These two gentlemen who are going to be speaking tonight have actually done serious, serious research on maritime and naval matters.
Commodore Keith, was that commander facing what some have been the Hudson fellows at the program at Oxford University for this entire academic year.
So they have nine months for in-depth research into their projects and they are
presenting the fruits of that research today in an exciting bubble presentation.
We will begin with Commodore with Stanley to speak about the Indian Ocean, which as you can see is one of the largest.
But he has travelled it in its entirety and most of all knows how to defend it.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks very much.
Whenever I speak to a military audience, I do so in the show knowledge that most of them are there with having no choice but of course, to go.
For those of you who are non-military, I never cease to be pleasantly surprised when I talk to a civilian audience that anybody turns up at all.
So thank you from both of us. For those of you who have found or made the time to be here, I'm going to speak for about an hour between us,
which is standard for these sort of Tuesday events and take questions at the end, 30 minutes or so.
If I'm still talking in 40 minutes, I intend to just shut up and give the floor to Commander Vincent.
Okay. And I'll introduce the Indian Ocean in a bit more detail in a minute.
But the national security strategy, a strong Britain in an age of uncertainty,
was signed off jointly by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister in October 2010, including the ABC's.
It's 37 pages long and you can access it or even buy it online for those of you who have not had the opportunity to read it.
I will save you the £14.75 that it costs and tell you that amongst many things it mentions the intercontinental reach of our time zone.
It mentions the global force of our language, talks about the ingenuity of our people,
and that our political, economic and cultural authority far exceeds our size.
Interestingly, it contains no definition of what is meant by security.
Rather more alarmingly, if you're a sailor or you live on an island, it contains no mention of maritime security at all.
What it does say is that a strategy is of little value without the tools to implement it.
It does say that the National Security Council has reached a clear conclusion that Britain's
national interest requires us to reject any notion of the shrinkage of our influence.
It mentions that we benefit from and must continue to exploit a wide range of alliances and partnerships through which we achieve collective security.
It talks about globalisation and the interconnectivity of technology, travel, migration and the trade in goods, security and capital.
It specifically comments on how much harder it is to isolate the UK from shelves outside our own territory.
Disruption of oil and gas supplies to the UK.
Oil price instability and short to medium term disruption to international supplies of other resources.
Both make the list of national security strategy priority risks excluding the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Seven other countries or in specific mention in the National Security Strategy, some of them more than once, and all of them feature on this slide.
So what do I mean when I talk about maritime security? There are a number of complementary but subtly different definitions in existence.
From a UK perspective, it can be defined as joint activity and I think that is significant.
That's important. There is a maritime security as purely the affair of navies are long gone.
So joint activity coordinated with other government departments and international partners to deter and prevent illegal acts,
to contribute to the vision of a safe maritime environment.
And hence, in keeping with the statement in the National Security Strategy, reduce harm to the UK by tackling threats at arm's length.
Maritime security operations cry out for collaboration, shared information, team efforts and a comprehensive approach.
This approach must be multinational, across governmental and interagency.
It must leverage the experience. Skills, knowledge and resources of navies.
Big and small. Coast Guard Air Forces. The offshore industry is not just oil and gas fishing agencies,
Houlton Harbour authorities and the full spectrum of commercial maritime shipping interests and companies both afloat and ashore.
Now, this is a recurring theme in my analysis, and I make no claims that this is either a new or new and unique concept.
Over 100 years ago, American Seapower theorist Alfred Salmon called the Sea the Great Highway.
He observed that the global trading system that used it was delicate and needed cooperation and collaboration to police properly.
In many ways, in my view, that system is even more delicate now than it was then.
More recently, in 2006, Admiral Mike Mullen, then the chief of Naval Operations for the US Navy and later chairman of the US Joint Chiefs,
called for the creation of what he called a thousand ship Navy.
The idea behind the Thousand ship Navy was that navies and other uses of the sea,
such as the shipping companies and such of the organisations I've just briefly touched on.
Should, regardless of their capabilities or technical sophistication, work to promote global maritime security by closer cooperation and.
And and cooperating to confront common problems such as arms smuggling and terrorism.
And obviously, that concept has wider applicability.
It's also now referred to as Global Maritime Partnership, and it's actually been first outlined about a year before Mullen's statement.
In an article published in Proceedings in which pirates, human traffickers,
drug smugglers and other organised current criminals were identified as being amongst the transnational
threats that the power of concerted states and maritime organisations should be harnessed to confront.
Now, what exactly does a ship, Navy or Global Maritime Partnership might mean in practice?
Has been harder to determine and harder to deliver, partly because the US Navy has been at pains to stress the voluntary nature of any
association and so has avoided explicit prescriptions of what it ought to cover.
But in broad terms, the aim is to encourage information sharing to achieve a common awareness of the normal picture,
and also to quantify, thereby quantify, help, quantify and and map illicit maritime activity at sea in order that maritime security assets,
essentially ships and aircraft, may be positioned to deter such activity and disrupt such criminal and terrorist use.
The sea now has most navies and certainly most regional navies and in the worst
affected areas currently lack the capacity to act on such information effectively.
The concept also extends to capacity building, and the suggestion has been made that major navies,
the US Navy in particular, should provide support and assistance in that context.
By my experience,
this has met with a mixed reception as although the US Navy has been at pains to emphasise its awareness of other nations sovereignty,
it has nevertheless met with accusations of playing what one commentator has called Globo Cop in the maritime arena.
