Tag Archives: NATO

NATO hangs it up on Blackbeard

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NATO’s last counter-piracy surveillance aircraft is flying her final mission, as part of the now-shuttered Operation Ocean Shield. The Royal Danish Air Force crew a Boeing Maritime Surveillance Aircraft, a modified Bombardier Challenger 604, and talks about how much the coast of Somalia has changed since the height of pirate activity in the Horn of Africa.

The operation, which began in 2009 as part of a broader international effort to crack down on Somali-based pirates who had caused havoc with world shipping, was conducted alongside Operation Atalanta— the EU operation in the area which current have a frigate each from Holland and Spain supported by a German P-3– and the 25-nation Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) Combined Task Force (CTF) 151, both of which are on-going.

At the height of piracy in January 2011 over 700 hostages and 32 vessels were being held by Somali pirates, with huge ransoms demanded for their release.  Today, no vessels or hostages are being held by Somali pirates. The most recent pirate incident occurred on 22 October 2016, when a chemical tanker, CPO Korea, was attacked by six armed men 330 nautical miles off the east coast of Somalia.

“The global security environment has changed dramatically in the last few years and NATO navies have adapted with it,” NATO spokesman Dylan White said in a statement. “NATO has increased maritime patrols in the Baltic and Black Seas. We are also working to help counter human smuggling in the Mediterranean.”

As for the EU operation, on Friday 25 November 2016, the European Council extended Operation Atalanta’s mandate to deter, disrupt and repress acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, until 31 December 2018.

Fire and ice

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U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Dalton A. Precht

U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Dalton A. Precht (click to big up)

A U.S. Marine Corps M1A1 Abrams tank fires its main gun as it takes part in a live-fire exercise in Rena, Norway. The Marines are preparing themselves for Exercise Cold Response 16, which will bring together 12 NATO allies and partner nations and approximately 16,000 troops in order to enhance joint crisis response capabilities in cold weather environments.

More on Cold Response 16 including a bunch of videos in my column at Guns.com.

Scribbling from a Ukrainian Rough Rider

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SOFREP has this really interesting take on what it was like as a foreign volunteer soldier of fortune in the Ukrainian Army during the late great hate there in recent years.

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As a former professional soldier in my own country’s NATO army, I found myself embroiled in the conflict in Ukraine by my own choice in late July, 2014. While technically I was a “volunteer,” I viewed myself as a professional soldier serving in a foreign country’s armed forces. Far from trying to make this some kind of dramatic personal narrative, I will attempt to portray a picture of the Russian soldier from my own limited point of view—that of an opponent.

At this point, I’d like to sidetrack a bit so as to make some things more clear to the reader. The Ukrainian “volunteer battalions” should not be seen as militias or irregulars, but rather as a sort of “Rough Riders”-style unit, a unit formed by volunteers, yet armed and supplied by the Army and subjected to the regular command structure, having normal combat duties at the front line. The foreign volunteers themselves, again, should not be seen as the like of all these colorful characters that join the Marxist and Arab irregular militias in the Middle East, but rather like the Swedish volunteers during the Winter War, integrated normally within their unit and most of the time taking up a front-line role either in operations or training. The opposing forces can be divided easily in two parts: the bandits who initiated the rebellion and the Russian regulars who intervened later that same year.

The bandits, no matter what the pro-Western propaganda claims, were not mercenaries or Russian regulars posing as rebels. Many Russian nationals flocked to their banner from the onset of the rebellion out of pure patriotism. Of course there were exceptions, but these were just that—exceptions. That doesn’t mean that Russian military advisors or SOF units didn’t directly aid them in the beginning of the conflict. The military effectiveness of said bandit militias was horrendous.

More here

Inside the Estonian national militia

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Tiny Estonia, who share a long and increasingly tense border with Russia, uses a force of volunteer unpaid citizens– equipped with their own military arms– to hold the line.

The Estonian Defense League, a militia independent from the government, is made up of over 15,000 members, making it several times larger than the 6,500-member official Estonian Defense Forces.

Stationed in every part of the country the League is ready at a moment’s notice to sally out and repel possible invasion from unnamed neighbors. It’s the largest military force in the region and members vow to put up more of a fight than they did when the Soviet Union took over the county in 1940 and remained for decades.

