Possible new humanitarian/rescue operation coming up.
 

Spin off from the long running Maritime aircraft requirement.


Cameron and Clegg admit axing search and rescue in Mediterranean has failed | UK news | The Guardian


EU leaders convene shortly to talk about what to do about the Med refugee crisis. I think I read the death toll of poor drowned people is x20 to what it was this time last year.
Something must be done. Although to quote the Irish man, I wouldn't start from here.
My guess is the RN and RFA with appropriate RM back up will be tasked to bring in an appropriate rescue capability, to find and lift out refugees and reduce the overall death rate. Just a guess mind-watch and see.
What the RAF will assist with (and I also bet they have to), I don't know.
I could be wrong, but I think the constant pressure of TV images of drowning people is having an affect on EU politicians images and ratings, and they must be seen to act. Italy and Malta were crying out for help the other night on BBC.
May be votes in it, maybe not and it may inflame the right wing element NO camp, so UK politicians right now will have to play a canny game on this one.
But I think they have to act and so does the military, now. Sorry.

The problem I see is in rescuing them and bringing them to Europe, it will simply encourage more to try knowing they only need to get so far out, somehow the action to stop them attempting it needs to be at the departure end, possibly by assisting their Governments..

The other option is to return those rescued via a LCT or similar straight back onto the shore they departed from, the other unpalatable option would be to sink any likely ship or boats etc in the harbours along their coastline.

Personally I would simply not allow them entry nor any form of asylum application and use the LCT option to return them from whence they came.


..

That option may happen, but what if they are dying? Do you expect UK servicemen to dump people on a beach and leave them?
Its an absolute growing crisis that's been coming for months and it is now and needs serious solutions.
We, the UK in a way have assisted the creation of this crisis.

People on here hate me for putting these threads up. But I've watched for years this crisis coming, and its going to get dumped onto the UK military (what remains of it) to assist with other EU military in applying a sticking plaster. Read Cleggs comments, he is really hinting at it.


"Now we need to make sure we do more to save lives. That will involve more search and rescue and there is a contribution I’m sure we can make to that".


Something is coming up for some of you.
RAF should be making something more of it, leverage for new patrol aircraft. So should the Navy.

Mrs PN suggests segregation. Mothers, children, and proven fathers be admitted and considered for asylum. Young fit men are almost certainly economic migrants and should be returned to point of departure.

Blockading Libyian ports would certainly reduce the potential for drowning from overcrowding.

Hangarshuffle, if they are dying or injured they should be treated before returning them, but that can be carried out on board a hospital ship or similar. They then can be returned.

I surprises me they haven't tried it to access the UK.

Lets face it, once they are across they won't get sent back so we may as well cut out the middle man and ship them in ourselves. At least that way we are in control.

The only way to stop it is to stop it being so attractive in the first place. If, in effect, they are given free food, clothing and housing once they are here, it is not a great deterrent.

Perhaps the large sums of money that government spend on them should be spent on making their original places more enticing, that way they wouldn't need to leave.

Of course we all know that if that were the case, most of the money would be syphoned off anyway and things would be no better...

What a mess. Criminal , illegitimate , incompetent and unelected African governments encourage and perpetuate an emigration of their populations northwards to an overcrowded and increasingly poor Europe. Too proud and guilty of their own colonial history to say no , Europe's future looks bleak. Combine this ticking time bomb with the rise of radical Islam throughout Europe , an enormous demographic shift , Greek weakness , a failed European diplomatic and currency project and it's not much of a leap to conclude that a war is on the horizon. European death by 1000 cuts.

The politicians have to move before the military can do anything, and they aren't going to do squat. Obama and Hillary caused the current mess in Libya, so perhaps they should sort it out.

Bob C

Hangarshuffle said:

Is that the sound of chickens coming home to roost? Or is it merely the anguished cries of the leaders' wives at yet another kitchen table supper? Where on earth do these people think we can keep rustling up capability from whilst they keep cutting it and neglecting what's left??? We might be able to do more SAR if we hadn't chopped the carrier, the entire MPA fleet and signalled the death of the SAR fleet.