Global Maritime Partnership is a promising but as yet largely unrealised element of a security regime that is faced with the problems
of maritime disorder that is growing rapidly as all kinds of exploitation of the sea intensify and illicit activity keeps pace.
In this context, those who argue that the overall security of the maritime world can be ensured by
multilateral treaties or regimes in anything other than a limited or temporary sense.
Without the leadership of a power such as the United States have, in my view,
scant evidence on which to base their faith in sharing in the sharing of information.
This information sharing must overcome cultural differences, technological difficulties, and even in some instances, commercial self-interest.
For some, this will be outside their comfort zones.
The question and challenge behind this issue is are we intellectually and culturally equipped and prepared for such transparencies?
Do our organisations or institutions, and even down to our muse support this?
Now, before I talk about the importance of the Indian Ocean,
let me first define it in both for the purposes of the presentation, indeed in the context of my paper.
As an observer noticed, it's a Bay Area.
It's actually according to the International Maritime Organisation.
Bigger than that, the boundary with the Pacific.
For example, it comes south of Tasmania, the band of the Atlantic, south of South Africa and the northernmost pair area in Appals,
credited by the I.R.A. as being part of the Indian Ocean, is in fact Iranian.
And it's the Iranian port of Bandera, Imam Khomeini, which is actually just off the slide at the very northern end of the Persian or Arabian Gulf.
So the purposes for the purposes of the International Maritime Organisation, the Indian Ocean contains everything on that slide,
plus a bit more and plus what most of you will have understood to be the Persian and Arabian Gulf.
Now, pressures on the sea in general and worldwide have been mounting steadily since the end of the Cold War.
And since that period, the incidence of piracy has increased both the transportation of legitimate goods and the smuggling of drugs,
arms, natural resources, slaves and other illegal migrants by sea has increased substantially,
and fish stocks at the same time have been depleted in some areas, almost to exhaustion.
Exploration of the sea has now reached unprecedented levels, driven by the rapidly rising demand for resources and living space on land.
Due to population growth and environmental degradation,
states and corporations are turning to the sea more than ever before for energy in the form
of offshore oil and gas and structures that are capturing or tidal power and for minerals,
drinking water distilled from the sea and even waste disposal.
The sea is also being exploited more than ever before for food, both from increasingly depleted fish stocks and from fish farmed in sheltered waters.
Added to these pressures is the exploitation of coastal areas by the wealthy portion of the world's population for tourism and leisure,
including the building of structures such as the Palms, the Palm Island developments of Dubai.
This is a trend that is likely to continue as the proportion of the world's population able to afford such privileges grows.
Greater economic activity will create more targets for maritime crime and terrorism in the commercial sphere.
As the trend for using fewer and larger cargo ships in a smaller number of giant ports continues.
While a number of strategic choke points obviously remains the same and the quantity of goods in transit grows,
the opportunities for successful criminal interdiction will increase, a sea movements intensify, and coastal activity increases.
Climate change is likely simultaneously to cause the sea to encroach upon the land.
These opposing pressures mean that the sea will become more contested, not less, in the future.
Resource depletion and the loss of productive land to environmental damage will increase.
The economic and political pressures on the littoral regions and may well make may well make conflict more likely.
Currently, international law, in the form of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,
sets the limits of territorial seas and determine the rights of states within exclusive economic zones,
thereby imposing some degree of order on coastal regions.
BUNKHOUSE was the product of a compromise between the often conflicting interests of coastal states and maritime powers.
And there is a danger that in the future,
political pressures exerted by sea with migration and rising sea levels and the attendant environmental and security
concerns could create rifts between states such that Anglos is able to exert less and less force in practice,
perhaps even to the point of fracture. Now,
this context of an increasingly pressurised and potentially semi lawless and somewhat chaotic environment
is the one in which possible developments in maritime criminality and terror must be must be assessed.
Upward trends in population and economic activity and resulting rising demand
for marine resources could aggravate three kinds of threat and vulnerability,
in particular criminality and criminal terrorist cooperation.
Weaknesses in the international trade system and the threat of maritime insurgency.
In simple terms, you can think of the Indian Ocean is a driven geographical region where one third
of the world's population lives in the 36 states across its rim or around its rim,
interacting as neighbours and sometimes competitors outside powers pass through for economic and strategic
purposes and resources vital to international trade and environmental stability must be managed and protected.
The global quest for energy security, coupled with the continuing rise of Asian economies,
have made this region even more critical for the stability of the international system system.
Population settlements with within.
Virtually all countries in the world that have maritime access are often more concentrated in the coastal areas rather than the interior.
And the Indian Ocean is no exception. Given the significant proportion of the world's population that live within it,
and the fact that almost 40% of the globe's total coastline is in this region, the significance of the Indian Ocean becomes more and more profound.
90% of world trade by weight and volume and 80% as measured by value, is carried by seaborne commerce.
Globalisation may be seen as a significant demand factor in the rapid expansion of maritime commerce,
but it is also it has been enabled and facilitated by these same developments.
Increasingly sophisticated means for transporting large cargoes such as containerisation,
or increasingly large vessels for specialised transport of liquid and dry cargoes in bulk.
That has transformed the speed and efficiency of maritime commerce.
It has. This has made possible the development of globally distributed supply chains and production processes,
and thus the efficient allocation of comparative advantage for the production of food,
other agricultural commodities, minerals and even finished goods.
Investments in large specialised ships and in high speed cargo handling systems introduced economies of scale that made the cost per unit cheaper,
even over a longer distance bus distances by sea than by land.
