Royal Air Force Poseidon jets from RAF Lossiemouth have arrived at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily to take part in Exercise DYNAMIC MANTA, a significant NATO training exercise.
The exercise will run for two weeks and bring together personnel and aircraft from nine allied nations to participate in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare training.
The annual maritime exercise provides a challenging and complex warfare environment, enhancing the participants’ interoperability and proficiency in maritime patrol operations.
The exercise involves the participation of submarines, surface ships, and maritime patrol aircraft in the Central Mediterranean Sea to support the multi-threat environment.
During the exercise, each surface ship will take turns carrying out various anti-submarine operations, while the submarines will have the opportunity to hunt and be hunted. CXX Squadron will coordinate search efforts to locate vessels below and above the surface. The squadron comprises two crewed aircraft and engineering and communication specialists providing specialised support.
The deployment of the Poseidon force on Exercise DYNAMIC MANTA underscores their ability to operate simultaneously at home and abroad, with ongoing operations in the North Atlantic from their home base at RAF Lossiemouth.
Exercise DYNAMIC MANTA is one of the two major anti-submarine exercises held annually by NATO, you can read more here.
Excellent! We need to harry the Russian subs in the Med 7×24…back to their home ports. Make it clear that the Med is our NATO is back yard!
I think we will be training NATO forces not theirs. Whatever we did to them would be far better than being on the frontline in the Ukraine. Best thing the Russian sub crews could do is defect.
Do we have enough to go playgames???
If you don’t play carefully calibrated games, where the umpire knows what is going on both side of the curtain, you never know the true effectiveness of the kit state and crews.
There will be a series of quite deliberate set ups of deliberately varying difficulty to determine this.
Games? Most professionals call it essential training mate.
Training is paramount to using the limited assets we have. The Maritime Force is capable but far too small. Double the numbers would clearly be welcome and allow better coverage of our backyard with scope to deploy to support our other top assets in the Fleet.
Come on PM shell up and allow the UK actually do what its top at.
Even another 3-4 would be a significant boost in capability and could probably be shoehorned into existing ground infrastructure. So the costs won’t be too absurd.
Problem with blinking the number of P8 is training pipeline and ground / maintenance facilities won’t be adequate.
Not sure that’s true Lossiemouth has received massive investment to enable MPA fleet support. 3-4 more aircraft should be doable with perhaps a further 30-50 million being spent on base infrastructure. So not going to be a deal breaker. HMG need to cough up. Sort out the mess of their doing and get the armed forces match fit.
I disagree.
3 more P8 could well get funded along with extra A400M – would slot in.
Just as funding T32 is the most likely for RN with Mk41 for T31 as it is a quick increase in fleet lethality.
Army – god knows how they will waste it this time!
Army are going for a new Quantum torpedo armed flying tank. With phasers, deflector shields and ablative armour. They are calling it defiant. It will be ready in 2500 after several trillion spent on development, they will get the prototype into service… In 2500 then scrap the project after they realised it couldn’t hold enough Generals onboard to make it trurlly effective. The specification was too aspirational as no flying tank can hold 24+ generals in a sumptuous conference suite with bunks, washrooms and a butlers pantry in its hull.
Agree. P8 order will probably be included w/ a future US purchase to obtain favorable terms. Immediate cost to support T-32 programme relatively minimal; activity will be confined to conceptual design.
One Army initiative Big Ben may well fund–additional CR-2 MBT conversions to CR-3 (at least the remainder of operational fleet, w/ some sort of incentive kicker for early deliveries). Possible overture to Oman for repossession of existing fleet of 38. Munitions order is a given (uncertain whether there is a separate Treasury funding line for restocking contributions to Ukraine). Other orders may be dependent on budget delta. 🤔
There is a separate funding line for serviceable munitions.
However, anything close to EOL or written off as unserviceable won’t get a good accounting treatment.
So for instance removing M270 from front line attracts funding to take an old M270 and get it back to the front line.
Same with CH2 that is current and serviceable.
If you send things like Harpoon which are written off or OOS then you are saving disposal costs so treasured view is nil value.
Same with end of life ammunition.
It gets a bit greyer where there is a viable upgrade pathway involved.
Accountants and auditors are the world’s real power brokers. ☹️
I have always been intrigued that serial numbers for 16 RAF P8 have been allocated. A spotter mate shows them to me in his little book.
Hi DM
I seem to recall a few months ago you noted a similar point re the new b737 awacs. Five serial numbers have been allocated (only three ordered to date)? Do I have my facts straight?
Morning K.
No mate! Not me regards AWACS. Good news on the AUKUS deals, but I fear what happens when Labour get in, their membership voted against AUKUS.
Sorry,my bad! Indeed,excellent news on the AUKUS sub deal. It’s encouraging to see the continued by -partisan commitment to AUS defence- both the current government and the opposition.
I do hope UK Labour are adult enough to appreciate the value of the AUKUS alliance!
Hmmm…just read a BBC article which stated R. Sunak will announce an additional £4.95B settlement for MoD for remainder of CY23 (£1.98B) and CY24 (£2.97B). £3.0B of delta to support AUKUS; £1.95B for munitions, etc. If proven to be an accurate account, does not appear to be sufficient to underwrite numerous purchases. Sorry, really believed Big Ben would deliver a substantial increase. 🤔😳🙃
Wait a few hours and we will know.
