This story tells you much of what you need to know about the Egyptian Armed Forces.
The buying spree for the Egyptian Armed Forces in the past five years has been massive and probably hasn’t stopped because the psychological needs of some are insatiable – as they are irrational. The discredited Freud had a theory on this.
The buying spree has also exploded the bloated, trebled or quadrupled, the national debt which the next few generations of taxpayers will service – but not the non-taxpaying Armed Forces and their retail, manufacturing, construction, housing, farming, mining and many other tax exempt businesses.
Centre stage of the naval purchases are 2 X French Mistral carrier type boats. They are big, no one else has ever bought them (for good reason) and they are essentially about projecting power and landing troops, not defense of the homeland and not anti-terrorism. A sort of invasion/task force type of thing. They cost a bomb and need helicopters and lots of other extra expensive things to fit out the hulk.
There are quite a few other French ships ordered (Corvettes) and some German submarines (old style, never bought by Germany and principally sold to fourth rate navies – some Egyptian Admiral went on a heady European shopping trip with the Egyptian credit card for boats from a company, Thyssen Krupp, with a bad track record for corruption of heads of state x2 maybe 3, and corrupt payments to Israel (for submarines), possibly corruption in Angola, illegal cartel behavior in Germany, possible corruption in Turkey, probable corruption in relation to submarine deals with South Korea and Indonesia, also Portugal and Greece – they have nice suitcases).
The President says they were bought to protect the gas fields. Everyone just laughs because you need very fast small boats for that type of work – if you know how to do that type of work. The Mistrals are big and slow but big and virile is an important thing to certain types of creatures. Their capacity to defend the gas is zero and you don’t need 900 commandoes and tanks on board for that task – but small things do little to enhance Egyptian pride, prestige and grandeur. Best to go with big shiny things.
What they were designed for is large scale expeditionary tasks or invasions involving 600-800 troops per ship, helicopters and tanks. If you can see a need for Egypt to invade with 1600 troops tell me.
The total cost of the new ‘fleet’ might be $US20 billion+ but its objective/purposes unclear (unless invasion of another country is on the cards) given Egypt has never been a maritime power, has a small low skill navy, faces no maritime threats and has zero maintenance and servicing skills. All this money to meet a threat which does not exist.
Typically the lifetime maintenance/repair costs of war ships is 2-3 times the purchase cost – a huge amount. Whether technical upgrades add to this cost I don’t know.
No one can work out why they were bought. On the other hand as Egypt has no military/diplomatic plan/strategy therefore every purchase is either short-term rational or, more likely, an impulse buy with no defined objectives/needs regarding any threat Egypt is likely to face. Its likely the second because Egypt’s naval high command/navy is difficult to underestimate.
A bit like buying a Rolls Royce or 2 for milk deliveries.
The French builders are clear and completely contradict the greatest President in the world. They say its design and purpose was: “force-projection, peacekeeping and humanitarian-support operations” but what would they know – Egypt knows better. https://www.naval-group.com/en/news/dcn ... tian-navy/ Does Egypt do humanitarian work – name one time in 70 years. The last time it did force projection was in Yemen in the 60’s and that was a disaster – they lost – but not before Mubarak dropped weapons of mass destruction – gas, on civilians killing about 7,000 in multiple ‘attacks’.
They look quite pyramidal (sic) at sea which is an Egyptian thing.
They are quite big in a 'manly' way:
There are problems. When delivered a few years ago they couldn’t defend themselves. Yes they had no missiles or guns because the French didn’t/wouldn’t fit any. Bit dangerous. Russian helicopters (accident prone, problems with spares and maintenance and not integrated with the US command and control system in the rest of the Egyptian military and the military in the region) had to be bought at a cost which is not clear. Helicopters don’t defend you from missiles or planes.
The command and control system for the ships is also not clear, likely to be Russian but unlikely to be integrated with the Egyptian US/French status quo.
Whether the French Mistral was designed to hold the Egyptian Abrams tanks is doubtful. Whether it can hold any Egyptian armored personnel carriers is doubtful.
You would expect a careful and deliberate Egyptian Navy (utterly unused to this type of boat indeed unused to almost any boats) would come up with the best idea to protect its $US2 investment. But no.
This is what they have done to defend their biggest ships:
(The source of the photo is not clear but it’s the right ship and its a Humvee the Egyptians get free. Jane’s, the worlds greatest military magazine published it as true)
Faced with a serious problem they solve it by getting a couple of Humvees, tied down on the deck in a less than permanent way (hopefully away from the helicopters) so they wouldn’t fall into the drink and then attached some Stinger missiles (?) (Avenger delivery system with no radar) which are rarely used at sea. If it’s a stinger system its useless because their range is too short, technology outdated and the new Iranian/Russian anti-ship missiles are very fast. I don’t think they solved their problem – that would require intelligence, good judgment, attention to detail, careful planning and good execution – the type of skills you expect from a good Admiral.
No one else in the world would use this band-aid to protect the Crown Jewels.