If we're going to do anything I can only see one viable COA. Assuming Ex Cougar runs again this year, then it goes to the Med and involves HMS Ocean, LPDs and various RFAs and hospital/ casualty ships. Embarked, the SAR cabs have a final hurrah alongside the Merlins, whilst the AH are used in support of counter-ISIL ops in Libya. This would have to be part of a multinational effort given the scale if the problem and a decision needs to be made right now, most likely at tomorrow's Special Meeting of the European Council in order to get ahead of planning to and decision timelines if they are to be on station in time for the best weather when there's an even greater surge of people making a run for it. Waiting until after the election and someone making a decision will be too late.

Above all else, there must be no further cuts regardless of whether Defence is ring fenced or not and there must be an assessment of what else drops off in order to meet this commitment - don't even think about trying to go to Yemen if we're going to do this. And finally, there must be a coherent policy and strategy (there's that S word again!) to deal with the crux of the problem rather than just treating the symptoms. Without a coherent policy and strategy you'll end up with a constant roulement of people earning frequent flier miles as they head out to sea, sink, get rescued by SAR, return home and start the whole sorry saga once again.

That's it Mr Clegg. That's your option. And it will be very very expensive. Other than that the cupboard is not only bare, the door is hanging off the hinges and even the church mouse having a look inside seems distinctly unimpressed. The RAF - pulling rabbits out of hats since 1918.

Amen to that!
We are victims of our own stupidity and self-righteousness...

Melchett, top post IMHO ! Whilst we remain the sheople we are, re electing the same old same old, we get no change, and the whole hand wringing mess is prolonged. Your description of the cutting yet demanding more is, as usual, accurate and to the point. Perhaps a vote for someone new come 7 May might be appropriate.

Smudge :ok:

The migration crisis in its current iteration stems from the fall of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi. Under Qaddafi, Libya worked closely with Europe to control the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean. But the country's chaos has upended that. In 2010, Europe was moving quickly to normalize relations with the former dictator. Oil interests played a role, but so did the desire of many European nations to outsource migrant control to the North African country.
Mr. Qaddafi was well aware of European alarm at the rising tide of migrants in his final years in power. He used it as a powerful wedge to improve his own standing. Back to 2004, Qaddafi began making deals with individual European states to control the tide of migrants. In August 2010, he visited his friend Silvio Berlusconi, then president of Italy, in Rome and said Europe would turn "black" without his help.
The U.S.-NATO intervention that toppled Moammar Gadhafi has led to an Islamist state where young militant men with heavy firepower control the country’s airports, harbors and major roads. Militias roam the countryside. Former al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban fighters have infiltrated the country, targeting moderate Muslims and blacks. The nation is splintering along ideological, sectarian and tribal lines. This is not a victory for humanitarianism but anarchy.
Libya's chaos has once more made it a major way station for Africans seeking a better life, as the European Union grapples with the morality of cutting back on patrols to rescue migrants. The argument for doing less is that increasing the risk of crossing the Mediterranean would save lives. Word that there was no safety net would filter back to people, many of them fleeing persecution, and they'd stop coming.
“We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” British Foreign Office Minister Joyce Anelay said last year. Rescues have “an unintended ‘pull factor,' encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths,” she argued.
Obama and NATO have a lot to answer for here. Melchett’s solution via Ex Cougar may be the answer.

Bobster, in a race to blame Obama for everything, you seem to have gone on a poorly-executed 'I can haz copypasta' exercise in which 'Muammar Qaddafi' suddenly becomes 'Moammar Gadhafi'.

It's a poor attempt to place all available blame on the current incumbent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (rather than on the bumblefark good ole boy who lit the blue touchpaper in the Middle East in 2003 before retiring to a safe distance to paint pictures of his feet). And by the way, it was the the Blessed St. Ronnie of Gipper who ordered the 1986 bombing of Libya, so attempts to absolve the GOP of responsibility fail on yet another level.

