Naval Forces Europe casts its attention on Africa and the Black Sea

By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor

Vice Adm. Henry G. Ulrich III, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe (CNE), spent time early this year in Ghana, Gabon, Angola and South Africa looking for military partners, offering security assistance and searching for ways to create new military coalitions with networked communications.

Ulrich also has cast his eyes — and his forces — eastward, building relations with nations in the Black Sea region, including new NATO members Bulgaria and Romania, as well as Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, he has continued the efforts of his predecessor to reduce the Navy’s footprint in the Mediterranean to a fraction of its level of a decade ago, when naval forces totaled about 25 warships, including several submarines. Today, two ships are permanently assigned to the Sixth Fleet, the U.S. operational command in the Mediterranean, normally augmented by four warships and one or two submarines from the Atlantic Fleet. The dedicated naval aviation presence there comprises four P-3C maritime patrol aircraft plus a few utility helicopters and transports, a stark contrast to the 15 or more P-3Cs in the region just a decade ago.

The U.S. naval presence in Europe and the Mediterranean is diminished to the point that it often is difficult for commanders to make ships available to train with longtime U.S. allies in Western Europe, said Cmdr. Craig Anderson, desk officer for international security strategy in Northern Europe and NATO for the chief of naval operations.

“We do not have as extensive a presence [in Europe], so we take advantage of the opportunities we do have for cooperative deployments. There are just fewer chances for us to train with other navies and [conduct] port visits,” he said.

After 60 years of intensive focus on Western Europe and the Mediterranean regions, U.S. naval forces in Europe are in the midst of fundamental reform to deal with a rapidly changing strategic environment shaped in part by military concerns about terrorist activities across in Africa, more demanding U.S. maritime security requirements and a growing U.S. dependence on West African crude oil.

U.S. military leaders have pointed to Africa as an incubator for terrorists. Gen. James L. Jones, NATO commander, told Seapower in 2004: “In Africa, there are clear signs of fundamentalists taking root and fomenting all kinds of problems for the future.”

Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, said in January: “We’ve captured what we believe are some pirates off the Horn of Africa. There is piracy in lots of places. There is drug trafficking. There is weapon trafficking. There’s illegal immigration. … It’s the full spectrum.”

This is particularly worrisome, said Ulrich, because, “A lot of shipping is coming from … Africa, either around the Cape [of Good Hope] or originating in Africa.” One of his goals is “to have better awareness of where that shipping is coming from [and] what it’s doing, and to be able to provide that information back to the East Coast of the United States.”

Achieving that end will require partnerships with nations in the region. Ulrich is working with “the maritime forces on the west coast of Africa” to improve their security, surveillance and policing capabilities “so they know what’s going through their waters and what’s originating from their ports.”

For most of the nations in the region, “their big focus with maritime safety and security is economic,” said Cmdr. Mark McDonald, spokesman for CNE. Petroleum, vital to the economic development of the region and to the U.S. economy, is of particular interest. Gabon, for example, is concerned about attacks on, and pilfering from, oil wells at sea, he said.

“Fishing is, in many cases, critical to their survival,” he said. Piracy, smuggling and illegal fishing are serious problems in the region, as is human trafficking.

Almost 2 million of the 13.5 million barrels of petroleum products imported daily into the United States during 2005 originated from West African oil fields, said Jamal Qureshi, lead analyst of the Oil Markets Group of PFC Energy in Washington, D.C. Nigeria is the largest producer in the region, followed by Angola, Gabon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast. He predicts the percentage of U.S. oil imports from the region probably will rise during the next five to 10 years.

He noted two advantages of crude from West Africa.

“It is very easy to load up to a tanker and pop straight across to the [U.S.] Gulf Coast market, one of the most important crude markets in the world. West African crudes have become a swing crude between the Atlantic and Pacific basins. Wherever the prices are best, the crude can flow either way, east or west,” Qureshi said. “It tends to be high-quality crude, it’s easier to process, it produces more of the clean products we need more easily, so it’s more valuable.”

Illegal pilfering of oil is a problem, especially in Nigeria.

“Generally, all sorts of pirating is going on,” Qureshi said. “A lot of puncturing of pipelines. About 20 percent of Nigeria’s crude production right now is offline because of ethnic and criminal unrest going on in the Niger Delta. The communities in the Niger Delta are extremely unhappy about the distribution of revenues within Nigeria, and we’ve seen increasing willingness to express that though violence directed specifically at the oil industry.

“If significant volumes are taken offline in Nigeria, that can affect the price [of oil], especially if the market is tight anyway from other factors around the world,” he said.

