Exclusive: Critical defence select committee report to come amid growing Tory unease over No 10’s plan
The credibility of the government’s plan to put the Royal Navy in charge of coordinating efforts to control small boats in the Channel is expected to be questioned by an influential parliamentary committee.
A report by the defence select committee, to be delivered shortly, will raise doubts over whether plans to put the Royal Navy in charge have been rigorously tested.
Continue reading...Home secretary rebuffs French claim UK immigration policy encourages people to risk dangerous journey
Priti Patel, the home secretary, has said Emmanuel Macron is wrong to say the UK’s immigration policy is encouraging people to risk their lives crossing the Channel from France.
In a further escalation of the row between the two countries, Patel has dismissed claims by the French president that Britain’s immigration system favours clandestine migration and does not allow for asylum seekers to seek legal ways into the country.
Continue reading...Engineering technician was stationed at Faslane and worked on a vessel that carried UK’s nuclear deterrent
A 25-year-old Trident submariner who died in unexplained circumstances at the Faslane naval base on Thursday has been named as engineering technician Stephen Cashman by the Royal Navy.
Police Scotland is continuing to investigate the sudden death, first reported to officers at 12.30pm on Thursday, which is believed to have taken place in the barracks at the base for Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
Continue reading...France’s top naval commander cites ‘rapid rearmament’ of China and Russia as danger to maritime security
France’s most senior naval commander has said future conflicts are likely to be fought at sea and in the cybersphere, citing the “rapid rearmament” of countries such as China as a potential threat.
Adm Pierre Vandier made his comments after the French Marine Nationale and forces from five allied countries, including the UK, took part in what he described as a unique two-week exercise intended to prepare for “composite threats”.
Continue reading...Naval strike group is sailing through waters heavily contested between China and neighbouring countries
Britain has said it has no plans to stage a naval confrontation with China in the South China Sea and that it aims to send its carrier strike group in the most direct route across the contested body of water from Singapore to the Philippine Sea.
The cooling message emerged hours after China’s military and state media warned the UK against provocation as the group, led by Royal Navy aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, undertakes what had been expected to be a more assertive deployment.
Continue reading...Kremlin summons UK ambassador as Boris Johnson says HMS Defender’s deployment ‘wholly appropriate’
British officials acknowledged they were taken by surprise by the speed of the Russian reaction to HMS Defender’s 36-minute passage through Crimean waters on Wednesday as the British ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Kremlin.
Although a Russian response to the Royal Navy warship’s passage within the 12-mile territorial limit was anticipated, the UK Ministry of Defence did not expect the Kremlin to speedily declare that warning shots had been fired.
Continue reading...Analysis: Royal Navy ship sailing near Crimea may also be test of Beijing reaction to territorial reach
British ministers will have been under no illusions that the decision to sail HMS Defender into disputed waters off the coast of Russian-annexed Crimea would provoke a reaction from the Kremlin.
A dispute about whether warning shots were fired or not is beside the point – although if they were, they were miles out of range. Because even if the west considers Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, to be still part of Ukraine, the Russians do not and will act accordingly.
Continue reading...MoD and Moscow disagree over whether shots were fired at destroyer near disputed territory
Britain was unexpectedly embroiled in a diplomatic and military dispute with Russia on Wednesday after Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender briefly sailed through territorial waters off the coast of the disputed territory of Crimea.
The warship sailed for about an hour in the morning within the 12-mile limit off Cape Fiolent on a direct route between the Ukrainian port of Odesa and Georgia, prompting Russian complaints and a disagreement about whether warning shots were fired.
Continue reading...New restrictions and deep cuts to allowances mean both French and Jersey boat owners feel betrayed by Brexit
Dawn was still four hours away and the small Normandy port of Carteret was alive, some boats hurriedly unloading their catch for a rapid turnaround, others turning on their lights and firing up their engines for the first time that night.
Minutes after 3am on Thursday they had left the quayside and, in pitch darkness and a gentle swell, were pushing smartly out to sea to join a growing armada of 60-odd boats from Cherbourg right the way round to St-Malo.
Continue reading...Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real
Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.
Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.
Continue reading...Campaigners say veterans should also get compensation for injustice they suffered and pensions restored
Thousands of British military personnel who were dismissed because they were homosexual will be able to have their service medals restored if they had been taken away when they were kicked out of the armed forces.
