As regulation slowly and painfully filters down the private maritime security industry, a “proliferation” of new firms from emerging countries is inevitable and British PMSCs will price themselves out of the market, according to Norton Rose partner Philip Roche. The big question, Mr Roche said, is w
£14m of drugs used to fund terrorist activity will never reach their destination thanks to a major bust by HMS Westminster. The Portsmouth-based warship intercepted a suspicious dhow in the Indian Ocean, seizing over 70 bales containing more than 180kg of pure heroin. The Portsmouth-based frigate po
A German-owned freighter loaded with military equipment and ammunition heading to Syria, was stopped on Friday 50 kilometres (31 miles) away from the Syrian port Tartus, a German Magazine Der Spiegel reports. The ship “Atlantic Cruiser”, leased to a Ukrainian company, White Whale Shipping, was inter
Early on Easter Sunday morning (8th April), British Antarctic Survey ship RRS Ernest Shackleton was alerted to assist a Brazilian navy vessel Ary Rongel from thick pack ice in the north eastern end of Bransfield Straits near the South Shetland Islands on the Antarctic Peninsula. The Ary Rongel — an
As part of a foreign military sales case, the U.S. Navy worked together with French military to execute France’s first aerial-target live-fire event using a GQM-163A Coyote Supersonic Sea Skimming Target (SSST), or missile, on April 4. France’s military procurement agency Direction Generale Pour L’A
Royal Naval Reservist Lieutenant Mark Bannister, 35, has recently returned from a six-month deployment fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. The Business Development Manager from Burnham swapped his civilian life to work for the European Union Naval Force in Djibouti, north east Africa. Mark sai
More than 130 men and women today joined the celebrated ‘band of brothers’ that is the Royal Navy’s Officer Corps as they formally passed out of its spiritual home, Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. Former First Sea Lord Admiral the Lord Boyce was the guest of honour at the passing-out par
Three “blue-nosed” Reservists from HMS Sherwood in Nottingham have returned from a major exercise inside the Arctic Circle The biggest war game of the winter, involving 16,000 service men and women from 12 nations, was played out amid the Norwegian fjords and mountains in the harshest of winter weat
The first Dutch F-35 Lightning II test aircraft, the AN-1, rolled off the production line in fully assembled condition at the Lockheed Martin factory in Fort Worth, Texas, on 5 April. In the coming weeks, the aircraft will be given a special coating. Lockheed Martin will then test the aircraft’s sys
Warships from across the globe – including a dozen Royal Navy warships, submarines and auxiliaries – are converging on Scotland for the largest military exercise staged in home waters in many years. Thirty two naval units, plus soldiers and air forces – some 8,000 personnel in all from eight nations
Leading international classification society Bureau Veritas has joined forces with French maritime security consultants Securymind to provide an auditing and verification service for companies providing armed guards to protect ships against piracy. Security companies offering services to shipping wi
On 4 April, the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard intercepted a stash of 91 kilos of drugs near Curaçao. Earlier, on 20 March, 500 kilograms of cocaine had been found on a so-called go-fast boat in the international waters of the Caribbean Sea. These seizures were made during an operation led by the Royal
