THERE are limits to what navies, even the well-funded ones, can do.

In the Baltic, Nato has been stepping up patrols and eagerly investing in any tech that may help it stem the recent spate of sabotage ‘incidents’ to the 40-odd telecommunication cables and critical gas pipelines that run along its relatively shallow seabed. Three of them have been hit since 2022, which, coincidentally, was when Russia invaded Ukraine.

For all the combined technological prowess of the navies, however, prevention is proving borderline impossible.

In the Red Sea, the combined naval responses that have so far seen dozens of countries supporting operations to protect ships against Houthi attack, have failed to convince shipowners their protection counts for much. The fact much of that support doesn’t extend to actually sending naval ships does not help.

Traffic through the danger zone is at the lowest level since the start of the Red Sea crisis.

According to the EU's naval commander charged with protecting shipping from Houthi attacks, shipowners shouldn’t be so worried. They have naval protection, he says, and besides, the Houthi’s accuracy rate is really rather poor — they only hit 7% of the targets at which they aimed.

That may seem a small strike rate, but it won’t comfort those who are hit. Little wonder that after the harrowing experience of fighting a fire for 19 hours, this year’s winner of the IMO Bravery Award, Capt Avhilash Rawat, has called on owners stop sending crews into the danger zone at all.

The EU’s Operation Aspides has, of course, offered a valuable contribution to efforts aimed at ensuring security, but much like the Houthis, their aim is proving problematic.

Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis’ entreaty to the industry to return to the Red Sea may carry more weight if his protection fleet was larger than the three ships under his command. That one of them is so old that it would have been scrapped years ago if it was a commercial vessel hardly inspires confidence.

He is, by his own admission, not a magician. What he has offered with the limited resource to hand is remarkable and the 300-plus examples of close protection services they have offered were invaluable.

But it is not enough and while his push to gain political support via shipping industry outrage may help get the message across to his political masters, few expect a swift expansion of the EU fleet any time soon given competing political resources right now.

Gryparis is correct to urge a more robust industry risk assessment and his guidance on shipping’s digital footprint is worth further review. But until naval forces can safeguard ships, rather aiming at safeguarding ships, there is unlikely to be a significant rerouting back through the Red Sea.

Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List

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