Combined Maritime Forces – this is the partnership of more than two dozen Navies committed to keeping the seas clear of all manner of nefarious activity (pirates, smugglers, drug runners, people traffickers, terrorists).    These Bahrain based forces directs the work of three distinct task groups of around half a dozen warships each, operating from the head of the Gulf to the Red Sea in the west, shores of India and Pakistan in the east and Seychelles in the south – and to put that into some context the area is some 2½ million square miles or more than eight times the size of the North Sea.  The ships allocated to those three task forces are:-

-       TF 150 (Counter-Terrorism/Maritime Security)

-       TF 151 (Counter-Piracy)

-       TF 152 (Maritime Security in the Gulf) – which typically operate as ‘lone wolves’, hundreds of miles away from other vessels assigned to the same force.