Gay rights campaigners welcomed the move as the “first step on a journey” but said that issues such as enduring criminal records, lost pension rights and still blemished service records now needed to be dealt with by the Ministry of Defence.
Continue reading...Exclusive: two vessels to be deployed at sea with two on standby in case EU fishing boats enter EEZ
Four Royal Navy patrol ships will be ready from 1 January to help the UK protect its fishing waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit, in a deployment evoking memories of the “cod wars” in the 1970s.
The 80-metre-long armed vessels would have the power to halt, inspect and impound all EU fishing boats operating within the UK’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which can extend 200 miles from shore.
Continue reading...Nigerians arrested after SBS stormed Nave Andromeda are still detained by Border Force
Seven Nigerian men detained after British special services stormed an oil tanker off the Isle of Wight have been bailed, police have said.
The raid was carried out by around 16 members of the Special Boat Service (SBS), backed by airborne snipers, who secured the Nave Andromeda tanker in around nine minutes.
Continue reading...Three-year-old Belgian shepherd malinois saved lives by tackling an al-Qaida gunman
A retired British military dog is to receive a medal for valour after he was injured in action while tackling an al-Qaida gunman.
Kuno will receive the PDSA Dickin Medal in a virtual ceremony in November, giving him the highest honour for military animal valour.
Continue reading...PM hints at law change to make it easier to deport people who make dangerous voyage
Boris Johnson has branded attempts by people to cross the Channel in small boats as a “very bad and stupid and dangerous and criminal thing to do” and hinted at changing the law to make it easier to deport such arrivals.
Meanwhile, a French politician has warned that the UK’s decision to send in the Royal Navy “won’t change anything”, and a former Home Office official has said he was sceptical of the plans.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson urges nation to unite in tribute as celebrations are adapted owing to Covid-19
RAF jets will roar over Britain to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, as Boris Johnson urged the nation to unite in tribute to the achievement and sacrifice of the wartime generation.
The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will lead a two-minute silence from Scotland on a day of celebration and commemoration which also includes a “national toast”, an address by the Queen, and a nationwide sing-a-long of Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again.
Continue reading...Seven ships remained off UK coast for unusually long time this month
Nine Royal Navy ships were involved in a major operation shadowing seven Russian vessels who had lingered in the Channel for several days this month as the coronavirus crisis was beginning to worsen in the UK.
The unusually high level of Russian activity concluded about a week and a half ago and navy officials said they believed it was primarily a response to western exercises in Europe rather than to a perception that the disease was leaving the UK vulnerable.
Continue reading...HMS Forth deployed to accompany the Vasily Bykov navy patrol ship through UK waters
A Royal Navy patrol ship has been deployed to shadow a Russian ship through the Channel.
Portsmouth-based HMS Forth had just returned to UK waters from her first foreign port visit when it was scrambled to monitor the Russian patrol ship Vasily Bykov.
A Navy spokesman said: “Forth had departed Gibraltar on 31 July, before heading north at speed and conducting heavy weather trials before a quick logistics stop in Devonport.
“She then sailed and positioned herself ready to meet the Vasily Bykov as the vessel sailed from the North Sea having taken part in Russia’s Navy Days celebration in St Petersburg.”
HMS Forth’s executive officer Lt Samuel Fields said: “It has been a particularly busy time for HMS Forth as we generate for deployed operations and continue to test our ship’s capabilities.
“I am proud of the ship’s company for rising to this additional challenge.”
The Vasily Bykov was previously shadowed by HMS Forth through the UK’s area of interest last month.
Frigate HMS Westminster was also deployed during the weekend to shadow the Chinese warship Xian up the Channel.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have released audio of an exchange in which a UK warship is told not to intervene in the capture of a British-flagged tanker on 19 July. Iranian commandos seized the Stena Impero near the strait of Hormuz two weeks after British forces captured an Iranian tanker near Gibraltar over concerns it was defying EU sanctions by transporting oil to Syria
Continue reading...MoD says destroyer will be deployed within days to protect British commercial oil tankers
The UK is stepping up its military presence in the Gulf by sending a second warship to the region to protect British commercial oil tankers, the Ministry of Defence has said.
The HMS Duncan, a Type 45 destroyer, will be deployed within days after it completed a course of Nato exercises in the Baltic Sea with the aim to be in the Gulf region by next week.
Continue reading...