1/10 for trying.

Call me a pedant, but ISTR Op El Dorado Canyon was actually a retaliation for the Libyan bombing of a Berlin disco (preceded by much c0cking about in the Gulf of Sirte and Chad) and had the effect of significantly reducing the practical (if not verbal) level of support for the 80s brand of Arabic terrorist.

I may be wrong, but one of the less-trumpeted (by some) consequences of Op Telic/OIF was that a certain N African dictator, having realised that people were getting serious about WMD proliferation, suddenly coughed to maintaining both production and storage facilities for some rather unpleasant nasties and offered to destroy them under supervision (with an aid package, natch).

Now IMPO Barry O'Bama is a bit of an @rse, but he has undisputedly suggested to Europe that it's about time it stood on its own two feet and looked after interests on its own doorstep, rather than expecting Uncle Sam to pop up and do the necessary instead. And about time too.

Much like Iraq, people are way too quick to get a dose of rose-tinted hindsight when sh1t happens and immediately activate the "blame whichever western government suits your political position" switch, rather than point out that this is in fact an African / Arabian governance issue, exacerbated by an ongoing Sunni/Shia proxy war. It's got very little to do with the West, other than the fact that our media luvvies expect the West to somehow sort it out, because "something must be done!"

Don't forget that a major contributory factor in all this was the media-led "Arab Spring", where a bunch of half-witted (if we're being charitable) journos tried to portray things as an outbreak of happiness where the masses would magically discover pluralist democracy, all enabled by the enlightened support of the religion of peace. Which was a stretch of the actualite to put it mildly.

The actual trigger for the Op Ellamy was the threatened extermination of the rebels and civpop of Benghazi. Whether it was a good idea to extend that operation into provision of an air capability for the rebels is a different question. However - the vision of what happens when you don't intervene is also available in technicolour in Syria and it's not like that's going well for the civpop either.

Short version - the cause of all this is not "the West". It's not the Red Sea Pedestrians either. It's actually a vicious sectarian war being played out between Sunni and Shia, with lashings of poverty thrown in as well. To fix it would require intervention on the ground at a scale that we have tested to destruction whether the public will support - and the answer is, they won't.

Unpleasant as it is, we have to learn to live with it and prevent it spreading to Europe, proper.

Not_a_boffin

:D:D:D pojmlm lokdw popwo

As Predicted: Overthrow of Qaddafi Led to Horrific Migrant Crisis in Europe / Sputnik International



West Should Take Responsibility for Chaos in Libya ? Prime Minister / Sputnik International

What proportion of the refugees are from Libya? I suspect not very many.

To stop people dying at sea, you intercept them, look after them medically and process them offshore. Those who are deemed to be true refugees, then get offered settlement in whatever country is willing to take them. Those who are deemed to be economic refugees get returned to the point of origin, in unsinkable lifeboats if needed. Sound familiar? Economic refugees from Iran, Sri Lanka and various other countries stopped paying the people smugglers when they realised the best they could hope for was PNG citizenship and not Australian.

No, no, no Surplus, don't feed the troll!! :oh:

Actually, I suspect there are two Kremlin troll-bots using the Ronald moniker - one that does actually have something reasonably interesting to say occasionally, and another who is only capable of posting links to RT/Sputnik/CCTV/Press TV et al, with no reasoned thoughts of his own to add.

Sadly, the latter appears to have resurfaced again (I guess they must be working them in shifts).

That's ok, I've got plenty of time now I'm not doing SAR in the Timor sea ;)

Surplus, the point is also that a stable Libya under Gaddafi was able to stop many migrants before they reached the coast.

Yes, you're right, he was well known for his humanitarian approach to his and other nation's people.

since you like links so much here's one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

Surplus, the choice in Libya was Gaddafi or terrorists. We now have a situation where IS and other groups can thrive in Libya. At least one could sit down and deal with Gaddafi. Libya was so safe you could visit as a tourist. I would not want to be doing that these days!
Another broken nation thanks to the west. The west wanted to do the same in Syria handing the entire nation to terrorists like IS.