Security of the oil properties is one reason behind the CNE’s initiative to convince African nations to invest in a network to improve their maritime domain awareness, which could include the commercial Automated Identification System (AIS), a shipboard broadcast system that acts like a transponder, capable of handling 4,500 data reports every minute and updates every two seconds. Like an air traffic-control system, AIS provides positive identification and greatly increases maritime awareness and safety.

“We do it every day with airplanes, and it’s time for us to start thinking about doing the same thing with ships at sea,” Ulrich said.

The cost of setting up an AIS network is about $4,000, and the coastal radars required cost about $150,000 per unit, which is expensive for many countries, but would be recoverable as the system contributes to antipiracy and antipilferage efforts, McDonald said.

In addition, Ulrich is devoting attention to goodwill missions, particularly along Africa’s west coast. The low number of submarines in the Mediterranean has freed the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land, at least for now, to support the CNE’s focus on Africa. Accompanied by the frigate USS Carr, Emory S. Land is making its second annual deployment to the Gulf of Guinea and the ports of several African nations.

The tender is not a sleek warship, but a massive hull filled with repair shops ideal for lending assistance to the navies and coast guards in the region. Its crew also takes on humanitarian aid projects during port visits.

Ulrich considers Emory S. Land “ideal” for building partnerships in West Africa. With very limited budgets, many African navies and coast guards are equipped with a range of patrol craft but are limited in repair and upkeep capabilities for them. The ship’s crew and embarked training teams are able to use their expertise and resources to repair ships and machinery, train personnel in maintenance and operations, contributing to the overall maritime effectiveness of the African sea services.

Since 1978, CNE has sent ships on the annual West African Training Cruise, also for the purpose of fostering security cooperation and conducting joint training with West African navies. Last September, the amphibious dock ship USS Gunston Hall and the high-speed vessel Swift participated in a Royal Navy-coordinated amphibious exercise in Senegal, and also conducted riverine, live-fire, amphibious raid and small-boat training.

Looking east, Ulrich said some nations of the Black Sea region, such as Bulgaria and Romania, “want to build their capability and capacity in their maritime security forces for all the same reasons as Africa. So if we can help them it’s a win/win for us.”

Ulrich wants to foster cooperation among maritime security forces that would patrol their home waters, share information, forewarning each, including the United States, about potential maritime problems.

Earlier this year, CNE dispatched the destroyer USS Porter to the Black Sea to train with the Romanian and Ukrainian navies in maritime security operations, including visit, board, search-and-seizure tactics. CNE sent explosive ordnance disposal teams to Azerbaijan to assist and train in the clearing of land mines. CNE also has been helping the Ukrainian Navy build “a professional noncommissioned officer corps, something they’ve never had before,” said McDonald.

CNE routinely contributes forces to Operation Active Endeavor, NATO’s ongoing effort to monitor shipping passing through the Mediterranean, primarily focused on searching for and interdicting terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, illegal drugs, human trafficking and arms smuggling, primarily from North Africa to Southern Europe.

Meanwhile, as Ulrich is reaching out to new areas, he continues to close facilities and cut back personnel, in concert with Navy-wide force reductions. For example, Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron Two at Rota, Spain, was relocated to Whidbey Island, Wash., the same base of its Pacific Fleet sister squadron, for reasons of efficiency. The helicopter combat support squadron at Sigonella, Sicily, was moved to Norfolk, Va., last September, and now is deployed to Iraq.

With submarine deployments to the Mediterranean reduced, the Navy will close its submarine support base at La Maddalena, Sardinia, homeport of Emory S. Land. CNE’s manpower, which has dropped to 10,000 from 14,000 since 2003, will decline by an additional 2,500 with the closure of La Maddalena, counting the tender’s crew of 1,100 sailors and Marines. The ultimate fate of the submarine tender has yet to be determined.

The Navy has been dramatically shrinking its land-based footprint in Europe during the last few years, an effort begun by Ulrich’s predecessor, Mullen. Most far reaching was the consolidation of the CNE staff in London with the CNE staff in Naples, Italy, integration with the staff of the Sixth Fleet and absorption of the staff of commander, Fleet Air, Mediterranean, resulting in one staff that serves CNE and its battle arm, the Sixth Fleet. The consolidation trimmed about 1,000 billets, leaving a staff of about 500, McDonald said.

The change in CNE’s size, roles and missions is a change for Ulrich, personally.

“I’ve been trained all my life to sink navies,” he told Seapower. “What we’re doing [in Africa] is building maritime security forces … so we’re learning to do that. What I’ve learned so far is that the tools, resources and skill sets we need to help build these maritime security forces is different than it was when I was trying to sink navies.”