The 'Secret' deployment of 16 Regt RA to Saudi Arabia

[ORAC]

H/T to Sir Humphrey at the ThinPinstripedLine.

Hiding in Plain Sight - The 'Secret' deployment of 16 Regt RA to Saudi Arabia (https://thinpinstripedline.********.com/2020/11/hiding-in-plain-sight-secret-deployment.html)

Usual caveats, either copy and fix the link below replacing bl*gspot or do a search on the title above.

https://thinpinstripedline.bl*gspot.com /2020/11/hiding-in-plain-sight-secret-deployment.html

One of the most powerful ways of finding out whats going on in the world can be to use open source media as a means of spotting information. Sometimes small statements, which can easily be missed, can reveal a great deal of previously unknown activity. This is both a blessing and a curse.

A good example occurred recently with the publication of the MOD annual report (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministry-of-defence-annual-report-and-accounts-2019-to-2020), which is a publication issued annually providing a range of facts and statements about the activities of the armed forces over the last 12 months.

There has already been some coverage of this report, which focused on the costs of equipment and disposal, raising some concerns about the way that the military was handling public money.

If you review the wider document though, one is left with the sense that there are all manner of innocuous sounding lines hidden in it that could reflect wider activity of the armed forces. Sometimes this can reveal a great deal of information that was not readily accessible.

In this case, the key line of interest was this paragraph:

"The deployment of Giraffe radars to Riyadh in February 2020 will help Saudi Arabia better track and identify objects in its airspace"

The reason this line is so interesting is that when Humphrey read it, he couldn’t remember hearing anything about a deployment by the armed forces to Saudi Arabia this year – usually these are announced and well publicised.

So, with curiosity piqued, he set off to do some research and find out a bit more about what was going on…

[NutLoose]

Hahaha, some pearls on there... read this re Hermes :E

The account below was on an internet forum (http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/topic/29761/Ex-HMS-Hermes-to-be-preserved#.VaGPVvlVhBc) many years ago – and the ‘dit’ is emphatically not Humphreys, but someone elses. It is shared here in the hopes that the original author of the piece who shared it with the forum won’t mind if it is shared again on this site with a new audience, and that it puts a smile on your face. It covers the period of the sale of HMS HERMES to the Indians and her handover as the INS VIRAAT…

For my sins, I was appointed to MOD Sales for the handover of HERMES to the Indian Navy as Oi/c Air Department. We were based in Plymouth and were in barracks for the beginning of the project. We were a small band of merry men soon to be bludgeoned to death with copies of, "THE CONTRACT" a document that every Indian Officer on the project slept with and carried around all day. We were first to arrive and saw "H" into dry dock for exterior hull work and painting. Soon after we were docked down, the Indian crew started to arrive in dribs and drabs until a few months later they outnumbered us. As all you salty sailors will know, when a ship is docked down, she rests on huge oak blocks and in order to complete the hull work on the areas resting on oak, the ship has to be floated, moved forward or aft and re-sat.

The Brit Commander was one of the most inspirational Officers I ever met in my Naval career, his name was Roger Lockyer and without his man management skills the whole project would have folded. Roger sadly died of cancer some years later but will always be remembered with great fondness by this sailor, he was a gentleman in every truest sense of the word. Roger and the Seamanship Department had put together the Temp Memo for floating the ship, as the initiated will know, this is a Whole Ship activity and a very intricate evolution so we were all required onboard. As a WAFU, I had very little input to this evolution so I was sat in my cabin catching up on Divisional paperwork whilst my boys were scattered around the ship on flood watch. About half an hour after the brow had been slung by a dockyard crane, my telephone rang and I was requested in Roger's cabin. When I got there he was with the Indian Commander, Rambir Talwir who was in a bit of a lather leaping up and down blathering on about something. He explained to us that as this was the first time the Indian crew would be afloat in the ship so they were holding a launching ceremony on the Forecastle and that we were cordially invited. Roger grabbed his cap and said, "Eric, this I have got to see!"

