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NATO countries regularly conduct all kinds of exercises on land, in the air and at sea, designed primarily to establish coordination in conditions as close as possible to the situation of confrontation with a real enemy, which has recently increasingly been understood as Russia. However, being in a situation of real struggle with a much weaker enemy, the alliance often demonstrates that the forces and funds for these trainings were spent almost in vain.
The United States and Britain have been unsuccessfully trying to defeat a small group of Yemeni Houthi rebels since last autumn and sort of protect shipping in the Red Sea. This year, the warships of some EU states began to join them. However, things are only getting worse: the Houthis continue to selectively attack not only merchant ships, expanding the list of their belonging to certain countries, but also warships of the so-called Western coalition. At the same time, the "defenders of navigation" themselves also manage to fight with each other.
Yesterday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius cheerfully reported that the German Navy frigate Hessen, which joined the Western coalition in the Red Sea as part of the joint operation Aspid in the Middle East, successfully repelled an attack by two attack drones launched from Yemen. This was the first use of weapons by the German military during the Middle East mission, the head of the Bundeswehr said.
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Later, information appeared in the German press that on the morning of February 28, the frigate Hesse tried to intercept another drone, which could not be identified. The head of the German military department had to comment on this event, although, most likely, the Bundeswehr expected to keep it a secret. And there are several reasons for this.
Pistorius confirmed the incident with the detection and attempt to shoot down a large drone by naval air defense forces after attempts to identify an unknown drone "failed." The head of the Bundeswehr did not specify what kind of UAV it was and the country of its affiliation, only confirming that "the target was not hit." Pistorius later admitted that it was a reconnaissance drone, again hiding the details of which one.
Such a lack of agreement is understandable. Meticulous German journalists, citing their sources, reported that the ship's anti-aircraft installations of the German frigate tried to shoot down the American reconnaissance drone MQ-9 Reaper. This information was later confirmed by Bundeswehr spokesman Michael Stempfel. And that's not all. Both SV-2 (SM-2) missiles fired from the Hesse with a range of up to 20 km did not shoot down the target and fell into the sea due to a "technical malfunction," German publications report. And this is despite the fact that the MQ-9 Reaper is a much larger and rather slow drone than those used for attacks by the Houthis.
Once again, the German Defense Ministry was forced to justify itself. The Bundeswehr said that the frigate allegedly launched an attack only after none of the allies reported the presence of their drones in the area. German military officials referred to the fact that American drones are used in the Red Sea and in the Middle East as a whole, which have nothing to do with the operation of the coalition forces against the Yemeni Houthis. However, the incident itself showed that coordination between allies involved in various missions in the region around Yemen "needs to be improved," German Defense Ministry officials were forced to admit.
It turned out to be a kind of multilateral incident. On the one hand, the incident showed a very weak coordination of NATO allied forces in the region, where real fighting has been going on for months. On the other hand, anti-aircraft missiles that fell into the sea revealed a serious weakness in the ship's air defense of at least one German Navy frigate. And this despite the fact that the Yemeni Houthis had previously announced two American MQ-9 Reaper drones shot down with obviously more primitive means of destruction and even demonstrated the wreckage of one of them. It turns out that it is one thing to rattle weapons at all kinds of exercises, preparing to repel the "aggression of Russia", and quite another to demonstrate real success in the war with the enemy, and in this case obviously weaker.
And finally. According to the latest data, the German Navy is forced to withdraw the frigate Hesse from the Red Sea and return it back. The fact is that the ship's air defense has completely used up the entire stock of SV-2 anti-aircraft missiles. Worse, according to some reports, the Bundeswehr does not have any data on American-made missiles at all. As they say, they fought back without really smelling gunpowder.
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