Task Force Handled 25 Piracy Incidents in Six Months Off Horn of Africa
Attacks reached a ten-year high as naval attention shifted to the Strait of Hormuz
A Royal Navy-led task group has intervened in more than two dozen piracy-related incidents off the Horn of Africa over the past six months, as attacks in the region reached a ten-year high.
Combined Task Force 151 was unable to prevent the seizure of a tanker last week, but the multinational group responded to 25 piracy-related incidents during the Royal Navy's six-month tenure of command. The 17 ships and units assigned over that period also carried out nearly 70 intelligence-gathering patrols to build a picture of potential illegal activity across the region.
Pirate action groups — typically a mothership and a couple of skiffs carrying boarding ladders, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — repeatedly attacked merchant shipping between 2005 and around 2013. A concerted international effort largely strangled the activity, but the threat never entirely disappeared and the underlying causes of poverty, lawlessness and the collapse of the Somali fishing industry were never resolved.
The resurgence coincides with a redistribution of naval attention. With the military-strategic focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz since the conflict began at the end of February, and the continuing threat to shipping in the Red Sea, pirates have been probing and approaching merchant vessels.
"Our collective naval presence, alongside the European Union's Operation Atalanta, has made a difference despite the broader tensions in the region; Deterrence works, but the threat has not gone away, and there is still much to do," said the task force's outgoing commanding officer Captain Jase Eacock, the Royal Navy's second most senior officer in the Middle East region.
The command tenure began four days before Operation Epic Fury started. In addition to Royal Navy personnel, Eacock drew on experts from seven other nations to coordinate the task force's activities from Bahrain.
The task force is responsible for more than three million square miles of ocean, with particular emphasis on the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa. It is one of five naval groups operating under the Combined Maritime Forces, a coalition of 47 nations, each group with a specific mission such as mine warfare or counter-terrorism.
Command has now passed to the Republic of Korea, which took charge during a ceremony at the Bahrain headquarters.
