Force Protection failure in Greece: RCN ship vandalized

https://twitter.com/x/status/1505298830379601926

NST had provided security the last time an HMC ship was in that port. Apparently no measures in place this time around.

Facebook comment from a former NST NCO:

''Lots of silly comments from people who think they know all about Force Protection. First, when we stood up NST in the exact same port we had two check points and a guarded gate with spike strips and Greek police manning those gates. Second, you would never open fire on people especially if the threat triangle isn't complete. Not sure how they got so close to the ship with the normal security measures in place, but it happened and it was only paint. However, this is exactly why you secure the jetty prior to a ship coming alongside using CAF and local authorities. De-escalate as best as possible and then use non-lethal force such as your fire hoses rigged on the upper decks.......trust me, they will stop someone

.....ask ST....lol.''

Some context from a more friendly Greek:

''Alright... As a Greek-Canadian (served both in the Greek and Canadian army) I would like to apologize. Those guys are fuckin morons and stupid as fuck!
In 1932 Russia would give huge amounts of money(in other words fund) KKE(those fucking cunts who thru the paint), So one day they would "rule" Greece. The Greek army didn't let that happen and thru a lot of them in the jail.. So since then they can't stand the sight of any military uniform. Whenever they see anything that has to do with military they throw paint cans.
Sorry for my bad English!''

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

So right now a CPF holds around 254 bunks, give or take with configuration.

We already take on secret squirrels, Air Det and NTOG (for portions) and a chaplain and a JAG and a PAF O during deployments. Which cuts about 50 people of the core crew.

We also no inject lots of trainees which taxes the watch rotation further.

What more do we cut ? To make room for more good idea ferry positions.

No need to create other positions, improving how we currently operate is easily achievable with present human resources.

We have the teams for this already NTOG and NST. Utilise them.

Agreed, also ensure Ships have a fully trained and appropriately equipped boarding party. The boarding party should form the QRT and be flagged for security duties alongside.

The question here is primarily how the protesters got access to the jetty. I've been to Piraeus a few times. Its always been closed and guarded.

How did they get access to the Jetty? Why didn't the second layer of Jetty Sentries (which belong to the Ship) alert the Duty Watch on board and what reactions were taken if any?

The response of the ship will come out in the report, but the fact we don't have a half dozen dead Greeks for some thrown paint is a small victory.

Agreed on the latter part. I doubt the response will be forthcoming in the report.

 

[Swampbuggy]

Q :Have you ever killed any one ?
A: No, but I once hurt someone's feelings.
Extra points for what film and whose speaking?

Ronin, baby! And...De Niro, FTW!

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Bingo.

But, that would take a complete re-work of the "naval" culture. I've been on both sides and I know it's far better to do so, but when some people say "the Air Force has habits, not traditions" with a straight face, I'm not holding my breath that change will come.

I also think this is the exact reason no lessons will be learned or applied from this experience

I don't doubt it that some report will get produced, it will get buried and will not be disseminated.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I also think this is the exact reason no lessons will be learned or applied from this experience

I don't doubt it that some report will get produced, it will get buried and will not be disseminated.

Hopefully one of the recommendations from any BOI will be the issue of Lewis Guns to the deck watch and shore parties.

For no other reason than I like the old 'Record Player'

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Hopefully one of the recommendations from any BOI will be the issue of Lewis Guns to the deck watch and shore parties.

For no other reason than I like the old 'Record Player'

View attachment 69628

I'm a fan of billy clubs myself because nothing says dealing with criminals like pressing them in to service of her majesty

Anyone can be a line handler, even Greek Communists

 

[OldSolduer]

Seriously. "Some paint got on the ship" is not in any way shape or form indicative of a lack of adequate intelligence or accurate threat assessments. I really don't get why everyone seems hell-bent on treating this event like it's some sort of major catastrophe.

It’s not BUT vandalism was performed on the ship. What if next time it’s a bomb?

Food for thought.

Just a question; do you have ANY real world experience?

 

[Blackadder1916]

Hopefully one of the recommendations from any BOI will be the issue of Lewis Guns to the deck watch and shore parties.

For no other reason than I like the old 'Record Player'

View attachment 69628

When did the "Love Boat" mount weapons?

 

[Remius]

I’m no expert on FP for ships.

In my land based brain, I see this for what it is. A breach. Who cares if it’s paint, crayons, a lost 4 year old or a bomb. Something got through that shouldn’t have. It should be treated seriously and hope it is.