This region represents a particularly heightened and concentrated form of the globalisation embodied in maritime commerce,
witnessed it witnesses the transportation of a very significant proportion of the world seaborne trade.
It simultaneously has a high concentration of the fastest growing economies in the world.
A high concentration. The most politically unstable.
And a greater proportion of the Indian Ocean than any other ocean is occupied by significantly insular,
insular nations, many with challenging population dynamics in terms of growth and age profiles.
It's important to recognise or to emphasise that the Indian Ocean strategic economic value is linked primarily to global trade.
Less than one quarter of its trade is amongst the states on the rim.
So arguably the world's most important trading crossroads.
And this is married to the reality of globally significant deposits of primarily raw materials that are vital to the world's economy.
Then I think the strategic importance of this maritime space becomes even clearer.
The most obvious of those materials are obviously oil and gas,
but the Indian Ocean and the Indian Ocean region also host a significant deposits of bauxite,
chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, nickel, phosphates, titanium, tungsten, uranium and zinc.
One fifth of the world's energy supply is now travelled across the Indian Ocean.
Largely, I have to say, from west to east, from the Persian Gulf to China, Japan and India in the reverse direction,
super ships carrying manufactured, manufactured goods from Asia to the Middle Eastern Europe.
The majority of us in this room have unknowingly, I suspect, seen total seaborne trade more than quadruple in our lifetimes.
Singapore is the busiest container port in the world and is nearly one fifth of the world's container traffic.
The independent linkages of shipping, ports and maritime trade across the Indian Ocean are expanding.
And for example, the Port of Singapore Authority helps build and operate ports in Kuwait, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Strategically, the region contains five of the world's global strategic choke points.
Collectively and individually, they constitute a significant constraint on trade in the Indian Ocean,
owing to the influence of particular countries upon them.
Because of the existence of geopolitical tensions borne of physical proximity or
competing interest in the freedom of navigation and due in part and in cases
to the physical limitations on ships that can navigate some 33% of the bulk
cargo and 66% of the containerised cargo of the world uses the Indian Ocean.
There exists a huge Western dependence and a rapidly expanding Asian demand on
energy supplies exiting the Gulf and this region via these strategic choke points.
For example, with 60,000 shipping movements a year, 25% of all World Trade uses the Malacca Straits.
That includes the transportation of 15 million barrels of oil per day.
That's 18% of the global total. And 70% of China's oil imports go through the market straits.
MARTIN Communications routes see lines of communications narrow sees strategic strengths in economic zones, coastal seas, territorial waters, bays,
rivers and ports are all the very arteries that keep alive the economic well-being and security of every nation in this region and many outside it.
The sea itself, of course, is also an economic resource for fisheries to deep sea minerals,
to the tourism that depends on tropical islands and coral reefs.
The health of the maritime environment is essential to the sustainability of these economic activities.
Yet the balance between resource exploitation for short term economic benefit and
preservation of the maritime environment for long term value has not been achieved to date.
Now the issues facing and in some instances threatening this region are complex.
Some of them are obviously interrelated fishery and environmental concerns, for example,
and some that seem unrelated and not such as the evolving role of great power navies in responding to human trafficking, piracy and drug smuggling.
These interactions are not governed by well-established rules and protocols.
The speed,
transparency and economic consequences for diverse global interests have increased and thus merit new attention and cross-disciplinary analysis.
The interactions therefore become increasingly pivotal also in the strategic calculus of outside economic, economic and political major powers.
Furthermore,
the discernable acceleration of India and China's economic growth and the improvements at the beginning of the current century has unsurprisingly been
matched by their drive to expand their military presence and power projection
capabilities to ensure the integrity of their sea lines of communication.
While there are a number of strategic trends that will impact on regional stability and security,
a number of specific developments and threats manifest themselves significantly in the maritime environment
and a force themselves on the attention of those concerned with security of maritime commerce.
Potential conflict with Iran could be top of people some people's list,
but I would add instability and insecurity in Somalia manifested by piracy and its effects throughout the western Indian Ocean.
Human trafficking, most notably between Somalia and Yemen, but additionally between the Makran coast and Oman.
And narcotics trafficking. These are all cases in point.
What becomes apparent is the scale of the problem and the diversity of the types of threat,
not only in their nature, but also in their location, can only be addressed through wide scale cooperation.
The multilateral approach to the conduct of maritime security in the Indian Ocean region involving small states,
regional powers and extra regional major powers is a recurrent theme throughout this analysis.
The Indian Ocean space is a broad spectrum of external security realities and potential concerns.
These include critical criminal concerns that have already touched on illicit trafficking,
narcotics, people, arms piracy and armed robbery at sea and terrorism.
Insurgent and or terrorist activity within complex or weak and or failing or failed states and geopolitics, conflict and security in the Persian Gulf.
In addition to those, my paper attempts to address the maritime security implications of piracy,
maritime terrorism, maritime commerce, port technology and ownership.
Regional actors, specifically the Chinese and the Indians in Somalia is a special case.
Maritime law on the Law of the Sea. International agreements and organisations.
Naval Power. Knots. Deployments in the Indian Ocean. Trends in fleet size and composition.
Basing Power Projection. Roles of missions.
I also cover non-energy related resources, notably minerals and fisheries.
And finally, climate change and sea level. Clearly, I cannot and I'm not going to dwell on all of these in any great detail.
This afternoon I'm going to touch very briefly on some shortly and then expand on piracy and say a little bit about maritime terrorism.
