 It's Bill Nalt, Interim Dean of CLE. It's my pleasure to introduce for the LOO today online and here in the classroom, Mr. Simon Church from the UK. You guys all have his short bio. I've read the long bio. It's glorious in every way. But Mr. Church is joining us this week for teaching with the MSGC course over in IP and has agreed to do a LOO today on maritime security, very timely, some of the things that are going on around the world. So I could and would drone on, but you don't want to listen to that. So I'm going to turn it over to Simon and I will drive slides. And if you have questions in Zoomland, I'll be monitoring chat and come in here and get your questions answered by Simon. So I'll do you, Simon. Thank you, Bill. Can everyone hear me loud and clear? Systems working. Good afternoon, everyone. And I'd like to begin by thanking the War College for inviting me here today to give this lecture opportunity. My name is Simon Church, and I'm currently working as the Special Advisor to the Gulf of Guinea Co-Chairs of the Shade Forum in the Gulf of Guinea. The Shade Forum is an operational forum bringing navies and the global shipping industry together as partners to tackle at the time in 2021 a chronic threat of piracy against merchant shipping in that region. The co-chairs are Nigeria and the Hyundai Code of Conduct, our inter-regional coordination center, otherwise known as ICC. The ICC represents 21 countries in the Gulf of Guinea region of West Africa. I was offered by the United Kingdom as a subject matter expert because of my previous 12 years experience working against Somali piracy under the UK command of EU Naval Force Operation Atalanta from 2008. I was employed by the European Naval Force operation as an industry liaison advisor to manage the increasingly demanding relationship with the global shipping industry. And through 12 very eventful years, I became the director of the Maritime Security Center Horn of Africa, otherwise known as MSC Hoa. And eventually the strategic advisor to the operational commander on industry relations. I have an unusual background in that I worked for 20 years over half my career in the shipping industry in a variety of roles, all of which were related to commercial operations of merchant shipping. And then the second half of it, I worked in naval operations, mandated in the protection of shipping from maritime security threats and piracy. This unusual combined experience has allowed me to understand the complexities of cultivating and navigating the maritime security relationship between navies and that of shipping the shipping industry internationally and in its numerous different guises. In the time I have today, I want to take the opportunity to share with you some of my insights into the specific relationship or partnership, as I like to call it, be it bilaterally in coalitions or from different regions of the world. I've entitled today's lecture as global navies and the shipping industry, partners for the protection of trade or a relationship of strangers. Question mark. I will explain why it is still often the case that the former is still aspirational and the latter is in many cases, the reality in today's interconnected global economy. In addressing this, I intend to frame today's lecture in the following headings, which you can see hopefully on the screen. The first is why is the relationship between global shipping industry and navies still one of crisis management and rarely treated as one based on a long-term basis of operational cooperation and partnership? Secondly, what exactly constitutes the international shipping industry and why its complexity is not widely understood? Thirdly, I will look at what can be achieved when and where the shipping industry and navies have formed long-standing partnerships in cooperation against threats to a maritime trade. For example, the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Guinea, the Straits of Hormuz, I will outline specific examples of where this success has been achieved. Finally, I will look at how is it that naval and academic institutions can play a transformative role in bridging this gap and fostering change? The word crisis is often overused, an overused term. For that reason, it can undermine its own currency. But right now, in the Southern Red Sea, we are truly living through a maritime security crisis that is almost unparalleled since the Suez Crisis of 1956. The reason is very simple. There are only three straits of water through which large volumes of world shipping pass that really matter. And one of them is Babel Mendeb in the Southern Red Sea. I have some experience in this region during the last 12 years of my time in EU Nav Force Somalia at the UK's Joint Force Command in London. The EU Naval Force, together with partners of US NABSENT, run by CMF, put in place a corridor for shipping in the Gulf of Aden that extends into the Southern Red Sea and has been pounded with drone and missile strikes from the Yemeni Houthis. So the timing of this lecture is particularly apt. Let me begin by going back in time somewhat. In recent decades, navies have had increasing demands placed upon them in upholding these rights. But more significantly, we have seen greater resources, assets and expertise and human capital being used by navies in protecting merchant shipping, facing an increasingly complex array of maritime security threats. Some of these threats have been so chronic requiring the creation of multinational naval coalitions and different navies mandated by their governments to come together to fight a common threat. But by the nature of these threats, it is that they are often defined as transitory and a crisis that require