for Nashville‘s mission. APS uses naval vessels as mobile school-houses, repair shops and medical clinics, calling at various African ports with a diverse international mission staff to deliver training, material, scientific and humanitarian aid to regional governments.

Better port reconnaissance is one lesson from Nashville‘s deployment. There have been other, more important, lessons — gleaned by all the major APS participants:

* Thebaud and her staff identified a need for: longer stays in fewer ports; more interpreters and foreign staff officers with broad language skills; and more appropriate platforms, perhaps anchoring the major APS deployments on smaller, shallower-draft vessels such as Swift – or at least using new, gas-turbine-powered amphibious ships that don’t require ports as deep as do older vessels with their steam boilers.

To read the rest, subscribe to the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings.

(Photo: David Axe)

Related:
Africa Handshake series

Related:
Africa Handshake series

by DAVID AXE

“Helping to enhance and develop maritime safety and security capability and capacity in West and Central Africa is really the genesis of this initiative,” Capt. [Cindy] Thebaud said of [Africa Partnership Station].

Using a single ship and a few hundred sailors, Washington hopes to help build up native forces to secure the region’s waters. If successful, the effort could lead to a crackdown on smuggling, illegal fishing and human trafficking before the crimes balloon into full-fledged international crises.

It’s part of a strategy that has gained wide support after eight expensive years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. To prevent what defense industry analyst Jim McAleese called “another trillion-dollar war,” American officials are looking for ways to root out the seeds of conflict before they grow.

Read the rest in The Washington Times.

(Photo: David Axe)

by DAVID AXE

They didn’t look like much: three tall cardboard boxes, each roughly the size of the Gabonese soldiers handling them into the bed of a battered military truck. But appearances can be deceptive. These unassuming boxes represent the critical, final components of a sophisticated early warning system for the potentially cataclysmic effects of global warming.

In the fight against climate change, public attention is focused on carbon emissions from cars, aircraft and power plants. These polluters, however, represent a drop in the ocean compared with the carbon that might be released by the initial effects of global warming. Temperature increases resulting from primary polluters such as cars could tweak weather patterns in small but significant ways, thus releasing vast stores of carbon sequestered over a period of eons in weather-sealed “warehouses.”

One of the biggest of these natural carbon warehouses is deep in the world’s oceans, in a layer of water that normally never reaches the surface as it circulates the planet. It was a sudden shift in this global pattern that  inspired the plot of the 2004 disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, in which the resulting overnight transformation of the world’s weather led to a cascade of lethal storms. While hugely exaggerated, the movie got the basic science right, says Dr. Augustus Vogel, an American researcher from the hip university town of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Read the rest at Wired.co.uk.

(Photo: Argo)

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by DAVID AXE

Africa Partnership Station commander Commodore Cindy Thebaud discusses the goals and importance of the mission.

(Video: David Axe)

In his civilian clothes, Dr. Augustus Vogel stood out among the khaki, green and blue uniforms of Nashville‘s military crew. As the U.S. Navy’s science liaison for the amphibious ship’s six-month “smart power” mission delivering training, humanitarian and scientific assistance to six West African nations, Vogel’s responsibilities were as unusual as his dress.

On April 17, Vogel sat down in the vessel’s plush officer’s lounge to confer with a small team of diplomats and naval officers. The topic of their hour-long discussion: fish — and the catching thereof — in the bustling, anarchic Gulf of Guinea.

It’s still rare for one of the Navy’s powerful warships to host an in-depth, jargon-laden scientific discussion about fish. But with the emergence of smart power, it’s becoming somewhat less rare. “We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in a 2007 speech advocating this new approach to national security. The Pentagon would draw on civilian agencies, aid groups and academia to address the roots of conflict before they can blossom into full-scale international crises.

Science is a largely unheralded aspect of this largely unheralded new strategy. But not for long, if Vogel, a civilian employee of the Department of the Navy, has his way. During World Politics Review‘s five-day stint aboard Nashville off the coast of Gabon, Vogel explained how protection of fisheries is vital to the security of the region and, by extension, the whole world. “It benefits everybody,” Vogle said.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

(Photo: David Axe)

Operation Continuing Promise in Latin America is just two years old. So is Africa Partnership Station. But already, the Navy is re-configuring to double or triple the number of these smart-power operations it supports. It might seem like naval smart power came out of nowhere, to dominate planning overnight.

But Continuing Promise grew out of Admiral James Stavridis’ long career thinking about new uses for naval forces. And Africa Partnership Station is actually a clever evolution of a program dating from the 1970s. In that decade, the Navy launched its “West African Training Cruise,” aiming to visit major regional allies once every five years or so. “That’s not a way to build partnerships,” said Lieutenant Commander Chris Servello, an APS planner aboard Nashville. “We need to be down here more often.”

