Ships from Standing NATO Maritime Group One (SNMG1), Turkish frigate TCG Gokova and Royal Navy frigate HMS Westminster successfully completed an important training mission in support of joint logistics.
The two NATO ships escorted civilian cargo vessel M/V Gute through high traffic sea lanes during her transit from Norway to Sczecin, Poland carrying Norwegian military equipment for NATO exercise Noble Jump.
The safety and security of sea-based trade and transportation routes is critical to the prosperity of the Baltic nations and the NATO Alliance. NATO say in a release:
“Escort training, such as that practiced by TCG Gokova and HMS Westminster, enhances interoperability among NATO and commercial shipping and provides reassurance to NATO allies and partners that NATO is capable and ready to maintain freedom of navigation in the Baltic Sea.
This training is part of Maritime Express, a new way of thinking about training opportunities for the NATO Standing Naval Forces. The concept is focused on creating training opportunities by NATO ships at sea to maximize readiness and interoperability. SNMG1 is using the concept to adapt their schedule for the best possible training opportunities.”
If it could be organised a good exercise would be to move a US Mech Infantry div from the US to France in convoy. To make it even more realistic then Mech Inf Div then needs to move out to the German Polish border in battle formation. Make it a 20 day exercise from which 10 days is to cross the Atlantic, 1 day to unload fighting formation and 36 hours to get the fighting formations from Brest to Frankfurt an der Oder, the rest is loading and unloading the logistics train. If you really want to push it then it should be a national guard unit rather than a front line unit.
The attacking force would be British, Norwegian and German subs. The defending force US, British and French surface vessels with a few subs from the US and France. Air assets thrown in. Area Atlantic Ocean, that would be a real test, not two warships escorting a single merchantman.
Not only would it test the ability to get such a convoy through contested waters and the loading of the logistics in the correct order. It would also test the French and German police for example in getting through such a reinforcement if the need ever happened.
It would be a good TV program to watch.
I know it will never happen but as a wise man once said if you want peace you must be prepared for war and this is something that has not been done by NATO for a long time.
Eh? But The Thin Pinstriped Line argued that convoy was obsolete as we hadn’t got the ships for escorting, and “they” had got the ships for anti-commerce work either…
I think his right.
We barely have enough ships to protect one task group (not sure we really do), after that we would have nothing left for escort duty.
Think Falkland era where the carriers were protected by more ships than we currently have.
Ok in a larger war there would be multiple allies involved, but equally there would be more than one task force and so the problem just scales rather than fixes itself.
OPVs don’t solve the problem as they can’t defend from any threat other than another OPV.