According to UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) – a Royal Navy (RN) capability that acts as an information conduit between military/security forces and the international merchant shipping community – the number of Red Sea incident reports it received increased by 475% once the Houthi attacks began in mid-November 2023. The rebels have linked their campaign to the Israel-Hamas war, which erupted on 7 October.
“From 18 November, over the next month of statistics, we had a 475% increase in the number of incidents we were dealing with. That is a significant amount,” Lieutenant Commander Jo Black – UKMTO’s RN lead, formally posted as Crown Representative to the RN-led/civilian-staffed organisation – told a media briefing at the UKMTO facility near Portsmouth, UK on 20 March.
“Instead of seeing one incident every two to three weeks or maybe every month or so, we were seeing multiple incidents – sometimes all at the same time, up to five incidents concurrently – which was a significant shift.”
“It was also a new type of threat we were seeing, compared to the historic [threat from] piracy,” Lt Cdr Black continued. “It was a huge change for us.” The threat included the use of missiles, uncrewed systems, and small boats.
Over the last three months of 2023, 69 incidents were reported – with 65 of these occurring in the last six weeks of the year. Across 2024 to date, UKMTO is tracking 55 reported incidents. This is a slight reduction compared to the attack levels in late 2023. However, overall, the incident level is still a significant increase compared to the routine pattern prior to the onset of the Red Sea shipping crisis, said Lt Cdr Black.
The increase in incidents has represented “a significant change in demand”, Lt Cdr Black added.
Information sharing to improve situational awareness and inform decision making is a core output for UKMTO. It provides information to the region’s response organisations, so that such organisations may take a decision to respond and to co-ordinate that response. It liaises with a range of regional stakeholders, such as information fusion centres (IFCs) or maritime operations centres (MOCs) in individual countries or with multinational constructs like the US Navy (USN)-led, Bahrain-based Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) 41-country maritime security partnership.
While UKMTO routinely ‘pushes’ incident information out to other stakeholders, the Red Sea shipping crisis has seen much greater demand from multinational naval task groups to ‘pull’ information from UKMTO to help them understand what is happening.
“Because of the changing type of attacks, we are communicating more frequently with the likes of CMF and the Operation ‘Prosperity Guardian’ players,” Neal Scott, one of UKMTO’s operations room managers, told the briefing. ‘Prosperity Guardian’ was the first multinational naval task group established to respond to the shipping crisis, and is commanded by CMF’s USN-led, Red Sea-focused Combined Task Force (CTF) 153.
The intensity of the shipping crisis is increasingly challenging. “[It’s] now escalated to the sinking of a vessel and some deaths. This is a very unstable situation,” said Lt Cdr Black.
The Houthi attacks are not the only area of concern. Organisations like UKMTO are noting signs of increased Somali pirate activity around the Horn of Africa, an increase pre-dating the Red Sea crisis, Lt Cdr Black explained.
There are several possible factors driving this, including organised crime, disputes between fishermen, political unrest, and food and water insecurity. “As those challenges increased, we started to see the frequency of these types of activities in the maritime increase again – which everybody was tracking, because we’re all aware of where it could go,” said Lt Cdr Black.
Recent months have seen fishing dhows pirated. Dhows can be used as ‘motherships’ to support attacks further out at sea. “It’s a possibility that some of these fishing vessels could be used as vehicles to transport pirate action groups further offshore to then target international shipping, and that is what everybody is very concerned about at the moment,” said Lt Cdr Black. “That would represent yet another threat on top of what is already a very challenging situation.”
In the last four months, several larger ships have been attacked by pirates. In November, the tanker MV Central Park was targeted in the Bab-al-Mandeb Straits: however, the USN DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Mason was close to hand, and drove off the pirates. In December, at distance offshore from Somalia, the bulk carrier MV Ruen was seized; in March, the Indian Navy freed the vessel. In March too, MV Abdullah – another bulk carrier – was attacked, again at distance offshore.
It is not UKMTO’s role to assess if such occurrences indicate a resurgence in piracy. However, the types of incident being reported are of concern, said Lt Cdr Black.
Overall, the combination of the Houthi attacks and the piracy incidents means “We’re seeing a really complex environment,” Lt Cdr Black added.