Some of you will notice that despite my brief mention of Iran, I've steered clear of stay clear of what could be termed the Iranian issue.
And I'm going to leave my colleague to talk about that in a few minutes.
Before turning to piracy, then let me just say a few words about the other areas of highlighted Somalia.
Somalia is, in my view, worthy of detailed study and analysis in itself.
My paper does not attempt to solve the problem that is Somalia.
20 international conferences in as many years have failed to do that,
and I challenge anybody to demonstrate how the communique originating from the London
conference on the 23rd of February this year actually adds anything to the argument.
There are multiple complex factors at play here, including the Kenyan invasion on the 16th of October last year,
a requirement to recognise the relationship between chronic and recurring refugees.
He follows regional interests into strait state conflict and economic underdevelopment and the requirement for the efforts of the international
community to suppress piracy to be accompanied by measures that provide for political stability and food security within the country.
My paper only touches on the staggeringly huge and continuing refugee crisis on the Kenya Somali border and in that
region on a similar but slightly less well known problem and crisis in the north on the border with Ethiopia.
Maritime Law. Law of the Sea. The Law of the Sea Convention recognises National Authority over vast tracts of the sea in the seabed,
except for a few of the most developed and of the developing nations in the region.
This has not been matched by the development of planning, administrative, regulatory or enforcement capabilities to oversee the exploitation,
to oversee the exploitation of the southern increase of their patrimony.
The link between what is legal and what is illegal, licit and illicit behaviour and black and white markets frequently intersect in unexpected ways.
International law is frequently a more useful and clearly drawn framework than is often assumed in popular discourse.
Discourse. In particular, the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on clause.
That said, such legal provision that does exist still lacks the impact it might have in the case of counter-piracy, for example,
because states are either unwilling to meet their obligations to enforce its provisions or they lack the capacity to do so.
Naval Power Deployment in the Indian Ocean.
The story of navies in the development of naval power both extra regional and regional in the Indian Ocean,
is one of ongoing MSSA maritime security operations intended to confront the threats posed by maritime based and targeted terrorism,
trafficking, piracy and vessel hijacked.
Yet at the same time, the story is also about the potential contest for naval control and influence between Asia's rising major powers.
Some analysts would argue that the rise and development of Indian and Chinese naval power and deployments in the Indian
Ocean constitute the most important aspect of 21st century naval and maritime security developments in the region.
Indeed, the individual ambitions and countermoves by the two dominant Asian powers are arguably more reflective
of 19th century mahogany and naval geopolitics than 21st century maritime security concerns.
And I say that knowing out of a retired engine Commodore and the audience to this mix must
be added the position of the United States and the United States Navy and the conflicts,
or as I see them, the apparent conflicts between a declared intent to shift focus to the Pacific
and what Robert Kaplan posits in concise and incisive fashion in his book,
The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power. When he he describes the Indian Ocean as the place is where the rivalry between the
United States and China interlocks with the regional rivalry between China and India,
and also with America's fight against Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, which includes America's attempt to contain Iran.
A word, a brief word on climate change and sea level rise.
Projections of rising sea levels due to global climate change are potentially serious implications
for coastal cities and infrastructure that have implications for maritime jurisdiction.
As rising sea levels move maritime baselines inwards,
taking with them the territorial seas and the economic exclusion zones that are drawn from those baselines.
More crucial, perhaps, is the threat to the very existence of small island nations where land territory may rise only metres above current sea levels.
The Maldives, where 80% of the country country territory has an elevation of one metre or less, is the perhaps the most obvious example.
Sea level rise induced migration has already occurred within the Indian Ocean, with the submergence of Bangla, Bangladesh's Bhola Island in 1995.
However, the loss of those islands being located inside the coastal baseline did not affect the country's maritime jurisdiction.
Okay, let me now turn to piracy. Let me start by saying it.
Piracy is an extremely emotive subject to some.
It is the biggest threat to maritime security and the security of the safe transportation of vital resources to the entire region.
To some, it's seen as an attempt, an excuse the maritime powers to demand increasing resources in times of austerity.
Some point out that less than 0.3% of the maritime.
Military are affected by piracy and therefore as impacts are hugely exaggerated.
Others claim the direct and indirect costs of piracy totalled somewhere just short of 7 billion USD per year.
Some claim a link, although some claim to link piracy or at least piracy funding with terrorism,
and many sadly a great many link piracy with al-Shabab in Somalia and
misunderstand cause and effect in regard to the situation ashore in that country.
What is probably not in dispute is that the root causes are ashore and not afloat.
And of course, the truth is probably somewhere in between the extremes I've touched on.
I make no secret of my own views on the subject as the in area UK naval commander in this
region and the Coalition Deputy Commander from two years for two years from 26 to 28.
I have to say, I accurately predicted the Pirates would adapt their tactics to operate further and
further into the Indian Ocean and seas bigger and more financially attractive targets.
I make no bones about the fact I saw piracy as both a distraction and an opportunity.
It was a distraction, in my view, in that it diverted assets from other, more important tasking,
namely human trafficking and its ability to destabilise other states such as Yemen,
Oman and to a lesser extent, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and counter-narcotics operations, specifically targeting funding for al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Those, in my view, were higher priorities, and yet it provided a significant opportunity,
an opportunity for closer cooperation with civilian organisations,
including commercial shipping,
and for closer interaction with navies who would otherwise not wish to join an Anglo US and predominantly US led coalition.