emergency interventions for short periods by navies. And once that crisis is assessed to be contained, then the mandates often end and with it many of the working practices of cooperation. Some good examples of that are the EU naval operation Somalia in the Mediterranean to tackle illegal immigration into Europe from North Africa, NATO's counter-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden called Ocean Shield. But what is often lost are those things that are most important that are not sustained and should they be required again in future crises? Often you have to reinvent the wheel all over again. Some examples are the operational protocols for the communication and interoperability between merchant shipping and military operations. Frameworks and formats for threat alerts, trusted mechanisms for incident reporting and voluntary reporting frameworks, including the sharing of confidential and commercially confidential sensitive information from shipping companies to military operations to name but a few. The benefit of being part of a longstanding operation such as EU naval was because of the longevity and the acute nature of the crisis. It was imperative for the naval operation to build a longstanding and trust-based relationship with the shipping industry. If it was going to be able to implement effective deterrence of the piracy threat and constrain and encourage, sorry, and constrain the freedom of operation of pirate groups. The significant collective multinational multi-mission response jointly working hand in glove with the shipping industry had never been undertaken on such a scale before. Bill, next slide. To highlight the gravity and scale of this crisis, especially in the first three to four years. Sorry, next one. Of the threat we faced at that time, between 2008 and 2011, over a hundred merchant ships were hijacked. 3,500 seafarers were taken hostage. Over 400 attacks launched by pirate groups against international shipping, as far as 1,200 miles from the coast of Somalia and $400 million a ransom paid for the release of those hostages and ships. Furthermore, the scale in terms of both the size of the sea space of operation, the volume and diversity of the shipping community, interest transiting that ocean, the Indian Ocean, is so extensive that it encompasses almost all types of vessel and cargo interests. So this required a credible processes for the coordination to be both effective in output and durable under operational stress. The confidence in processes, protocols, industry, military guidance, instruments of information sharing were tested by the gravity of the piracy crisis. It was my job to build the Maritime Security Center Horn of Africa, better known as MCHOA that you see here on the slide, which was in fact, the military to military to merchant shipping operational interface that was incorporated into the J3 operations unit within the headquarters of UNIFOR and became crucial to the effective piracy deterrence and support and protection of shipping and seafarers. At the heart of our strategic thinking was building a construct of mutual trust, which places obligations on both the merchant shipping community to report to self-protect and in return, naval response would be forthcoming. This was the premise that MCHOA was built on. We introduced reporting schemes, getting shipping to use them was quite another. Processes and protocols can shape behaviors to enhance the security for the freedom of navigation only if they are followed. So we worked hand in hand with the shipping associations to introduce and publish disseminate an entire doctrine of guidance and the application of self-protection measures. They were called best management practices, otherwise known as BMP. Next slide, which you see here. And 15 years and five versions later, you will see them on the bridges of merchant vessels around the globe today. All of this enabled the military responses to security threats that could be executed effectively, leading to the building of confidence of all stakeholders. This in turn justifies the decisions for interventions in security in commercial shipping businesses and the justification for governments and their decisions on expenditure of expensive assets. In short, there was a transaction of trust with an implied mutual commitment to that trust. One of the biggest single deterrent effects was UNIFOR strategic and operational partnership with the industry. You see there in the slide, a senior leadership forum between UNIFOR and CMF and the shipping associations at a senior level. The neutrality and singular nature of UNIFOR's commitment to industry in its mandate is its protection of vulnerable shipping from policy. It was this neutrality of purpose that enabled the trust to be built and the conditions for disclosure of commercially confidential information to our operation. UNIFOR built trust with the shipping industry over many years of operations. This trust has been predicated on the understanding that MSC-HOA was an integrated instrument of military counterparency. Next slide, please. The forced deployment of hard naval assets and ships and aircraft have a proven track record in military deterrence and piracy attacks, arresting suspects and transferring those suspects for prosecution. The high percentage of merchant ships registering commercially confidential information to MSC-HOA was done on the understanding that this information was being used for tech shipping through a military response to the threat backed by credible military threat assessments. We received vessel registrations from over 70% of all merchant vessels transiting through the Indian Ocean. There was an approximately 4,500 single