When we arrived on the fo'c's'le the Indian Ship's Company were already mustered and sat cross legged on the deck, in the eyes of the ship their senior Warrant Officer had an alter set up with burning joss stick and other paraphernalia. At this point Talwir began to explain the ceremony and said that at the moment the ship floated, they would be informed by stornophone and at this point the launching ceremony would begin. Roger, jokingly, asked where the bottle of Champagne was and was told by Talwir that in Indian custom a coconut is used because it is considered to be the fruit of all knowledge. After a silent pause for thought, Roger then asked where the coconut was only to be told that they did not have one. Roger looked at me inquisitively and I thought that our duty driver was on the jetty with the ship's Landrover and as we had about 40 minutes to go to lift off, we could despatch him down to the market to get a coconut. I offered this to Talwir as a solution only to be told, "No no Eric, this is not necessary, we have the next best thing; we have been to the NAAFI and bought a Bounty Bar!" Sure enough, they launched INS VIRAAT (still HERMES at that time) with a Bounty Bar broken across the forward hawser…

[India Four Two]

Fixed using TinyURL:

Hiding in Plain Sight (https://tinyurl.com/y4n9l3fd)

PS I hadn't heard of the "Thin Pinstriped Line" before. Lots of interesting articles.

[NutLoose]

Vegan appropriate uniforms..... so I wonder how the said vegan feels about shooting at people if they want meat products such as wool and leather removing from their kit.... it’s barking mad if you ask me.

https://thinpinstripedline.blogspo*.com/2019/11/vegan-uniforms-in-raf-outrageous-or.html

[Chugalug2]

Assuming that ORAC's OP is about revealing not only the RA's deployment but similar French and US ones as well, rather than the pinstripedline, here are the concluding lines of the blog to save the need of fixing/following links :-

So what can we draw from this? What we know is that in early 2020 the British Army / RAF deployed a unit consisting of surveillance radars to participate in an operation in Saudi Arabia. We know the French armed forces have carried out an identical deployment in the North East of the country. We do not know when, or if the deployment was concluded or if this was part of a wider joint UK/French/US operation. We do not know if this operation was carried out at the request of the Saudis, or was at the initiative of the UK.We do know that the UK deployment was going on as late as March 2020, and may have continued past this point. A letter from the CO to families of 16 Regt RA, posted on their publicly accessible Facebook page confirms that the Regiment was deployed in both the Falkland Islands and Saudi Arabia. It refers to possible delays in returning personnel due to the emerging COVID challenge.
https://1.bp.********.com/-S2h_38No7yQ/X7LFyQUEboI/AAAAAAAACQg/75XRPgGrmWcMEwwf6O7LRxZU8DHugv0lQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/90424256_582734322326260_1625766797959495680_n.jpg (https://1.bp.********.com/-S2h_38No7yQ/X7LFyQUEboI/AAAAAAAACQg/75XRPgGrmWcMEwwf6O7LRxZU8DHugv0lQCLcBGAsYHQ/s676/90424256_582734322326260_1625766797959495680_n.jpg)What is interesting though is that there seems to have been no public reference to this deployment prior to this announcement. A search of Hansard reveals that there have been no Ministerial statements, or questions in either the House of Commons or Lords about this deployment. There have been no MOD press releases or media briefings, and no reference can be found to any news or announcements about this deployment.



This does raise questions about what would happen if the troops had been involved in any incident in country, or been on a site targeted by an air strike or ballistic missile attack. Similarly it is unclear why no public announcement of this deployment was made, given that the French were very open about it at Head of State level.

None of the information cited in this blog has come from anywhere but the internet. It is a telling reminder about how much is hiding in plain sight, and also how easy it can be with a little bit of digging to find out all manner of fascinating information that raises as many questions as it answers!

[ROC man]

Question asked in Parliament 2 days ago on this ver topic
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/dept/MinistryofDefence/alert-sampleAnswered by James Heappey (https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/mp/james-heappey) - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)

UK Defence personnel have accompanied the deployment of Giraffe radars to Riyadh. This deployment is purely defensive in nature and helps Saudi Arabia with the very real threats it faces.

[Tocsin]

Hazard a guess that this was one response to the Abqaiq and Khurais attacks in Sep 2019?