Now, any piracy or armed robbery of seas in its contemporary form is a plot to bite right outright
or comparative terrestrial lawlessness and inadequate security on land and near the coast,
or of a given state or territory combined with the proximate shipping lanes and high numbers of transiting cold and calling vessels,
which essentially become targets of opportunity.
And in the case of Somalia, the prerequisites for chronic levels of piracy and armed robbery of ships are without equal anywhere in the world.
Indeed, the scale of the problem confronting the international shipping community and the regional states has resulted in the formation,
as many of you will be aware of the largest international naval effort since the tanker war in the Gulf to help protect shipping in the region.
But what do you think piracy costs? What does piracy actually costs?
Some costs, such as ransom payments and increased insurance costs, are relatively easy to determine.
Others are not. According to available data, 31 ransoms were paid in the last calendar year, amounting to a total of just under 160 million USD.
Average ransom just under 5 million USD.
While the success rate of pirate attacks in 2011 declined 27% successful in 2010, 13% successful in 2011,
there has been an increase in both the number of attempted attacks as well as the ransom process.
In other words, pirates have been securing equal or greater value for less hijacked vessels.
2011 last year also saw the highest ransom paid on record.
In April, 13 and a half million US dollars was placed was placed to was paid sorry to at
least the Irene a very large crew carrier Greek flagged hijacked in February.
She was carrying 2 million barrels of oil valued at 200 million USD, the equivalent of 20% of one day's worth of US crude imports.
On average, it took 178 days or around six months or ransom to be negotiated and the ship released.
Many vessels in the crew were held hostage off Somalia for distressing 12 months or longer.
The two major forms of piracy related insurance of war, risk and kidnap and ransom.
The insurance market has evolved throughout last year.
The total cost of war, risk and kidnap and ransom insurance was approximately 635 million USD.
Now team from the One Earth Foundation have attempted to calculate the true and full cost of piracy,
and they published their working paper on the findings for 2011.
In February of this year, the study addressed the direct economic cost of nine different cost factors ransoms, insurance.
Which of the two I consider most reliable. Plus security guards and equipment rerouting.
Increased speed. Labour prosecutions and imprisonment.
Military operations and counter-piracy organisations.
They're working on the last seven areas are at least in part in my view, questionable.
For example, they attribute the total cost of 30 different navies, contributing warships in this area,
a gauge of the cost of piracy, which I think is stretching a point.
However, the last they estimated by their calculations, the true cost of piracy to be somewhere between 6.6 and £6.9 billion.
So $3 billion. Now, if at least for the moment one accepts their analysis in their figures, then of the total cost of circa 7 billion,
over 80% is being borne by the shipping industry, 19% by governments, and less than 1% by you and I in civil society.
Furthermore, two of the total costs counter-piracy organisations and prosecutions could be considered developments in long term solutions to piracy.
These two factors at 37 million account for about 1% of the total cost of piracy.
The remaining 99% of the costs are therefore currently devoted to mitigating the symptoms and defending against
pirate attack without adequate investments in long term sustainable solutions to the piracy problem in Somalia.
The cost of mitigating the system, the symptoms of piracy are likely to be a perpetual expense for the shipping industry and for governments.
From a cost benefit perspective, irrespective of the actual accuracy of the figures,
this highlights a concerning dimension dimension of the cost of piracy, as funds are consistently spent by industry to treat the systems.
Very little is invested in resolving the root causes.
While the cost of piracy persists, whatever the final figure or total figure is, we are faced with an increasingly risky piracy model,
inflicting more deaths and violence against seafarers, expanding its geographical reach and threatening, ultimately, the oil trade.
Substantially reducing the economic and human cost of piracy will require a redirection of investment from short term symptoms to long term solutions.
Finally, just 2 minutes on maritime terrorism.
And in the aftermath of the attacks by AQ maritime cells on American cells on the USS Cole in Aden in 2000,
the very large crude carry M.V. Limburg off the coast of Yemen in 2002, an Al Qaida in Iraq attacks against the Iraqi oil terminals in April 2004.
Maritime security has been concerned by the prospects of follow on attacks by al Qaeda
and al Qaeda in Iraq against shipping and petroleum structure and infrastructure,
specifically in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. Has she been slightly wider afield?
You can add to this list the sinking of the super ferry,
14 passenger ferry in Manilla by Philippine Islamists, Islamists which killed 116 people again in 2004.
Now,
images of a hole in the side of the USS Cole or the Limburg ablaze of Yemen are the most obvious manifestation manifestations of terrorism at sea.
Instances of terrorism coming from the sea are, however, more recent terrorism attacks at sea have not occurred since 2004.
But a real danger exists in an absence of attacks when coupled with competition for scarce resource and the high cost of comprehensive security,
will lead to institutionalised complacency.
Even a brief analysis of the terrorist attack on Mumbai in late 2008 an attack from the maritime environment
both illustrates the point and implies lessons that states and other areas in the region would do well to note.
India suffered perhaps the greatest blow ever inflicted by seaborne terrorism when a handful
of terrorists conducted a commando raid on central Mumbai in which 170 people were killed.
Now the attacks on Mumbai also reveal the vulnerabilities of the substantial financial, industrial,
nuclear and commercial infrastructures at risk in the northwest on the northwest coast of India.
The question that arises is how highly influential business interests will seek to protect their facilities from such risk.
At present, business appears to rely on private provision for security.
However, in the absence of more complete domain awareness involving law enforcement,
intelligence and the navies, the risk of terrorist attacks remains high.