vessel transits each month. The point is that we backed up our commitment by responding to the emergency reporting of incidents. This has also empowered us with the data to track patterns on routing and to identify points of vulnerability. Next slide, please. Oh, the next slide. Longstanding operational partnerships for the shipping industry was not limited to bilateral relationships between a single operation like you now for. The Shared Awareness and Deconfliction Forum, otherwise known as Shade, is a voluntary cooperation and de-confliction meeting attended by navies and organizations involved in operations and counterparency and other maritime threats to shipping. The Indian Ocean Shade has met over 50 times and has been ongoing for 12 years. Its role is to ensure the coordination, de-confliction of military resources, military operations and industry practices to achieve a maximum efficiency and effectiveness in counterparency and other threats. It has always remained an operational meeting and as such was given the freedom to make operational decisions in the interests of its stakeholders without strategic engagement, but always observing and respecting the sovereignty of nations who take part. Which Shade was formed, you now for CMF and NATO, shared it on a rotational basis. It was designed this way to reinforce the idea of community of stakeholders for which decisions are made by consensus and each military counterparency mission is an equal partner. The participation of China, Russia and India was the first and only time where these states have come together in this way with Western navies to cooperate and mitigate against a common single threat to shipping. The inclusion of the shipping industry as a key stakeholder in Shade has been fundamental to that success. Here are some of the examples of the work that was done at the Shade Forum. Next slide. Shade generated its own policy threat assessments or called IRTAs, industry-releasable threat assessments, published every three months. These threat awareness products released to industry or their associations, who in turn shared them directly with their member shipping companies. At this in turn generated awareness of the threat and the risk assessments by ship owners and recommendations for shipping companies to invest in sustainable self-protection measures. Over many years, you now for in partnership with CMF developed products such as these of threat intelligence with a strong emphasis on military doctrine and descriptions. In these periods when piracy activity was very low, this was decisive in sustaining a proportionate application of piracy self-protection measures, including the embarkation of private arms security teams onboard merchant ships in the high-risk area. What you see here on this slide is a product that was provided by CMF, illustrating activity of different criminal organizations operating in the maritime domain, but in the same area as where the pirate groups were operating and addressing that threat was key in understanding how it worked. I want to turn now to the shipping industry itself. How little is often understood within naval communities about how it works, but also to show you where long-standing partnerships have flourished. There is a common misunderstanding that I've seen and heard many, many times, and that is from naval officers around the world. And the question that I often get asked is, what does industry think? Why can't we get industry to do this? Why can't we get industry to agree that? The idea that when it comes to a maritime security to maritime security and the safety of navigation to merchant vessels, that they, being the industry, are an organization with policies or a collection of associations that can compel private shipping companies to follow routine practices or implement voluntary reporting procedures is somewhat different. This misunderstanding has been a constant for me. Why is that, you may ask? For one, it's not surprising when there is very little cross-pollination of shipping as an industry, be it commercial operators or even company security officers with naval operations. At EUNAV4, we were fortunate in having the loan of master mariners from shipping companies working alongside naval officers inside the OHQ because they were loaned for a short period, allowing us to work alongside them. This was critically important in trust building because we would often have a captain calling in to ask a question, for example, about the start of convoys or convoy times. Having a fellow master mariner answering and giving that information made all the difference in that trust being built. I vividly recall a conversation between visiting Japanese naval attaché from the Japanese embassy in London in meeting the Japanese merchant navy captain from NYK, which is the second largest shipping company in the world. He was a secondee from that company working in the OHQ. It was truly awkward because neither knew anything about what the other did, nor did they know how to relate to each other at all. The shipping industry is a highly complex and unintegrated transportation industry that spans the globe in almost every way. Vessels that are owned by a company registered in Singapore can be operated by a ship management company in Germany, whose crewing is contracted to a company in Dubai. The vessel could be flagged to Liberia, but it's also under the time charger to an oil company for 24 months. That oil company has sub-time chartered the vessel to another company for six months. The crew come from 12 different states. Risk management for security is the responsibility of the head owners, but it is often implemented by the ship management company