Joint Warrior: French ‘Flunk Out’ Before Exercise Starts

NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE

“We don’t think Putin will be too alarmed at the next few days of sabre-rattling by NATO. It appears some of the French ‘sabres’ are a bit rusty!”

Looks like Vladimir Putin hasn’t got a lot to fear from the French Navy. With much vaunted NATO Exercise Joint Warrior (JW 15-2) just twenty four hours from getting underway it looks as if the French Aeronavale maritime reconnaissance participation has had to go home!

A variety of maritime reconnaissance (MR) aircraft have been gathering at Loussiemouth in Scotland including United States Navy P8s, Canadian Air Force CP-140 and German Navy P3C. The sole French participant a Bregeut Atlantique (serial FNY 5624) from the base (shared jointly with the civil airport) at Lorient did arrive on the 2nd of October but almost immediately departed again and limped back to Lorient.

It seems as if the ageing Atlantique was not up to the planned 10 days of exercises simulating the hunting of Russian submarines off the North and West of Britain.

Still the French can console themselves that they still have MR aircraft (albeit ageing) to ‘breakdown’ as the UKs contribution of this maritime reconnaissance show of force to the Russians is nil. All the United Kingdoms MR fleet were scrapped years ago and the MOD struggling to balance its budget and committed to the expensive Trident programme can’t find the money to replace them.

Somehow we don’t think Putin will be too alarmed at the next few days of sabre-rattling by NATO. It appears some of the French ‘sabres’ are a bit rusty and in the case of the UK they don’t have a ‘sabre’ at all!

Celtic League will be monitoring the exercise, which starts at 2400 hrs today and runs until the 16th of October. Let’s hope in their zeal to play ‘catch the Russian submarine’ they don’t snag anymore trawlers this time!

BERNARD MOFFATT

Issued by: The Celtic News

04/10/15

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