RFA Mounts Bay is supporting a huge exercise designed to train troops to defend a NATO member state effectively.

The vessel is participating Exercise Joint Viking 23, alongside NATO allies and partners, in Norway’s fjords.

The exercise is organised by Norway and designed to evaluate allied forces’ cold weather warfare skills, ensuring their readiness to fight across the Arctic’s waters and challenging terrain seamlessly. In the words of NATO, “20,000 NATO troops, plus Finland and Sweden, are training to defend Norway”.

The Bay class are operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and are officially designated as ‘Landing Ship Docks’. Each Bay class vessel is capable of carrying up to 24 Challenger tanks or 150 military trucks in 1,150 linear metres of space. The UK operates three Bay class vessels after selling the fourth to Australia.

Under normal conditions, a Bay class ship can carry 350 soldiers, but this can be doubled to 700 in overload conditions. The flight deck is capable of handling helicopters up to the size of Chinooks, as well as Merlin helicopters however while the class have no hangar, a temporary shelter can be set up to house a single helicopter. The well dock can carry one LCU Mark 10 or two LCVPs, and two Mexeflotes can be suspended from the ship’s flanks.

A Mexeflote from RFA Mounts Bay in the Carribean.

 

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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17 COMMENTS

  1. Mexeflotes are utterly brilliant, they carry huge amount of stuff..they are modular..you can use them as a causeway..landing pontoon or boat…they have even been used as a causeway between ships at see….

    the best bit is you just cart them around attached to the side of your ship, they don’t take up a boat bay or well deck space….

        • Fair one. I can see artillery being around for some time yet myself. It’s a lot cheaper, especially for sustained fire plus Spike (awesome btw) can’t have an area effect.
          I just think it’ll all have to be self-propelled; Archer or Caesar type kit. Surprised no one is marketing a turret for a 105mm artillery for Boxer/LAV/Patria 8x8s yet. Missing a trick. Or does the AMOS do the job?

          • Even with rocket assisted mortar rounds, the AMOS does not have the same effective range of a standard HE shell fired from a L118.

            However, as a close support weapon for dismounted infantry in support of Boxer. AMOS being a gun-mortar has a distinct advantage. As it uses an autoloader and the twin 120mm barrels can fire at a rate of 10 to 12 rounds per minute per tube. Which means it can lay down a devastating barrage of suppressive fire.

            I definitely believe the Army require an AMOS like 120mm gun-mortar system fitted to Boxer. the direct fire mode, it would be a significant advantage when dealing with hardened and fortified targets.

            Leaving Archer, AS90, MLRS and perhaps the Brimstone Overwatch for longer range stuff.

      • The LIMAW combination of Supacat platform and M777 could get into and out of action pretty quickly. It was dropped in 2007 for budgetary reasons. Much cheaper than Archer and more flexible.

        • Not sure about cheaper. M777 is about $5m each. That’s before we add a tow vehicle.
          Archer is $4.5m (not sure that includes the ammunition carrier though).
          Even Limaw will be too slow to ‘scoot’ against some adversaries soon (in my opinion & I could very well be wrong obviously).

          • I’ve seen very different prices quoted for M777 in reported deals so it’s hard to be sure. I suppose one advantage of LIMAW was the amount of UK content. The other was the mobility the light weight could offer.
            Artillery has been most effective in the past when operated en masse. Shoot and scoot reduces it to long range sniping_ fine if your using GPS guided shells, but not for standard unguided ammunition.
            Anti tank guns have all but disappeared ( except on tanks) to be replaced by guided missiles. Perhaps tube field artillery will also be replaced. A non ballistic missile is not vulnerable to counter battery radars.

          • I believe Archer can put 4 rounds on a target (TOT) to land at the same time, taking around 10 seconds ish to fire all four. That would give very substantial terminal effects!
            cheers

        • Being in Norway, not sure the Supercat platform would perform that well when away from roads. However, if the L118 or M777 was mounted on the rear carrier of a BV206, then that could literally go anywhere.

  5. Did that exercise different name in the late 70ts and early 80ts yanks would cone over and consume our Beer issue , and then just watch the Northern lights from the GDP falling out of the LAS sights couldn’t handle British Beer

  6. Second to last image is an old stock photo of Lyme Bay before the Bays had the diesel exhausts moved from the after edge of the flight deck to a position roughly halfway along the open deck.

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