Certainly the terrorists who attacked Mumbai targeted symbols of Indians prosperity and her connection to the global culture and economy.
This fact will not be lost on other terrorists and terrorist organisations.
In February 2010, the. Deputy commander of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula side,
Al Shaqiri publicly declared the group's interest in closing the Babur Mandeb Strait at the bottom of the Red Sea.
Not only declared the group's interest in closing the bubble mandate,
but they also stated they wish to bring the straits under the protection of Islam.
Now, while there were no hints of how this highly ambitious goal could be achieved,
it could not be done without some form of hijack or attack on transiting vessels.
That is, I think, 40 minutes. So I'm going to close there.
I'm happy to take questions when we finish. But for the moment, I'll give the floor to Commander Vincent,
who's going to look more closely at the sort of this area and level down manic dynamics from an Iranian point of view.
Thank you very much. Okay.
I'll try to get through this in as quickly and efficiently as I can.
So I know we've got probably some questions that'll be we'll be taking entertaining here in the next few minutes.
I'm essentially doing a what I consider kind of a subset of commenter when Stanley's brief,
where he focussed on the macro level of security concerns facing the global community in and around the Indian Ocean.
I intend to talk more about Iran and how they are modifying their Iranian strategy.
Maritime ways to help build their.
Their national security objectives. Before I get into the meat and potatoes of the brief,
I just wanted to have throw up a couple of slides to indicate some of the differences
between some of the ships and some of the capabilities the Iranians have.
What sometimes is not well understood with the Iranians as they essentially have two different militaries,
they have a regular ground force or army, a regular air force and a regular navy.
Additionally, they have a Revolutionary Guard Corps component to each one of those services.
Now was designed out of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
It was specifically each force was intended to help provide additional security to the Islamic regime.
So these slides here depict some of the Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy platforms that
are currently operating in and around the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
You can see they're very small, very manoeuvrable, carry short range rockets as well as surface to surface missiles.
Many of them that they have been acquiring or building over recent years can achieve a speed of in excess of 60 miles an hour.
Again, very manoeuvrable and maximises their capabilities in and around restricted waters such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf.
And it might be hard for some in the back to read it, but it says they have at least 100 of these attack boats and fast attack craft.
And the Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy consists of approximately 20,000 people.
Now, on the other hand, the regular Navy or the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, referred to as the Orion,
typifies more of the maritime forces that we see in the West and across the rest of the globe.
Frigates, destroyers, amphibious craft, submarines and the like.
And here's a snapshot of a few of them.
You can see a kilo Russian based, Russian built submarine that the Iranians acquired in the 1990s, and then a number of other ones.
And the want to talk to Jammer on is the an indigenous class frigate that the Iranians just put to put to sea in 2010.
And they've been using it in and around their coastline as well as counter-piracy patrols in the last year or so.
Proximately 58 ships and a slightly smaller composition of personnel, about 18,000.
I titled my research that I've been conducting over the last year a new era Iranian navy strategy, expansion and soft power.
Because I really think the Iranian navy is undertaking a larger mission with regards to its navy to support national security objectives.
But in large part, we haven't seen a whole lot of this reflected in the press and in other reports in the last few years.
But it started to gain some traction.
You know, the geopolitical landscape really in the last decade has focussed on issues such as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And coming out with Stanley brought up climate change, which of course has been a huge issue, global economic crisis.
But and even with regards to Iran, really the big issue over the past few years has been the nuclear program.
What has largely gone under the radar is the Iranian naval strategy expansion.
But as I mentioned, foreign policy and press reports have started to show some of their capabilities recently,
particularly long range Iranian naval deployments,
as well as some comments which I'll go into a couple of slides about some ongoing strategy changes that are currently undertaking.
Just of note and comment on when Stanley brought up piracy.
The Iranians felt it important enough after one of their Iranian released vessels was attacked by Somali.
Pirates in late 2008, they decided to send their own flotillas down there, and they've been doing so the last four years.
Additionally,
you may have seen reports in February of last year and this year of Iranian flotillas heading through the Red Sea and up through the Suez Canal.
In fact, February of last year was a first air in transit through the Suez since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
I won't belabour the Indian Ocean specifics too much because we just received a presentation on it,
but it is no doubt in my mind that Tehran is viewing the maritime environment as
key and essential to its own economic prosperity and maritime security as well.
And it's not just the large powers such as China, the US and other Western nations that are recognising this.
I put up one key bullet just to highlight the importance, which I think signifies the rationale for Iran's changing maritime strategy.
87% of its imports and up to 99% of its exports are being conducted via the sea.
Now, in terms of some of the things we've seen and heard over recent years with regards to this changing strategy and strange changing environment,
with respect to the Iranian one key quote that came out of an interview with two key individuals within the IRGC and Admiral Sari,
who is the in the US terms, would be equivalent to their chief of naval operations and a deputy director of operations for the Iranian Rear Admiral.
Admiral or somebody indicated in an interview that by expanding their presence within that strategic triangle
and you can see how large it is extending from the Strait of Hormuz down to the southwest to the Gulf of Aden,
and then farther to the southeast over the Malacca Strait.
They will be able to completely oversee the transit of the world's energy and at the same time protect their own interests.
Very, very large swath of the ocean, as you can tell.
Just of note, the Iranian coastline, which extends from up near the border with Iraq all the way to the coast of Pakistan, is about 1100 miles.
The distance between the Gulf of Aden and the Malacca Strait is about three and a half times out of nearly 4000 miles.