and can be overridden by time charger clauses on where the vessel can trade as one example. All this just relates to the operations of the merchant vessels. I haven't even touched on the insurance and how vessels are insured against piracy risk and the application of war is premiums by insurance companies and the relationship to designated high risk areas for piracy and state threats. It's important to recognize that the global shipping industry did make considerable efforts to come together on issues such as the grave threats to their security in the piracy crisis. The group of shipping industry associations called or known as the Round Table consists of all the main industry associations including the International Chamber of Shipping into Tango, into Cargo, Ockinf and BIMCO to name the main stakeholders. All these associations combined represent the security interests of over 90% of the world merchant shipping fleet on all matters relating to security, security standards, environmental protection and much more. At UNAFOR we invested in building the relationship with this group as a long sustainable relationship. I wanna take a few minutes to explain what I think can be achieved in building long standing security partnerships between naval operations and the shipping industry. At UNAFOR it was recognized that a multi-level relationship with the international shipping industry was necessary. Cooperation range from relationships with the shipping companies and masters at the operational level in the OHQ. Also to the vessels directly at sea to a higher level of strategic engagement with the industry associations at the appropriate level. Also at two levels, both mid-management and at senior CEO level. The setting up of fixed processes for consultation and meetings also made a big difference. Where the existence of a dedicated follow-up meetings allowed for that trust to be built for dialogue to continue and to sustain trust. In terms of collective coalitions I've already mentioned the Shave forums. In terms of the relationship with industry it was a perfect example of effective collective cooperation. The forum is an operational forum designed to focus on operational output. The shipping industry were granted stakeholder status and an equal partner alongside the navies from around the region. This was key. Why? Because too often navies don't treat the civilian shipping as partners but those who need our protection. There is a difference. In 2009, the doctrine of best management practice or known as BMP, known as BMP an industry written guidance to merchant vessels to counter-piracy protection was written with significant input from the US led coalition combined maritime forces and UNF4. The result is that today, 15 years later it is still recognized as the standalone industry military guidance for the protection of merchant vessels from piracy. I also want to share with you examples of where the relationship between the civilian shipping industry and navies can deteriorate rapidly and if there is an absence of a foundational trust or and understanding. In the Gulf of Guinea region, a large tanker waiting to load crude oil from an offshore terminal was arrested by a navy in 2021 for not having the correct cargo and port calling documentation. The navy in question had been recently given new tasking orders for the verification of cargo lifting for tankers and documentation for those port calls. Because there had been no consultation from this navy and the wider tanker industry about these procedures, the result of misunderstanding led to an arrest and a protected legal case involving two separate states. The detention of vessel and crew for nearly a year and the cost of settlement and a resulting court case that never came to pass settlement of over 10 million dollars. All because essentially of a lack of consultation and the introduction of a new verification procedure being conducted by that navy. This kind of event can undermine the confidence and trust between the shipping industry and the navies that can last for years. So having walked you through some of the more eventful chapters of my experience of this critical relationship over the last 15 years, I want to turn now to look at the future. Where do I see the relationship evolving? And where I think educational forums and institutions such as the Naval War College can make a real difference and what instrumental role they could play. It is my belief that the root of this issue is that the relationship of strangers begins with a broad lack of awareness that exists in navies and their working knowledge around the world about how commercial shipping companies work in practice and vice versa. Security partnerships that are effective will always involve a foundation of trust and principles of shared understanding and commitment. For example, the commitment that was made by UNR4 in protecting shipping from piracy was predicated on the clear understanding that there was a mutual commitment expected in return, those being the application of vessels reporting guidance and the implementation of piracy industry guidance, best management practice. But let's be clear, this was an extraordinary crisis that created the conditions for commitments such as these to be given an agreed. For most navies, be they in the Caribbean region or West Africa or Southeast Asia, it is far harder to say single nations to know where and how they should seek such partnerships outside of their own national maritime communities. As we look into the future, new technologies also being used by nefarious actors to target shipping in international waters. For example, the use of drones and anti-ship missiles in the Red Sea to