British warships join task force to protect Red Sea shipping

British ships and personnel have joined a new international task force to safeguard ships passing through one of the world’s most dangerous ‘choke points’, say the Royal Navy.

HMS Montrose and RFA Lyme Bay joined the US-led Combined Task Force 153 for a “demonstration of naval might and unity in the Red Sea”.

According to a Royal Navy news release:

“The task force is the fourth international naval group – numbered 150 through 153 – dedicated to security at sea from the Suez Canal to the Western Seaboard of the Indian sub-continent, from the shores of Iraq to those of the Seychelles, in all more than three million square miles of ocean, tackling issues as complex and challenging as terrorism, piracy, smuggling.

Its focus is the Red Sea from the Suez Canal to the narrows of the Bab-al-Mandeb, one of the key straits on the world’s major shipping lanes. Every 24 hours around 50 large merchant ships pass through the BAM – as it’s known by many seafarers: tankers, gas carriers, container ships, car carriers. Should it become blocked or unsafe for merchant shipping the impact on the UK alone – which relies on regular supplies of liquid natural gas from the Gulf for example – would be severe.”

The Royal Navy add that last year’s accidental blockage of the Suez Canal, when the Ever Given became stuck – cost global trade more than £280m per hour, or £6bn per day.

“The BAM is just as much of a trade ‘choke point’ – roughly 20 miles of water separating Yemen and Djibouti – and passing shipping has been threatened on occasions by missile-armed rebels.”