So much larger body of water that they aim to cover.
Another key mission said that was identified through press reports this morning a little bit earlier in February 2009 by Admiral Sari.
He highlighted some of the objectives which the Iranian was planning to undertake as a result of this new mission set.
And again, you can I'm not going to read every single bullet, every single word, but you can take some key words out of there.
Security, superior, superior military power, expanding their presence throughout the region.
Highlights, again, not only the defensive and the deterrence factor, but also the the importance of expanding that operation,
extending that defence perimeter beyond their traditional confines of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, further south into the Indian Ocean.
Now, operationally, I don't want to get too much into the weeds with this, but just to highlight a few details,
what we tend to follow a lot in the US Navy when we when you look at Iranian naval operations, is where the Iranian and IRGC and units are operating.
And in back in about 2007 was when we first started to notice changes to the operating areas.
And then since 2007,
and this has really been the composition of the areas of responsibility in which we're identifying the Iranian and IRGC and prior to 2007,
really operated interchangeably throughout that entire body of water in the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz,
and then out outwards into the Gulf of Oman. But with this new change in maritime strategy,
what we've seen is the Iranian is really taking a foothold within the Persian Gulf and the IRGC is conducting its operations outside the Persian Gulf.
I think this is a well founded strategy for them because as I mentioned earlier,
when I showed you the slides of the pictures of the platforms that the Iranian and IRGC in,
and it caters to the capabilities of both service the IRGC and will be allowed.
To operate in more manoeuvrable are less manoeuvrable and more restricted waters.
Whereas the Orion can conduct missions outside the Gulf where there's larger bodies
of water and conduct soft power missions in support of the national objective.
But one operational thing that does complicate a bit of the Orion operation is that two key primary or two key Orion bases in particular,
the one that we share but also monitor a boss lies within the operating area of the IRGC.
And so what that will mean is whenever they have to go out into this blue area and conduct their patrols,
they'll have to transit through IRGC and footprints.
Not a huge deal, I don't think.
But it does add to the complexion of the manoeuvre, adds more time to being able to respond to particular challenges or threats that may be out there.
Changing gears a little bit here,
and this is where I get into the soft power focus and some of the mission sets that the Iranian navy may be undertaking.
Don't want to. I'll let you guys read the definition that I got from Joseph Nye on Soft Power,
especially as it competes with the hard power definition that the military's typically focus on, which is coercive and based operations.
But why? Why would the Iranians change their operations and build a navy to support it?
Well, I think overall, we're seeing Tehran's ambition to create greater conditions for prosperity and economic diversity.
There, largely still an oil oriented economy.
But I think over time, they're going to want to stray away from that and have a more diverse economic base to gain additional revenue streams.
And Navy could help support that. Also is the regime's desire to counter military and diplomatic encirclement by the West.
If you look on a map, you'll see the Iranians operating around Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as GCC countries that are largely western leaning.
So I think allowing the Iranian navy to move outside that Persian Gulf and Gulf of
Oman area allows them to essentially leapfrog and focus on areas outside the areas,
particularly around the periphery of the Indian Ocean, to build their relationships.
And then finally, one of the things that has really put their efforts into fruition is their 20 year vision plan,
which was implemented in 2005 by the President Ahmadinejad's government with the aim to be the region's pre-eminent leader in science,
technology as well as economics by the year 2025.
So essentially what we have here is an aim by the Iranian navy to match this 2025 vision
and put its ships to sea to support that mission set all across that strategic triangle.
By that time frame, the significance of maritime soft power is becoming more and more important, especially within Western navies.
But the Iranian could also be ambassadors in support of a larger soft power ambitions for Tehran as well.
Humanitarian aid response is obviously a big mission, said we've had U.S.,
as well as China and other larger countries support earthquakes and tsunamis and
other areas to supply food and other other provisions to support needy citizens.
Also, medical and dental civic action projects have been in the forefront of the U.S. military and more recently with the PLA Navy.
Back in 2010, they commission their first hospital ship in which they coined it the Peace Ark.
They went on a four month deployment throughout eastern Africa, in the Indian Ocean,
to help provide additional soft power support in support of its China's mission or political objectives,
and then more traditional missions, which we can provide basic seamanship and vocational training programs,
whether it's navigation, intelligence and information sharing, small arms training and the like.
The Iranian can certainly do that in support of its larger objectives and then exercises traditionally more
of a hard power approach with supporting exercises at a multilateral or a bilateral type of environment.
But again, it's part of that trust. Building.
And and and basically a ability to build mutual trust among partners and build those partnerships.
And it must be noted as well that the Irish traditionally are considered very strong and capable seamen.
So they will be able to, you know, if they're called upon to do some of these things,
would be likely good ambassadors to support these soft power missions.
This slide really probably deserves its own set of its own lecture on its own.
But just to highlight a few things in terms of some of the soft power initiatives that the Iranian government has taken over the last several years,
it's really global in nature. But because I tended to focus on the Indian Ocean,
you can see a lot of effort that the Iranian regime has undertaken over the last few years to cover,
especially East Africa and to a smaller extent in the South and Southeast Asia, in particular, Djibouti.
2010, they signed a naval cooperation memoranda with the Djiboutian Navy to help provide additional training,
as well as support to their territorial waters and support to fishermen in and around their their economic zone.
Kenya Relationships between Tehran and Kenya have been largely economic and industrial in nature, providing a lot of agricultural support,
manufacturing, building those relationships in the larger areas in and around Mombasa and Nairobi.