I guess that the difference between you and I is that I wouldn't have gone to Libya when he was in charge, I suspect that with your views, you'd have been made very welcome. I wouldn't like to see you outed, but you're not George Galloway are you?

I apologise for hogging the thread with my new friend.

Well I guess privatised SAR assets would not be used, which leaves................

...three (presumably Fleet Air Arm) helos embarked in HMS Bulwark plus a couple of Border Force patrol vessels:

Strange set up with the force being sent?
 

I understand Bulwark. Its the only asset remaining, with Albion being withdrawn. Is Ocean available?
Bulwark has no hangar, an important point here if the operation is to last the summer, and not just up to the UK election.
I don't understand the Border Force vessel concept in this role here, someone explain to me. The Wiki blurb says they are coastal cutters, manned by civilians and are part of the Home Office.
Are they used to operating as part of a military force? I never worked with them. Learn as they go along?
I would have sent a T45 to escort Bulwark, and they have the ability to embark up to 50 RM as I recall, can launch and operate 2 x FRC, can operate up to size Merlin, spare deck....
I would back up with a Bay Class RFA as well- we still have 3, are spare deck, have big tank hold and dock, lots of room inside.
Element of high risk to our service people with this - this area is now active with AQ and more. They will be exposed to trap and ambush as they investigate these boats and people.
The absolute desperation of the poor souls fleeing the many war zones shouldn't be underestimated either.
Pass the financial cost into the EU pot-everyone should put in on this one.
HS.
The BBC report said the people involved are fleeing from Nigeria, Syria, Ethiopia and Somalia.

Not be kidded.
 

This is just a tiny sticking plaster, its for the cameras, the polls and the vanity of the politicians. Cameron...where to start?...airheaded and shallow doesn't do him justice.
The question is how to keep these poor people in their own countries in the first place, and for that nobody seems to be leading at all.


I would pay them money to return - at least double or treble what it cost them to reach the departure ports in the first place, and I would ensure a safe passage return.
Italy has asked permission from the EU to sink pirate boats in port, before they depart.
Establish a safe zone (for arriving refugees, and guarded or set up by EU military) onshore Libya will probably be put on the table, but that will be very fraught and risky I would imagine.

Hangarshuffle

It was tried by Australia with the Sri Lankan economic refugees, they were given money to go back and a civvie aircraft was chartered to take them back. It was stopped when the same people were caught a few weeks later back on a boat repeating the trip just for the money. They got off the aircraft and straight onto another boat.

HMS OCEAN finishes playing a central role in Ex JOINT WARRIOR off Scotland today:

Sadly, we're not likely to get anything resembling sensible policy right now from the government -or the opposition for that matter. Thanks to the millions of migrants rolled in by Mr Blair, immigration is such a toxic issue that even taking a few hundred of the most desperate refugees is off the table. I'm glad I'm not the Captain of HMS Bulwark!

No worries. He's a Lynx observer (also a Principle Warfare Officer rather than a Principal Warfare Officer).

Any ideas whose supplying the rotary winged element? Commando Force still working up on the HC.3, Merlin HM force just back from Sierra Leone... three Whirlwinds dragged out from the FAAM, perchance? Or 771 being tasked with the job as it's mainly SAR?

Options are limited so we can guess.

Not saying I told you so but I knew this day would come eventually. Like the perfect storm of famine, war, political turmoil, energy resource war, fundamental religion, intolerance and much more has settled over large areas of the earth and people want to escape it and come to relatively calm and wealthy Europe.
I can only see it continuing (this current exodus) for many more years to come, which perhaps makes the RNs recent tasking what? Unsustainable? Gloomy end piece but anyway good luck lads and lasses RN.

HMS Bulwark already rescued 400 people.
 

