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Last month, Brazil and Angola signed a Technical Memorandum of Understanding for the Brazilian navy to support the development of Angola’s naval capabilities. Angola will purchase seven Brazilian Macae patrol ships, four of them built in Brazil with Angolan personnel support, and three others in Angola. Brazil will also train Angolan military personnel and build a shipyard in Angola. The agreement is another sign of Brazil and Angola’s strategic partnership, following their 2010 Defense Cooperation Agreement and more recent pacts on naval and aeronautic cooperation. But it also fits into Angola’s broader strategy to secure its maritime borders to safeguard its oil and fishing resources.

Angola’s military authorities first made improving the navy’s capabilities a priority in 2006, when Gen. Agostinho Nelumba, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, called for a complete naval modernization. Since then, they have followed up with several initiatives. In 2009, Angola announced plans for a National Maritime Surveillance System (SINAVIM) to monitor, control and protect territorial waters against illicit activities. As planned, SINAVIM will include a monitoring component—with short-, medium- and long-range radars, data-processing centers and four regional centers distributed along the Angolan coast—and an operational component comprised of naval and aerial assets, including unmanned aerial vehicles. Although the Angolan government has yet to set a target date for acquiring and installing the necessary systems, when it becomes fully operational, SINAVIM will also support the Maritime Organization of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), a regional partnership that promotes shipping and security, according to Minister of Transportation Augusto da Silva Tomas. ...

The Greek owners of an oil tanker that vanished off the Angolan coast on January 18 said on Sunday that pirates had hijacked the vessel and stolen a large quantity of cargo, contradicting the Angolan navy's denial that such an assault took place.
Greece-based Dynacom, owners of the 75,000 deadweight tonne Liberian-flagged tanker MT Kerala, said it had managed to contact crew on the vessel who reported the pirates had left.
"Pirates hijacked the vessel offshore Angola and stole a large quantity of cargo by ship-to-ship transfer. The pirates have now disembarked," the company said in a statement.
It did not provide any further details on the attack or the ship's current location but added that all crew were safe.
Dynacom's version of the events contradicted an account from the Angolan navy, which alleged the crew had turned off the ship's communications to fake a pirate attack.
Captain Augusto Alfredo, spokesman for the Angolan navy, told Reuters earlier on Sunday that the ship had been located in Nigeria and that reports of a hijacking were false.
The reports raised concern that piracy off West Africa was spreading south from the Gulf of Guinea, near Africa's biggest oil producer Nigeria, where most hijacking gangs are believed to originate.
Pirate attacks jumped by a third last year off West Africa. Any attack off Angola, which is the continent's No. 2 crude producer, would be the most southerly to date.
"It was all faked, there have been no acts of piracy in Angolan waters," Alfredo told Reuters. "What happened on January 18, when we lost contact with the ship, was that the crew disabled the communications on purpose."
Alfredo declined to comment on how the navy had established the behavior of the MT Kerala's crew, saying only that other authorities may provide further details later.
He also would not be drawn on the crew's possible motivation but said the ship was due to finish a time-charter contract for the Angolan state oil firm Sonangol on February 12.
Sonangol said on Friday the MT Kerala had 27 crew, all of them Indian or Filipino.
Alfredo said a tugboat had contacted the tanker in Angolan waters and then led it to Nigeria. The tugboat was a replica of one involved in a pirate attack off Gabon last year, he said.
An SOS raised by another tanker in Angolan waters saying it was under attack from pirates on Friday was also a false alarm, he added.
"The navy and the air force went to the location and did not find any signs of an attack. We want to know if this was a diversion tactic and will remain alert as there may be some forces maneuvering behind these acts," Alfredo said.

04/08/2013

(Infodefensa.com) Madrid - A delegation of the Angolan Navy ship recently visited the Prince of Asturias for a commercial evaluation for a possible acquisition, but so far nothing has not materialized.

The visit came at the request of the Marina itself and is part of a program of visits to surplus units of the Navy, which has been developed over a week by different arsenals, as sources have indicated the Spanish Armada to the newspaper La Voz de Galicia .

The same sources added that to date no more visits planned delegations and no new demands consist of other nations to evaluate the possible acquisition of the vessel.

Apart from Angola has transcended other two countries Indonesia and the Philippines, have shown interest in the Prince of Asturias .

If realized in purchasing any of these interests, the operation could affect workload for Navantia , which is responsible for the reform and modernization of the Navy's flagship.