BW is the only guy who has ever delivered budget increases?
He has already got an inflation increase. So this is real extra money on top of Doris’ £16Bn.
This should also be over and above the replacement of usable inventory – as opposed to written off items donated.
Munition stocks is a vague term. That could mean anything. RN & RAF will use it to increase stocks of existing stuff. Army will use it to create a Gucci 155mm shell they can afford to buy 25 of but can’t fire them because they haven’t got enough rounds to clear them for active service?
Original requirement was for 16 P8s; we got 9…..
Original requirement for MRA4 was more than 16 but as the budget was expended it fell to 12 then 9.
P8’s then replaced the rump of MRA4 1:1…..
OT
Whilst the thread is on a nautical theme, (Its only me from over the sea, said barnacle bill the sailor)
the Guardian is currently reporting on the latest on the NORD2 pipeline blast:
Divers used chartered yacht to sabotage Nord Stream pipelines – report
The underwater bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September was carried out by a team of divers operating from a 15-metre chartered yacht called the Andromeda, according to a new report.
The report in Der Spiegel traces the Andromeda’s route around the Baltic from its home marina in Rostock on 6 September to the German island of Rügen and then finally to the Danish island of Christiansø, close to the site of the blasts on 26 September.
Experts have questioned whether the amount of explosives used in the sabotage attacks, estimated to be several hundred kilograms, as well with the necessary breathing apparatus and other equipment could have been carried on such a small boat, raising the question of whether another vessel was involved.
Der Spiegel said that one of the six-person crew on the Andromeda was using a forged Bulgarian passport, but the German investigators have yet to identify the nationality of the bombers, or attribute responsibility to any government. A New York Times report this week cited intelligence sources as saying a pro-Ukrainian group was involved, but German authorities have warned about the possibility of a “false-flag” operations in which misleading clues are left deliberately to point in the wrong direction.
The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement in the attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which were built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany, and are majority-owned by the Russian state-owned company Gazprom. They were not operational at the time of the attack, which came seven months after Vladimir Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, but they were filled with gas, which bubbled to the surface, creating a wide area of visible turbulence.
The Spiegel quotes a harbour master in Rügen as saying the group that hired the Andromeda were dressed like normal sailors, and that he saw them carrying shopping bags of provisions to the boat, speaking a language that “sounded Polish or Czech to him”. He said there were several men and a woman.
The Andromeda is a Bavaria C50, a sailing boat made by a German company, Bavaria Yachts. It has five cabins and room for up to 11 people. It has a platform at the back to dive from.
At the site of the blasts, the Baltic Sea is about 80 metres deep, requiring specialist diving skills and special air tanks, one with a helium-oxygen mixture and one with pure oxygen, the Spiegel report said.
Each dive would have required the boat to be over the pipeline for about three hours. To have laid explosives on two pipelines 4km apart would probably have required four dives over a few days.
Diving experts say such extended deep dives would have required a decompression chamber for the divers, which would not fit on a yacht. There are also question on whether there would be room for the required explosives. The Danish and Swedish governments have said that the blasts were equivalent to the power of “several hundred kilograms of explosive”. Some experts say up to 2,000kg would have been needed.
“We have been presented a piece of a puzzle. However, we don’t know how big the puzzle is. Is it 50 pieces, 500 or 5,000 pieces?” said Christian Mölling, the head of the centre for security and defence at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
“Was there was a second boat and did somebody transport the explosive from somewhere else?” Mölling asked. “So that’s why I think there are pieces of the puzzle missing for the moment.”
The chair of the Bundestag’s intelligence oversight committee, Konstantin von Notz, has warned the press “to be as cautious as possible with any conclusions at this point in time”.
He told Die Zeit the investigation was “very likely to be dealing with a state or quasi-state actor because it is very demanding to transport large quantities of explosives – up to two tons are now being discussed – undetected to the right place in the Baltic Sea, to transport them into a relevant depth in order to trigger several explosions in a controlled manner”.
He said a “state-backed act of terrorism makes it more likely that false or deceptive clues were laid”.
The German public prosecutor’s office has said that a boat had been searched between 18 and 20 January over “suspicions it could have been used to transport explosive devices that exploded on 26 September 2022”.
I thought we had to be worried about state of the art submersible drones or submarines attacking pipelines. I am going to be miffed if it’s just some divers on a ship anchored over the pipelines for a couple of days.
Thought we needed sophisticated underwater surveillance – not a big pair of binoculars on a ship patrolling above the pipelines.
Anyway. Nothing to see here. Move on 🙂
Hopefully integrated review outcome will add 3-4 more MPAs to RAF fleet. Hugely in demand and vital assets.
I had 5 or 6 F18 Super Hornets fly over me very low on my walk today at Kessingland/Benacre, flying SSW along the beach. Is there an exercise on? Up to c1990 we had loads of jets flying frequently locally, but the last 20 or 30 years they’re quite rare. First time I’ve seen Hornets here.