name but one. Advances in maritime domain awareness technologies not only helps agencies involved in the safeguarding monitoring and protection of shipping but are being actively used by those who seek to target ships for an attack. As we have seen recently in last November, the boarding of an Israeli-owned car carrier, the Galaxy Leader, by Houthis operating using a helicopter and fast road boarding makes clear that the reality of the threats to shipping are becoming more advanced in their capabilities as well as the technologies to support them. To conclude, it is my belief that the time is now for states and their navies to work more closely together with the shipping industry so that these threats can be tackled effectively. Knowledge and understanding must be the driver for change. Programs to foster this exchange of working practices should be promoted through institutions, especially with a naval educational nexus. The interests of larger international shipping companies that have resources and the interest to expand the working knowledge of how navies interact with them on maritime security and vice versa, I believe has real merit and will gain support and interest if fostered and championed effectively. Thank you for giving me the time today to share with you my thinking experiences and insight and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you, Simon. Again, in the chat, if there could be questions in Zoom. Simon, I'll get started with one. I'm a slow learner. So this took me a while to understand when I was in the position of CMF, why is it difficult or why do shipping companies, security departments, for lack of a better term, or the companies themselves restrain themselves from talking to each other about the security problems they're facing on the high seas. Why do they not like to share that information amongst themselves? What's the, again, some social and kind of, economic reasons for that, maybe that'll help. You might wonder, well, why don't they just talk to each other and say what they see and then cooperate more? What's going on there? Yeah, really, really good question and a couple of points I would raise in answer to it. The shipping industry sometimes not fully understood. Well, some of the things I tried to describe about how they are constructed is essentially they are private entities and each private entity is a company. The company will have a motive, their highest motive is always profit. It doesn't mean that they don't look after their threats to the security. But what you have to understand is that the confidentiality of information between shipping companies is very sensitive and safely guarded. So what you have is a culture where the sharing of information with other companies, even when it comes to security, is something that is not an easy habit to get into. I would say that actually what we've seen since this piracy crisis and of course a mutual interest in sharing information on threats, there is a lot more in terms of how company security officers do share information about threats because they understand that that is needed and that is necessary. There's a shared risk there. There's a shared risk but essentially the bottom line is that it's not a natural habit that they have in working together because ultimately they're competitors. So you have to see it first as a business and the security that is part of that business. So let me follow. What is the information they don't want to share? What's the loss? So mainly when it comes to confidential sensitive information that has a commercial nexus, it's things like routing and charters that they may have agreed to. So one of the things, having worked my last job, which was in a TK tankers, a big tanker company operating SewersMax and Afromax tankers, they were very careful about how exactly any information about what route they're taking might give some sort of advantage if that ship is now being taken and used for this route. So the information really relates to exactly where their ship is, which is why when it comes to security that's also an issue is what you don't want to know, what you don't want your competitors to know is where is that ship trading? Of course you have AIS and other ways in which you can find out where the ship is, it's not that difficult. But essentially it is the protection of their market and the advantage within that market that they're constantly fighting each other over. And there's also some hesitancy to broadcast their own security vulnerabilities possibly. I think that is also important because there is a reluctance to share information about what security protections they have in place, not necessarily because other shipping companies may know what happens if it gets out into the wider domain. So one of the issues that we always faced was why will I give you information if I don't know that it might somehow make its way back to nefarious actors or might take advantage of it in order to target my ship. For example, we had information and disclosure from companies about whether they had an armed security team. Now if you're a ship owner and you have an armed security team you'd be very reluctant to share that information because you feel you're vulnerable in sharing it. If there's someone new that you didn't have one who might pass that information to someone who might then use that to attack you then you can understand the reluctance. This lecture has been recorded and we'll post it and let everyone know when the link is out. So with that, I'd like to thank Mr. Church. I'd like to thank all of you who zoom landed in here. Let's give Simon a hand and he'll stick around if you'd like to chat. Thanks for this. Thank you.