Fix it. That way if it’s just paint wielding commies they won’t get shot if they can’t get close. And the guys with bombs won’t get close because they’ll get shot because they’ll have to deal with the first layer of protection to get to where they want to cause shenanigans.

Whether that’s the host nation or us.

I just think if we are deploying a ship to what is essentially a potential war zone the likes of which we haven’t seen that the posture should be high the moment they leave our ports. But maybe they are, I’m unfamiliar with the SOPs the RCN has.

Our Naval experts here have chimed in and I’ll defer to them as I know sweet eff all about this sort of thing.

 

[dapaterson]

When did the "Love Boat" mount weapons?

Given the alleged conduct of senior naval officers aboard some of those ships, that's probably not the most fitting name for the class.

 

[dimsum]

good idea ferry

Now you got me thinking of something like BC Ferries, but at RCN HQ.

 

[Underway]

In the words of Letterkenny let's all take about 20% off here.

I've thought about this overnight and came to this conclusion.

What exactly did the ship do wrong here? Nothing as far as I can tell from the information we have.

Responses to security situations like this, particularly in the civilian context must be proportional to the threat (if any) and non-escalatory. Law enforcement can escalate if necessary, we don't do that.

From what we could see the response by the ship was proportional and non-escalatory.

If the ship's response was something along the lines of...

1. Close the brow
2. Make an informative pipe, stand up the off-watch FP elements.
3. Warn the protestors verbally/visually away from the ship,
4. don't physically interact, let them throw the paint,
5. take pictures, watch them get arrested, provide evidence, do AAR, lessons learned, SI etc...
6. Paint ship evolution.

SAT response.

The only failing that for sure we know about is the civilian authorities. The point of the outer security is to stop the ship from having to put up with this crap in the first place.

Now before we assume I'm a homer (I am but I'm generally a realist) I'm sure not everything is rosy and perfect. Guaranteed some response or action could have been more proactive or done better, just like a "SAT" DC exercise, there is always, always room for improvement.
Hell for all we know the ship could have been oblivious of the situation until the paint hit the ship and the CO is seething with his shitty duty watch/FP element. They might have bumbled into the best outcome! (though doubtful, foreign port there are lots of eyes looking out on the upper deck)

Finally, any of this talk about burying this and forgetting doesn't know the current RCN very well. This is the preview of Sea Training and they don't let anything go. Everything will be gone over and the lessons will be passed through Sea Training to the fleet because the next people in the seat at Sea Training are always the ones who just came off of deployment. The folks who were there will ensure that this situation makes it into an exercise and discussion when the FP elements undergo training (actually dealing with protests is one of the exercises that are on the docket, its a classic problem).

 

[KevinB]

From what we could see the response by the ship was proportional and non-escalatory.

If the ship's response was something along the lines of...

1. Close the brow
2. Make an informative pipe, stand up the off-watch FP elements.
3. Warn the protestors verbally/visually away from the ship,
4. don't physically interact, let them throw the paint,
5. take pictures, watch them get arrested, provide evidence, do AAR, lessons learned, SI etc...
6. Paint ship evolution.

SAT response.

I will caveat this with the fact we don't know if they had forward knowledge this would just be a paint attack.
If they did, I would still disagree with the response, simply because we have seen time and time again that reported nuisance attacks, are often used by other more nefarious groups to launch lethal attacks.

Given the couple of OS videos released on this - 2 and 3 didn't occur.

All the OPFOR has learned now, is you can get to grenade/Molotov/breaching charge range of a RCN vessel with no problems, and yes there are elements in Greece with all of those options who don't like NATO and don't have a problem killing or maiming it's members, and would love to sabotage a warship.

I'm not suggesting that anyone should have been lethally engaged by what occurred -- what I am saying, is that I think the RCN could use some additional items - mainly 1-2 LRAD/ship, and a few B. E. Meyers dazzlers - I've seen both employed operationally and they have saved a lot of lives.

 

[TacticalTea]

Bingo.

But, that would take a complete re-work of the "naval" culture. I've been on both sides and I know it's far better to do so, but when some people say "the Air Force has habits, not traditions" with a straight face, I'm not holding my breath that change will come.

Hah! Tried that once. Went about like this:

Me: Look, way it works in the Air Force, when something goes wrong, the point is not to blame someone, but to be transparent about what went wrong so they can be clear-eyed about what needs to happen to prevent it reoccurring.

Oxygen Thievery Officer: Why are you talking about the Air Force, we're not in the Air Force!