Was on C4 news tonight with MOD footage. Already picked up 400 people. Bulwark has been doing this already for over a week and was on task in something like 5 days from sailing Devonport.
A tremendous reflection on the Captain, ship and people involved.
But I feel for the poor people picked up. Unloved and unwanted. Even the way the bootnecks were tossing the lifejackets at them seemed to indicate it, somehow. What the future for the refugee, if they even have one?

Incredible mission creep..
 

BBc are reporting tonight the mission is now increasing somewhat...RN will now be looking to carry out search and destroy missions of the boats used to transport the refugees. Presumably this is along the south med coastline, in harbour, in Commando raids.
Did I hear it right? I've had a few pints.
They are all making it up as they go along. Once again UK forces are deployed into combat (which it is, no matter how you split it) and the matter is hardly even debated in Parliament.
I will try and find a source, unless someone can help me.?
This is on the radio news now, sort of slotted in at half time in the Chelsea/West Brom game somewhere in a story about the NHS and some other dross.

Yea, sources leaking..
 

UK to offer drones to help combat people-smugglers in Libya | World news | The Guardian


They must have been spooked. RFA Lyme Bay+ more helicopters/drones. etc.
Basically its moving to a more defensive "war on boats" rather than a humanitarian rescue force for the refugees.
Some on prune will be creaming their knicks at this but to me, its just sad, the West turning their guns yet again on the unarmed and hopeless and helpless.

Latest news is approx 400,000 are waiting to get across
 

Half a million refugees gather in Libya to attempt perilous crossing to Europe | World news | The Guardian


Up to half a million (yes I looked twice as well) refugees now waiting to cross the Med and invade Europe. Going to be the crisis of the Summer.
Well, bombing the blazes out of North Africa doesn't look such a good idea now.But we are where we are (through mismanagement and poor overall strategy, hand wringers and do-gooders).
Royal Navy (what remains of its small rump, and that is Bulwark) seem to be totally overtaken by events here, and have simply become a ferry service for the refs. (who are instructed by their smugglers to sink their boats on sight of the RN to guarantee a pick up).
There was talk of sending in commandos to destroy all small boats along the coast of North Africa...hmmmm hasn't happened yet and not sure this can work without destroying the livelihood of many fisherman and genuine tab/drug smugglers etc.
We continue have a lawless coast/state right on the coast of southern Europe robustly pushing hundreds of thousands our way and none of the clever whities have a single solution how to really solve it.
Using the UK's RN so robustly (yet again in a fringe Europe land problem, see Bosnia,Kosovo,Libya,Beirut/Lebanon and many more) should be leverage for Cameron in his negotiation with Merkel over the UKs overall contribution to the EU-where's Germanys assault ship? .
Anyway, crack on you clever 100 odd well paid Admirals on the payroll with the one ship to play with on this one.
* Actually, considering Pruners normally pretty sensible approach to problems as a whole, if I were a minister or an Admiral reading this thread this morning how about considering (a) the PM unilaterally withdraws part of the UKs EU funding contribution (which is apparently something in the region of between 9 and 11 billion GBP for FY2015-16 depending on what and where you read or believe). (b) Use that money to (1) partially re-float part of the RN (HMS Albion and fund more capable vessels) and fund RN interdiction operations (2) Use the remainder to establish safe camps in North Africa for the genuine refugees (this is difficult I concede totally) (3) But vigorously maintain patrols along the Med. coastline to prevent further incursion by the refugees. (4) Pay some local warlords to get on side with us to "help".
Expensive but I think this would bring our PM some genuine support and be a practical sticking plaster solution over the Summer).
An absolute nightmare for UK forces of course, and potentially bloody and unpleasant as well.

Hit'sanitemare
 

24 April - I believe the Principal Duty of a Principle Warfare Officer is to Dessimate the Henemy.

Perhaps we need to introduce a new specialization of Principle Welfare Officer because this isn't going to go away, and I can't see shooting solving the problem.

........ LFH