Earlier this summer Vice News spent some time in-depth with not only the minutemen of the League but also those on both sides of Estonian politics and the above video shows some interesting footage of their training and doctrine.

The firepower shown is impressive, showing some sweet shots of donated German HK G3s and MG3s, old-school Chevy K5s that likely came from the U.S., a sweet 1950s-era Bofors Pvpj 1110 90 mm recoilless rifle, a smoking hot M240/FN Mag, some IMI Galils, a sprinkling of 84mm Carl Gustavs and at least one BTR-80 armored personnel carrier.

It seems Estonia is very down with the concept of civilian use of military-style arms.

Sure, Estonia has no illusions about stopping an all-out Russian incursion, but they just have to slow it down enough to allow fellow NATO members to apply action or rush reinforcements to the region and they plan to do so by putting a rifle behind every blade of grass.

“If Russia knows that attacking Estonia is not a walk in the park, maybe Russia will think twice,” says a commander.

Speaking of which, check out a recent NATO exercise with the League as part of Operation Hurricane in the video below.

With so much firepower at the hands of your everyday civilian, its hard to sell the prospect of being a member of the League because you want to hunt ducks.

But then again, back here in the states we know that Washington didn’t cross the Delaware to get to a duck blind.

More in my column at Guns.com

Russian Warships to Get NATO Communications Equipment

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BRUSSELS, April 25 (RIA Novosti)

Russian warships will be equipped with NATO navigation and communications systems to improve coordination in anti-piracy missions around the world, Chief of the Russian General Staff Nikolai Makarov said on Wednesday.

The issue has been discussed during a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels.

“We decided to install standard NATO navigation and communications systems on our warships,” Makarov said.

NATO warships have been patrolling the pirate-infested waters off the Somali coast since 2008, as part of Operation Ocean Shield. NATO has recently extended its mission in the Gulf of Aden and adjacent areas until 2014.

Russia joined the international anti-piracy mission in the region in 2008. Russian warships have successfully escorted more than 130 commercial vessels from various countries since then.

Task forces from the Russian Navy, usually led by Udaloy class destroyers, operate in the area on a rotating basis.

A task force from Russia’s Northern Fleet, led by the Udaloy class destroyer Vice Admiral Kulakov, will arrive in the Gulf of Aden in the beginning of May to join the anti-piracy mission.

Udaloy class destroyers,
Type: Anti Submarine Warfare Destroyer
Displacement: 6,200 tons standard, 7,900 tons full load
Length: 163 m
Beam: 19.3 m
Draught: 6.2 m
Propulsion: 2 shaft COGAG, 4 gas turbines, 120,000 hp
Speed: 35 kt
Range: 10500 nm at 14 kt
Complement: 300
Sensors and
processing systems: Radar:MR-760MA Fregat-MA/Top Plate 3-D air search radar and MR-320M Topaz-V/Strut Pair air/surface search radar
Sonar: Horse Tail LF VDS sonar and Horse Jaw bow mounted LF sonar
Fire Control: 2 MR-360 Podkat/Cross Sword SA-N-9 SAM control, 2 3P37/Hot Flash SA-N-11 SAM control, Garpun-BAL SSM targeting
Electronic warfare
and decoys: Bell Squat jammer
Bell Shroud intercept
Bell Crown intercept
2 x PK-2 decoy RL
10 x PK-10 decoy RL in later ships
Armament: Missiles:
• 8 (2 x 4) SS-N-14 Silex anti submarine missiles (2x4 SS-N-22 Sunburn ASCM in Udaloy II),
• 64 (8 x 8 vertical launchers) SA-N-9 Gauntlet surface to air missiles
• 2 x Kortik SAM (SA-N-11)
Guns:
• 2 x 1 100mm/70cal DP guns( 2 x 1 AK-130 130mm guns on Udaloy II)
• 4 x 30mm AA guns (4 x6 AK-630 CIWS 30mm gattling guns in Udaloy II)
Torpedoes and thers:
• 2 x 4 553mm Torpedo tubes ( RPK-2 Viyuga/ SS-N-15)
• 2 xRBU-6000 anti submarine rocket launchers (2 x 10 RBU-Udav ASW RL in UdaloyII)
Aircraft carried: helicopter deck and hangar, 2 Ka-27 'Helix' series helicopters

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