WEB SPECIAL - Northern Exposure
NORTHERN EXPOSURE
Iain Ballantyne visits the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean off the coast of northern Scotland and meets the ship's Commanding Officer and one of her aviators. Photos by Nigel Andrews.
Pictured: A Sea King ASAC Mk7 takes off from HMS Ocean during JMC 043; the carrier's Commanding Officer, Captain Tony Johnstone-Burt takes a call from the bridge. Both photos: Nigel Andrews.
CAPE WRATH is at the most north-western tip of mainland Britain and its name is very apt for, while on a mellow early winter's morning its craggy cliffs and crisp, gently rolling seas can be bathed in a soporific Arctic glow, should a grey curtain of cloud descend, and the swell become more lively, it becomes the bleakest of places.
It is into this most mercurial zone of King Neptune's domain that the Royal Navy ventured to tests its people and ships during the final Joint Maritime Course of 2004.
For, if there is one thing that the British fleet appreciates above all else, it is the fact that people, ships and concepts of naval warfare are nothing if they are not subjected to the vagaries of the ocean.
With the era of fleet versus fleet battles in the deep blue seas considered to be at an end, or at least in abeyance, the focus has become the littoral, the waters off a shore from where navies can exert influence deep inland.
Such warfare is nothing new in the Royal Navy, for its history is littered with episodes in which it was able to apply decisive effect to the course of events on land: From sustaining Wellington's bedraggled troops in the Peninsular, through numerous episodes in WW2 to the most recent wars in the Gulf.
There have been failures too, most notably the Dardanelles campaign of WW1.
Modern technology has served to enhance the reach of maritime forces, with naval helicopters, deep strike missiles and commando forces in the vanguard of warfare in the troubled 21st Century.
The main thrust of JMC 043 was to rehearse naval intervention in a turbulent situation that might call for the full range of the naval forces outlined above.
For the Royal Navy, the key assets to be exercised were the brand new assault ship HMS Albion - acting as the command vessel for a multi-national force - and HMS Ocean, the Iraq War veteran helicopter carrier that has been possibly the hardest working ship in the British fleet since her entry into service in 1998.
Her current Commanding Officer is Captain Tony Johnstone-Burt, who was keen that his ship should, prove her worth once more during the JMC. Captain Johnstone-Burt explained that the JMC scenario had been created to reflect the kind of complex reality that often confronts RN warships on deployment: "You can talk about such situations, you can evolve table top tactics, but nothing beats being at sea in a large group of ships and doing it for real. The exercise scenario we have here envisages the classic fragmentation of a nation state into five different pieces. They are all trying to establish themselves and are jostling for the right of passage at sea and for natural resources. The scenario depicts different levels of democracy in each part and the armed forces of the former state have been divided between them and there are defence alliances forming. It is like the situation that existed in the former-Yugoslavia in the 1990s and similar conditions have also been present in Africa over the years. If you are intervening in such a situation, it is very important that the Rules of Engagement are clear and appropriate...you want to protect your ships, but you also want to avoid escalation."
A ship such as Ocean is capable of far more than the war-fighting role that she performed in the Gulf two years ago - she has also proved herself in disaster relief and humanitarian aid missions, her embarked marines, helicopters and landing craft having helped hurricane ravaged communities recover.
That kind of task-other-than-war becomes difficult if hostilities are also likely to break out, which is just the sort of spanner a JMC scenario throws into the works.
Therefore, Ocean was tasked with carrying out an 'evacuation' of civilians ashore at the same time as she anticipated an attack from 'rogue elements' that might involve a suicide boat attack.
"Actually, when you are up against people like Al-Qaeda in the real world you cannot practice exactly what they going to do," acknowledged Captain Johnstone-Burt.
"But you can at least rehearse what you will do to counter the likely range of threats."
But the Royal Navy's game is increasingly not just a defensive one, for there is great discussion within the UK amphibious warfare world about the need to form expeditionary strike groups along the lines of those recently introduced by the US Navy.
The USN's Expeditionary Strike Group concept involves assault carriers, landing ships, marines, cruise missile-armed surface warships and submarines forming a comprehensive and self-contained task group that can exert influence many hundreds of miles inland.
Captain Johnstone-Burt backs the idea of the Royal Navy fielding similar task groups.
"The Royal Navy's amphibious ships are now one of the prongs of a double-headed spear," he said. "Ours is littoral manoeuvre, while the other is maritime strike, with the Invincible Class carriers at the tip. My view is that we should step away from being a Royal Navy platform, to become a Joint Services Platform capable of launching Army, Navy and RAF helicopters plus troops. I think that what was laid out in the Strategic Defence Review back in 1998 is coming of age - all three Armed Forces realise that they need to stand together and form a seamless team on operations."
While Ocean is used to hosting Army Apache gun ships and RAF Chinooks, it was unusual during the JMC to see Sea King Mk7 Airborne Surveillance and Control (ASAC) helicopters arrayed on her flight-deck.
The aircraft type has its origins two decades ago, when a lack of Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft left the Falklands War task force of 1982 dangerously exposed to air-attacks (through not being able to spot them developing over the horizon, in time to neutralise them at a safe distance).
With no fixed-wing AEW aircraft able to fly off the small Invincible Class carriers, the Sea King was later adapted to fill the capability gap. The Sea King Mk7 was only recently introduced into service, its new ASAC acronym heralding a revolution in naval warfare.
Its potential to exert extraordinary influence over a land battle was fully demonstrated during the Iraq War of 2003, where it was able to provide not only a battlespace picture to naval commanders but also a comprehensive, and highly detailed, battlefield picture for ground force commanders, including the Navy's own 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines, which spearheaded the Coalition offensive into southern Iraq.
During a break from flying aboard Ocean, Sea King Mk7 Observer Lieutenant Rob McKee, from 849 Naval Air Squadron's A Flight, explained the awesome potential of his aircraft:
"We are still in the business of Anti-Submarine Warfare, Anti-Surface Warfare and spotting air threats, but increasingly we are moving into the littoral side and that is why we are starting to work from assets like Ocean and RFAs.
Aside from assisting the ground forces directly, we can also help direct the Ocean's landing craft. Obviously once Ocean has put the troops ashore she withdraws over the horizon and one of our roles can be to control the landing craft so they know where their mother ship is and vice versa."
To cope with the new era of Joint Services Platform, and hosting aircraft such as the Sea King Mk7, Ocean may also evolve in a visible sense.
"The future for HMS Ocean is very exciting," said Captain Johnstone-Burt. "On the front line this ship needs to launch a landing force ashore with helicopters and landing craft as fast and economically as possible. One of our aspirations is to square the bow so we can put aircraft into the corner, which will enable more to be launched and recovered. We also need to be more network-enabled. That is all part of the shopping list for the next major refit, but, of course, everything is subject to budgetary constraints, so we will have to wait and see."
As ever with the Royal Navy, the people and the ships are ready, willing and able, but while they have managed to prevail in every conflict and other operation of recent times, the resources provided by Government have declined year-on-year. Exercises like the recent JMC will be for nothing if the politicians lack the moral and fiscal will to use naval forces properly.
Pictured: A Sea King ASAC Mk7 takes off from HMS Ocean during JMC 043; the carrier's Commanding Officer, Captain Tony Johnstone-Burt takes a call from the bridge. Both photos: Nigel Andrews.
• In the concluding part of our series on JMC 043 we will be looking at how the Royal Navy took charge of a US Navy surface warfare strike group and baptised it in the art of true littoral warfare. Buy the March 2005 edition of WARSHIPS IFR..