Cue mental facepalm

 

[KevinB]

Hah! Tried that once. Went about like this:

Me: Look, way it works in the Air Force, when something goes wrong, the point is not to blame someone, but to be transparent about what went wrong so they can be clear-eyed about what needs to happen to prevent it reoccurring.

Oxygen Thievery Officer: Why are you talking about the Air Force, we're not in the Air Force!

Cue mental facepalm

Any entity that doesn't hold open and honest AAR's just dooms themselves to failure.
It doesn't need to be public - but the lessons do need to be disseminated.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Hopefully one of the recommendations from any BOI will be the issue of Lewis Guns to the deck watch and shore parties.

For no other reason than I like the old 'Record Player'

View attachment 69628

I have a interesting report where in 1922, DFO borrowed a Lewis Gun and found a Vet that used use one in WWI. Whereupon they went and massacred a Sea lion colony, going ashore to finish off the pups with revolvers. The report ended with "This experiment was a great success and DFO should acquire some of these guns to carry on this work to protect salmon stocks" . Different times.......

 

[dimsum]

Hah! Tried that once. Went about like this:

Me: Look, way it works in the Air Force, when something goes wrong, the point is not to blame someone, but to be transparent about what went wrong so they can be clear-eyed about what needs to happen to prevent it reoccurring.

Oxygen Thievery Officer: Why are you talking about the Air Force, we're not in the Air Force!

Cue mental facepalm

 

[GK .Dundas]

I have a interesting report where in 1922, DFO borrowed a Lewis Gun and found a Vet that used use one in WWI. Whereupon they went and massacred a Sea lion colony, going ashore to finish off the pups with revolvers. The report ended with "This experiment was a great success and DFO should acquire some of these guns to carry on this work to protect salmon stocks" . Different times.......

Different times indeed. I can remember when the British Foreign Office borrowed one and the destroyer it came with and almost started an international incident. While almost inducing a collective stroke in the Canadian PMO.

 

[Blackadder1916]

I have a interesting report where in 1922, DFO borrowed a Lewis Gun and found a Vet that used use one in WWI. Whereupon they went and massacred a Sea lion colony, going ashore to finish off the pups with revolvers. The report ended with "This experiment was a great success and DFO should acquire some of these guns to carry on this work to protect salmon stocks" . Different times.......

W.E. Maiden

Killing Sea Lions to Save the Salmon | Maclean's | February 1, 1925

Scientific destruction of a pest of the sea means real money to B. C. canneries.

archive.macleans.ca

. . .

In the summer of 1922 the Canadian Government Fisheries Protection steamer Givenchy, with a picked crew aboard and commanded by Captain Laird, steamed through the early morning mist of Vancouver harbor, bound for Hope Island, one of a group at the northern end of Vancouver Island. The situation called for a technical expert and W. E. Maiden, of New Westminster, a member of the Fishermen’s Association and a graduate from the Imperial College at Hythe, England—Lewis gun instructor and first class gunner in the recent war— was put in charge of operations.
. . .

 

[Underway]

Any entity that doesn't hold open and honest AAR's just dooms themselves to failure.
It doesn't need to be public - but the lessons do need to be disseminated.

Counterpoint to some of the comments here:

For warfare and damage control that's the case right now. Everything is recorded (voice, video, sensor data) and analyzed and briefed back. There is an initial assessment done by the "range staff" for a missile shoot or DC issue and then all the data is analyzed.

I was in an amazing AAR for a missile shoot, the Combat Sytems Team was there as was the whole OPS Room, CO.

They ran back a reconstruction of the shoot, from both the enemy and friendly sides and picked out where performance could be improved. Where certain decisions were made they asked why those decisions were made, and in one case it lead to a direct change in training for the ARRO ( Jr position). The Jr told them why they did what they did and were listened to with no blame. Their training for how to use a certain sensor wasn't as clear as it should have been, so I saw the training chief leave with notes to fix that.

And as the warfare centre does the training for the OPS team you can believe it went right back into their program.

 

[daftandbarmy]

W.E. Maiden

Killing Sea Lions to Save the Salmon | Maclean's | February 1, 1925

Scientific destruction of a pest of the sea means real money to B. C. canneries.

archive.macleans.ca

The Columbia River fishery is culling them right now...

It's now legal to kill sea lions that are threatening salmon in the Pacific Northwest | CNN

Animal control in the western United States just got more extreme.

www.cnn.com

BC wants to follow suit...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/group-calls-for-commercial-cull-on-seals-sea-lions-1.5255221