In 2005, 6th Fleet Vice Admiral Harry Ulrich — Stavridis’ intellectual twin for Africa — decided the Navy needed to boost its operations along the continent’s western coast. His choice of vehicle was a seemingly odd one. Ulrich tapped the repair ship Emory S. Land, pictured, for a four-month deployment, delivering trainers and maintainers to several African nations. Land helped fix African navies’ old boats and give sailors refresher training. Servello called it a “test case” for Africa Partnership Station. “It was well received.”

Next, 6th Fleet began expanding on the concept, sending frigates and amphibious ships to drum up interest in deployment’s like Land‘s. In 2007, the Navy formalized what Ulrich and Land had pioneered, and Africa Partnership Station was born.

(Photo: Navy)

Last summer, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned about the “creeping militarization” of U.S. foreign policy. “Broadly speaking, when it comes to America’s engagement with the rest of the world, it is important that the military is — and is clearly seen to be — in a supporting role to civilian agencies,” Gates said.

Does USS Nashville‘s smart-power deployment to West Africa represent this militarization of what should be strictly peaceful, civilian functions? After all, Nashville is delivering forms of assistance not normally associated with the military. Scientists are aboard to deposit ocean buoys that are part of a global-warming warning system. At every port, Nashville hands over small batches of humanitarian aid. Various U.S. ambassadors have embarked for brief stints in order to accompany Commodore Cindy Thebaud on high-level meetings with local elected officials.

Two civilian diplomats integrated into Nashville‘s crew said not to worry. “The core of what we’re doing is fundamentally military,” one said. Both asked not to be named for this story.

He was referring to the military training programs that comprise the heart of Africa Partnership Station. It’s a traditional military job, using strictly military tools, and doesn’t represent an armed usurping of any civilian organization’s mission.

But what about all those “tertiary” activities: the humanitarian assistance, the science, the diplomacy? “We’re sensitive to that balance,” one of my sources said. In other words, in its current mix, Nashville‘s mission is still military enough that anything else the ship might be doing feels, to the State Department, to be a side project rather than an intentional invasion of State’s space.

“I see Africa Partnership Station as a vehicle for ‘whole-of-government’ efforts,” said one of the diplomats. And besides, the other added, “our diplomacy has been historically under-funded and under-staffed.” The 500-strong Nashville crew is equal in size to “10 percent of our entire foreign service.”

So we don’t have much of a choice. If State is going to perform “expeditionary” outreach missions at all, it’s going to have to rely on the military for transportation and logistics, while keeping an eye on that “balance” between military and civilian functions.

(Photo: David Axe)

In 2007, the U.S. Navy amphibious ship Fort McHenry sailed on a six-month cruise down the West African coast. Her mission: to deliver training and humanitarian aid to new and emerging U.S. allies, in a bid to foster good will and security in a troubled and rapidly growing region. The Navy called the mission “Africa Partnership Station,” and aimed to make it a regular affair.

Two years later, USS Nashville, pictured, a ship similar to Fort McHenry, sailed a similar route, calling at the countries of Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe, expanding and refining the Africa Partnership Station concept. Since January, Nashville‘s 500-person crew has delivered tons of humanitarian aid, provided free medical care to hundreds of patients, helped rebuild schools and, perhaps most importantly, trained thousands of African sailors and coast guardsmen to better look after their waters.

Nashville‘s successful cruise, observed by World Politics Review during a five-day visit to the ship, has helped establish Africa Partnership Station as the centerpiece of a new national “smart-power” strategy for preventing conflict.

It’s a strategy that’s quickly catching on, not just in U.S. circles, but around the world. Nations are racing to copy the American model for early prevention of conflict, especially at sea. The Dutch navy is planning its own version of Africa Partnership Station, and West African nations might follow suit.

Read the rest at World Politics Review.

(Photo: David Axe)

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USS Nashville lost a day’s work in Libreville, Gabon, last week, when upon arriving in the West African capital, the crew discovered that the 40-year-old Nashville wouldn’t fit at the city’s tiny pier. Instead, she anchored a mile offshore, and used her boats to ferry people (see video).

The issue was less Nashville‘s sheer bulk — 570 feet long, 17,000 tons displacement — than her draft. The 40-year-old gator’s bottom is only 20 feet underwater, but she needs extra clearance to suck seawater for her old-fashioned steam-generating boilers. The crew told me a modern ship, with a gas-turbine power-plant, wouldn’t have such problems.

Which raises the question: Is Nashville, and any ship like her, the right platform for Africa Partnership Station? Lieutenant Commander Chris Servello said amphibious ships, in general, make good foundations for these soft-power missions, for they are “non-threatening” and can carry lots of stuff. But Commodore Cindy Thebaud said it’s possible to be too big. “Many of the navies and coast guards with which we work are very small and easy to overwhelm,” she said. She strongly hinted that smaller vessels, perhaps better suited to really shallow waters, are the way to go.

Fortunately, the Navy’s on it. The next iteration of Africa Partnership Station, this summer, will be anchored on Swift, the 300-foot-long catamaran, drawing only 11 feet. The Navy has only two catamarans in service, but will add at least 10 in coming years.

(Photo: David Axe)