Indian Navy/CG Take Down Another Pirate Ship

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More evidence the Indian Coast Guard and Navy is aggressively taking on pirates in the Eastern Indian Ocean. The cadet training ship INS Tir and the cutter CGS Samar have retaken a Thai fishing vessel, the Prantalay-11, being used as a mother-ship by Somali pirates, capturing 28 pirates and freeing 24 crewman.  This comes only a week after the Indian Navy and Coast Guard sank her sistership, the Prantalay-14. Three tuna fishing vessels Prantalay 11, Prantalay 12, Prantalay 14 were pirated on April 18 2010 in Indian ocean, some 1200 nm off Somali coast, with 77 crews on board, vessels were actively used by pirates as mother-ships after their owners refused to pay ransom.

Thanks to Eaglespeak for the heads up. He is still the go-to-guy for news on piracy. Continue reading →

More Information on Narco Sub

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There is a bit more public information on the narco sub found in Ecuador.

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Special to the Chronicle

“Experts have studied the narco submarine, which sits in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Painted a camouflage pattern of blue, black and gray, it is believed to be able to submerge about 50 feet.”

Details are still sketchy. I want to know if they had any ESM equipment, and if so, how sophisticated?

I’m really surprised that the smugglers chose an “Albacore” hull form that is optimized for performance under water. Surely it would spend most of its time on the surface and submerge only when it recognized there was a search unit in the area. A shape more like a WWII submarine would have made more sense in terms of covering long distances on the surface. And why the rudder above the hull, but none below? I’m impressed that they could build this in the jungle. I’m less impressed with their design choices, so I suspect the designers may not have been as expert as the DEA seems to think.

There is the possibility they intended to snorkel all the way? In that case the hull form would make more sense. Concern for snagging the rudder in the jungle where it was built might explain the rudder.

Some background here and here.

Shipbuilding–My Grand Plan–Navy and CG Work Together

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One of the criticisms of the Navy and Coast Guard’s ship building programs has been that they were not coordinated; that they should have been able to come up with a common hull. I think there may still be an excellent opportunity to do that and get the benefit of large scale series production, by combining the 25 ship Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC) with the last 31 ships of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program.

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A Tale of Two Harbor Defense Organizations–Part Two

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This is the second in a series comparing two incidents from World War II in which ships tried to force entry into a hostile harbor. Part one looked at the bloody, but ultimately successful British assault on the fortified port of St Nazaire. This part will look a German attempt to force their way into Oslo, Battle of Drøbak Sound. Part three considers what these incidents can tell us about what it takes to stop a terrorist attack on an American port using a ship as a weapon.

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Early in World War II, After the invasion of Poland, but before the invasion of France, the Germans invaded Norway to secure their access to Swedish steel and Iron ore and deny it to the British. (Denmark was also invaded on the same day, to secure airfields to support the Norway invasion.) Unlike their other invasions, there was no direct land route into Norway, so the invasion had to came by sea. With the Royal Navy and their French ally dominate at sea, the transit would be risky, but resistance from the Norwegians was expected to be light. Norway was at peace. They had only a small Navy and standing Army. Their defense depended primarily on mobilizing reservists. If they could be defeated before they mobilized, it would be a quick and relatively inexpensive campaign.

Six separate task forces would seize critical facilities all along the Norwegian coast. Rather than a Normandy style assault, the invasion of Norway looked like several simultaneous Special Forces operations. Troops would be landed from warships that could make the transit quickly. It would all be over before the Norwegian military could react–or so they thought.

The Target:

The particular operation we will examine was to seize the seat of power in Norway. It was intended to capture the capital, Oslo, and with it, the King, the Norwegian cabinet, the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) and the national gold reserve.

Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Harbor Defense Organizations–Part One

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This is the start of a three part series, the story of two harbor defense organizations, how one, already at war, well trained and well armed, failed to stop a small force, while another, ostensibly at peace, facing a vastly stronger force, and in many ways poorly prepared, managed to stop their enemy.

I’ll put both stories in context, but what I found most interesting and most relevant to current Coast Guard missions was the means employed and the relative success of each in stopping a hostile ship from reaching its objective inside a port. The third part will talk about implications for the Coast Guard.

File:Saint Nazaire Harbour 1942.png
First, the St Nazaire raid. This is normally told from the prospective of the heroic British sailors and commandos who successfully ran a small ship (about the size of a 210) into the gates of the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast of occupied Europe where major German warships, including the Battleship Tirpitz, could be serviced. There the four and a half tons of explosive packed into the bow of the ship, exploded, wrecking the dry dock gates and disabling it for the remainder of the war. Continue reading →

Piracy Update, 2/2/11

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Three Indian vessels, two Navy and one Coast Guard sank a pirate mothership, killing some of the pirates, taking 15 prisoner, and freeing 20 hostages after a 12 hour “battle” here and here. The Indian Navy vessels were Car Nicobar class fast attack craft, about the size of the Webber class Fast Response Cutter, a bit faster, with much larger crews. Reportedly they have eleven machine guns on board. That may include the 30 mm main armament. The Coast Guard Ship, CGS Sankalp, sounds a lot like an OPC, 2,300 tons, helicopter deck and hanger, 25 knots and a crew of 106. Interestingly all three vessels were relatively new. All were delivered in the last three years. Continue reading →

Bring Back the Coast Guard ASW Mission

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With the end of the Soviet Union, it looked like there was no longer a significant threat from submarines. The Coast Guard, whose ASW assets were already largely obsolete, took the opportunity to simplify its training and maintenance requirements by eliminating what remained of the Coast Guard’s ASW capability. It made sense at the time, but times have changed.

The Emerging Threat

For the first time, with narcotics traffickers starting to use true submarines, it looks like an ASW capability is essential to do a peacetime mission. (The primary surface ship ASW sensor, the towed array, can also help us find semi-submersibles and possibly other targets as well.)

In addition, the threat of military submarines has reemerged.  There are still relatively few nuclear submarines in the hands of possible adversaries (other than possibly Russia) but their numbers are growing, and new air independent submarine technologies are making diesel electric submarines deadlier then ever.

Why the Navy will need Help

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Manning Ships, Navy Acknowledges Mistake, Will the Coast Guard?

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The Navy has admitted they made a mistake by attempting to minimize the manning of their ships using a concept called “Optimal Manning.” As unfortunate as the mistake may have been–and it has resulted in a lot of pain and may have weakened the service for years to come–poor morale and broken ships–at least now it has been acknowledged. There has been some soul searching about how the mistake was made. The general consensus seems to be that a new generation of leaders was absolutely positive they have evolved to be smarter than those that went before, and since their solution is so obviously superior, there is no need to test it on a small scale be for applying it service wide.

Has the Coast Guard made a similar mistake in attempting to replace twelfve 378s with only eight National Security Cutters, based on an untried concept called “Crew Rotation Concept (CRC)?” Unlike the Navy’s mistake, if we have made a mistake in adopting this concept, it cannot be quickly reversed by moving billets ashore back afloat.

Continue reading →