Failure to reach a firm offer, the final destination of the ship, as in the case of other units, public auction will be scrapping the ultimate goal.

Angola's Naval Power Development Programme (PRONAVAL) took a significant step forward on 5 September, when Minister of Defence João Manuel Lourenço and his Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim, signed a technical memorandum of understanding (MoU) covering the construction of seven Macaé-class patrol boats.

The MoU specifies that four vessels will be built in Brazil, with the other three to be constructed in Angola. The two governments will now begin contractual negotiations to establish the technical configuration of the ships.

The project will be run by Brazil's state-owned Naval Projects Management Company (EMGEPRON), which will also oversee the building of a shipyard in Angola and the training of the associated industrial and naval personnel.

Already in service with the Brazilian Navy, the Macaé class is a local modification of French company CMN's Vigilante 400 CL54 design.

Vessels in the class have a displacement of about 500 tonnes, a length of 54.2 m, a beam of 8 m, a top speed of 21 kt, a range of 2,500 n miles at a cruising speed of 15 kt, an endurance of 10 days, and a complement of 35.

The vessels currently in service in Brazil have two MTU Friedrichshafen 16V 4000 M90 diesel engines coupled to controllable pitch propellers; Ares Aerospacial e Defesa electro-optical sensors; IPqM's TTI 2900 tactical control system; and the Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine VisionMaster FT 250 integrated bridge system, which includes X-band and Y-band navigation radars.

They can carry rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIBs) and are armed with an Allied Ordnance of Singapore L70 NADM 40 mm gun and two 20 mm Oerlikon GAM-B01 guns.

La nouvelle a sans doute fait sursauter nombre de lecteurs : Luanda aurait acheté d’occasion le porte-aéronefs Principe de Asturias, sorti de service de la marine espagnole pour des raisons budgétaires. A priori, la nouvelle parait peu crédible. La marine angolaise ne dispose pas d’une aviation navale – ni a fortiori de Harrier – et ses capacités sont extrêmement limitées, permettant à peine une surveillance des côtes.

Son futur navire le plus lourd sera d’ailleurs un garde-pêche. Reste que, contrairement à d’autres pays, l’argent n’est pas un problème pour l’Angola, qui bénéficie d’un budget de défense en très forte augmentation du fait de l’exploitation de ressources pétrolières et qui affiche clairement ses ambitions de modernisation (voir le dossier que nous consacrions aux forces angolaises dans DSI n°97, novembre 2013).

Reste également qu’il faut se garder de tout déterminisme historique ou technique : en dépit de la difficulté à s’approprier des instruments navals et aéronavals hauturiers alors que l’on ne dispose que de capacités côtières, les phénomènes de montée en puissance navale rapide ne sont pas totalement absents. Le cas du Japon de l’ère Meiji montre ainsi un Etat qui passe d’une absence de marine constituée en 1868 à une capacité suffisante, en 1905, pour battre la Russie avec des navires qui n’ont techniquement rien à envier à ceux de la Royal Navy ou de la Marine nationale.

Le cas de l’US Navy elle-même montre une montée en puissance océanique rapide à la fin du 19ème siècle, sans compter, plus récemment, les cas sud-coréens ou chinois. On notera au demeurant que l’acquisition d’une capacité aéronavale a été bien pensée par la Chine, au point que les opérations d’appareils sont aujourd’hui plus fréquentes sur le Liaoning que sur le Kuznetsov et que si nombre d’observateurs estimaient qu’il faudrait à Pékin dix à quinze ans pour maîtriser son porte-avions, il faudra sans doute diviser ce chiffre par deux.

Mais à quoi servirait un porte-aéronefs angolais, dans l’hypothèse où la vente serait confirmée ? Comme souvent, l’achat révèle un faisceau de rationalités. La recherche de prestige international est évidente – le navire sera le plus gros en service en Afrique, détrônant le ravitailleur sud-africain Drakensberg – et renvoie au modèle thaïlandais. Cette recherche de prestige et de tonnage doit cependant être remise dans la perspective d’une maritimisation de l’Afrique : nombre de marines dans la zone renforcent leurs capacités navales, dans un contexte de plus en plus marqué par la piraterie mais aussi par la nécessité de protéger les installations offshore.

L’utilisation du navire comme plateforme aéronautique n’est pas totalement à écarter, même si l’Angola ne dispose pas d’hélicoptères ASM. Par ailleurs, il est susceptible de jouer un rôle de navire-école, Luanda ayant tout à apprendre en matière de gros bâtiments.