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No waffle, all action for RN patrol boats in North Sea exercise
25 September 2024
Two of the Royal Navy’s smallest warships have completed causing havoc in the North Sea as they joined a multi-national minehunting exercise.
Fast patrol boats HMS Blazer and Exploit were invited to ‘play the bad guys’, tearing around the waters off the Flanders coast, attempting to upset the peaceful efforts of minehunters and dive teams hoping to locate underwater explosive devices and protect sea bed infrastructure.
The duo belong to the Portsmouth-based Coastal Forces Squadron and the P2000 craft have traditionally been used for fairly ‘gentle’ training/giving university students.
More recently, the patrol boats have been employed operationally on numerous duties, supporting Royal Navy/Royal Marine operations in the Arctic, Scandinavia and Baltic, from developing tactics to deal with fast attack craft to serving as launchpads for aerial and underwater drones.
Blazer and Exploit formed two of the seven ships committed to Sandy Coast – an exercise run annually off the Belgian or Dutch coast by the two Low Countries navies.
This year it fell to the Belgians to take the lead, with the North Sea off Zeebrugge the setting.
Minehunters from the host nation, plus the Netherlands, France and Estonia as well as specialists in very shallow water operations shared their expertise with the focus on improving the rate of finding mines and rendering them safe in some of Europe’s busiest waters.
Despite the best efforts of the P2000s to upset the apple cart, the international force neutralised 11 explosive devices over the course of the 12-day workout.
“This was the first time the Royal Navy has been involved in exercise Sandy Coast – but not the last,” said HMS Exploit’s Commanding Officer Lieutenant Cameron Osborn.
“Future Sandy Coasts will act as a springboard for the development of the Coastal Forces Squadron and Mine Threat Exploitation Group’s liaison whilst working with our NATO partners.”
By working alongside mine hunting teams we can build our own squadron knowledge as well as identify further opportunities for P2000 to be used as both training and operational assets to the RN.
Running from the naval base at Zeebrugge every day, the two Royal Navy vessels not only replicated the tactics of fast inshore attack craft, but also served as ‘VIP taxis’ moving senior military leaders around the task force for a first-hand inspection of Sandy Coast.
And Blazer embarked experts in finding/neutralising mines in very shallow waters from the Royal Navy’s Mine Threat and Exploitation Group, building on work carried out earlier by mine warfare teams with the latest tech and autonomous systems with other P2000 craft in the Baltic.
The chief lesson they learned was that the small patrol boats can serve as a ‘base’ for minehunting operations, notably a launchpad for Remus autonomous sonar scanners – particularly if accompanied by a small Zodiac RIB.
Lieutenant Aaron Paul, Blazer’s Commanding Officer, explained: “It’s always good to have further opportunities to develop the Future Coastal Forces Concept.
“By working alongside mine hunting teams we can build our own squadron knowledge as well as identify further opportunities for P2000 to be used as both training and operational assets to the RN.”
There was some down time for both crews, which allowed them to pay their respects to Britain’s war dead from the Great War, with a visit to Ypres, and the Napoleonic Wars by walking the battlefield of Waterloo, south of Brussels.