But there is a potential for a bilateral free trade zone, in particular through the maritime scheme between Bonner, Abbas and Mombasa.
Haven't seen that materialise yet,
but that could prompt the Irene to conduct patrols farther south from that strategic triangle from the Gulf of Aden down to Kenya coast into Mombasa,
Somalia. Aside from the counter-piracy patrols that have taken place over the last three and a half, four years.
There's also been a number of maritime humanitarian aid shipments to needy citizens in and around Mogadishu.
And between September and December of last year, upwards of 20 shepherd shipments have taken place.
And then farther to the south and southeastern part of Asia, Malaysia and Indonesia,
some economic and trade development aspirations between those countries and Tehran are taking place.
However, there's also a possibility of additional counter-narcotics track of trafficking prevention, which could materialise in the next few years.
There have been reports indicating there were concerns, particularly among officials in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur,
that indicate that illicit drug trafficking taking place,
which starts from the coast of Iran in Pakistan and across the Indian Ocean and
into the coasts of Malaysia and Indonesia have risen about 300% since 2004.
So that could prompt additional maritime military involvement with the Iranian navy.
We haven't seen that come to fruition yet, but it is possible.
And then, of course, India, a lot of economic trade taking place.
But again, as Commodore One, Stanley mentioned as well,
common concerns exist between the two countries, in particular piracy, as well as maritime terrorism.
So there could be an opportunity to build those relationships where they have those issues of common concern.
Switching gears once again before I conclude. 2025 is the timeline in which the Iranians want to put this plan in place.
They're in the process of doing it right now. But as you can see by that map that I showed earlier,
there's a huge swath of the maritime environment covering a large chunk of the Indian Ocean, which they'll have to cover.
Again, that 4000 mile stretch between the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Malacca is pretty large.
And, you know, historically, the Iranians have not been doing that.
They've been covering an area roughly one third, one fourth that size during their history.
So what are they going to need to do to help make this implementation possible?
They're in need to not only maintain, but build additional ships and acquire even more personnel to help.
Or that mission set within that strategic triangle. What we're not seeing right now, though, is that rate of modernisation and procurement,
which is not meeting the pace of those expanding footprints and mission sets that they have the desire to cover.
Just as an example, during those four years that the Iranians have been conducting the counter-piracy missions,
they've only cycled through eight ships and one submarine to conduct those.
What what'll happen is usually they'll send a flotilla of two or three ships out of under Abbas,
travel around the Arabian landmass, and just set up their operation in the Gulf of Aden and monitor activity,
particularly taking close making close attention to those Iranian leased vessels
that are transiting through the Baba Mandeb and heading to Iran or vice versa.
They've only cycled through nine total ships out of about 58 of their total inventory.
So that indicates to me that they may have some challenges that are in place for those long duration missions that they intend to cover.
And additionally, to do this, you can't send all your ships out.
You've got to maintain the ability to to monitor activities in and closer to your coast.
So they're going to have to find a good mix of those long duration patrols with those defensive coastal missions.
If they don't do that, they risk operational overreach and they won't be able to respond to everything they should,
should a crisis occur, should a threat pop up closer to the coastline?
And then, of course, I haven't mentioned too much about the quality of life of personnel,
but as you saw on that second slide, 18,000 personnel doesn't seem like a whole lot.
And it really isn't if you've even if you have only 58 ships, but, you know,
you risk that lower unit morale and lower readiness if you continue to send your ships
to sea and they don't have time to rest and recuperate and get additional training.
This slide just shows the order of battle that the Orion currently has.
It's not for memorisation or anything like that. Just to highlight, I got this from basically I compiled it from ISIS website,
from the military balance from this year that just came out in March, took a snapshot of that and put it in this tabular format.
But if you take a look at that, you can see that they've got a fairly good mix of submarines,
frigates, Corvettes, and then down to the bottom some of your support ships,
replenishment ships, tenders and things like that to help provide additional support for some of the frigates and submarines.
But if you look at the right column, you'll see that most of them, especially the ones farther down the bottom, are fairly old.
Seventies vintage, some eighties vintage.
Not that you can't maintain them.
You can maintain a ship for quite a while, for several decades, and still have it operational and operating in good fashion.
And it could this could be the case through 2025 and beyond.
However, again, this is meeting what I assess to be the current state, which is minimal,
the long range deployments and more focussed on operations in and around their coastline.
So where are we now? Well, Tehran is using its navy to build its influence throughout the region.
They're orienting their strategy southward to the Indian Ocean,
whereas in the previous years they had really been focussed in and around the Persian Gulf and around its neighbours.
But it's clear to me that they see economic prosperity and especially maritime security, is paramount to their national security interests.
The model that they developed for the Iranian and IRGC and I think is well-founded, is that it suits the capabilities of each service.
Again, you have the small attack craft and smaller boats operating in those more confined waters of the Gulf.
And you have the Iranian stretching out into the Indian Ocean.
But again, I think their plan to do this by 2025 is a bit ambitious unless they come up with additional personnel and additional procurement
processes to build up their navy so they have more state of the art equipment to help conduct these missions on a persistent basis.
And then finally, I think U.S. and Western planners would all agree that we need to.
Being more and more aware of the Iranian operations,
especially as they expand farther out through the Indian Ocean and consider continuing the three security cooperation activities that we have
to identify and help consider additional efforts on behalf of the United States and the West to support some of these countries as well.
And with that, I will conclude and if so, I guess it's time to entertain questions.