Maybe that’s why the Egyptian Navy is staying well away from Yemen or any people who have these modern weapons. The missile threat to the Egypt Navy has been around for a while because in 2015, before the Sinai terrorists got higher quality Iranian/Russian missiles, they hit an Egyptian Navy ship. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33557180. The Government of Egypt absolutely denies this even though the BBC has video of the hit. The Egypt Navy has learnt from 2015 – absolutely nothing. The Government of Egypt denies undeniable evidence. They have recently been cruising off Sinai but I think well out at sea.
The Mistral is the type of ship that needs many other ships to protect it from missiles, submarines and airplanes. Egypt has few of these and many are old with outdated technology. Protection of the Mistral will be expensive and take time – its not a 5 minute Presidential command if you want to get it right.
Wonder where the missile stocks/stores for the Humvee are kept, maybe the sailors amble across the deck to get them. Hope they don’t get killed whilst ambling.
How this ‘Humvee/stinger system’ is linked into the ships radar, plotting systems and all the command and control on the bridge and other ships/planes in the convoy I don’t know. Maybe the admiral just ambles across the deck from the bridge to the truck to tell them what to do. Two way radios would be jammed. They could use flags or signal lamps.
It must get hot in that Humvee. Lets hope it doesn’t run out of petrol/diesel/air conditioning/lighting for night attacks.
In case you’ve missed the point. This is the total defense system of a 23,000 ton ship and more than 1200 men.
I think they should have hired a professional to fit it out. Someone who knows what to do. Probably not an Egyptian.
Never give an expensive present to a child – or to the intellectually disabled.
At this stage I wouldn’t run the risk of either Mistral leaving Alex Harbor with just a truck on its deck.
On a positive note the Mistrals are the biggest ‘things’ in the region and bigger and shinier than anything the Saudi’s have. That must make some feel very superior. At this stage their use is limited and, until Egypt invades another country, zero. They are just symbols and not very potent ones. It’s a mess. Egypt now has the 6th largest navy in the world – a lot for a poor dysfunctional country whose greatest threats are on dry land. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-inter ... ding-spree and a lot of its ships are aging vulnerable hulks.
If all else fails the two Mistrals could be set up as off-shore money making touristic brothels in keeping with their French heritage where the French State always provided government run brothels for its troops (Bordels Mobiles de Campagne or Bordel Militaire de Campagne). They could be a mobile ‘resource’ to move from the Med coast to the Red Sea depending on seasonal ‘demand’ but the boats are too big to go down the Nile to Luxor so Upper Egypt will ‘miss out’. Tax-free profits would go to the generals and, as with all military matters, press reporting of this whole thing would carry 10 years jail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bordel_mi ... e_campagne.
Letting military chaps do their own machinery shopping is always bad particularly if there is no thought-out and carefully debated shopping list that reflects the agreed priorities. Usually this involves politicians, diplomats and academics. Yet no overall plan/or shopping list seems to exist in Egypt so military impulse rules alone.
Every other country in the world, except the toilets but including Israel, publishes its military strategy. In Egypt the absence of a published military strategy is a lot like the absence of their economic plan, tourist plan, climate change plan, water plan and agricultural plan. If there are plans they are never implemented for long. Its not a place which values deep thinking, evidence and debate as a way of moving forward - its impulse, theater and display.
Here is what an independent European think tank said in 2016 about the Egyptian plan/strategy:
“The Egyptian military is essentially still modeled to refight the 1973 war, with a war paradigm very similar to that of 1973, yet with more advanced hardware and somewhat improved tactics. Its core competence is to move large armored and infantry formations into forward defense positions, under the cover of a mobile integrated air-defense system. Egypt’s focus is still on main battle platforms (such as tanks, frigates, jets, etc).”
“it is questionable whether the Egyptian navy can carry out a large scale, prolonged campaign in a remote theater if opposed by a competent player (in contrast with, for example, a showing of the flag off Yemen’s shore)….. It is astonishing that Egypt the largest Arab country and the traditional leader of the Arab world is without a meaningful proxy in the main conflicts of the Arab world. (no friends/allies/treaties/military alliances – no one likes/trusts them)”
https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/file ... ksl_v2.pdf
There are worse Western opinions the sum effect of which is that new toys aren’t going to fix the core problems – the officer class is poor and its thinking/strategy/man management worse. The major use of conscripts is another matter – almost everyone else has got rid of them because the quality is low – particularly in complex wars using high-tech equipment and complicated strategies – even Russia has stopped. So they are not much good at their chosen profession with 60 years of unremitting defeat but assert the right/competence to spend lots of time running 30% of the economy and 100% of politics without experience or training. In other places military, political and economic failure leads to humility – or shame.
You get an idea how operational the Egyptian Navy is from Jane’s report which states that none of the entire current submarine fleet (4) has gone to sea for years. https://ihsmarkit.com/pdf/IHS-Janes-Amp ... 044232.pdf Again the source is the impeccable Jane's.
Perhaps these boats are for the new slow cruses they have been on about. You could easily get a putting green, volley ball, tennis/cricket pitch and even a ten pin bowling run on those decks. A cruise around the Red Sea on a near defunct war ship is bound to be a hit, and probably the only ''hit'' such a vessel will make. For an extra payment, the rich and wealthy Yanks, cos they love pulling triggers, would be quite eager to fire off one of those stingers in an attempt to sink a 21 tonnes Whale shark.