Ljubeck?
Thats Lübeck, named after Skybird's favorite north german town.
And if we wanted to take on the Black Sea Fleet, we wouldn't send one of our oldest Frigates....
But maybe she will carry out a surprise bombardement of Sevastopol with her single 76mm gun like SMS Goeben did in 1915
:rotfl:
Also, the spanish, german and polish ships do not take part in that "humanitarian aid" thing. They just entered the Black Sea for regularly scheduled exercises with the turkish navy.
This whole "aid by destroyer" thing is the result of a fancy bit of brainwork by no one else than George W. Bush himself.
He announced that "Navy and Air Force" would send aid. Unfortunately, George did not know anything about his namesake country, especially not that it is located on the black sea. And especially not that access to the black sea is strictly limited for naval vessels of states not bordering that sea.
According to the 1936 treaty of Montreux, a non black sea nation may only keep 30.000 tons of warships for a maximum of 21 days in the black sea.
I suppose Dubya wanted to send one of the big USN hospital ships like the USS Mercy to Georgia. Problem is, those ships are 60.000 tons, so he could only sent half of such a vessel to the black sea
:rotfl:
Turkey may be a NATO ally but the treaty of Montreux has been quite useful to Turkey, sparing it the need to fortify the straits Gallipoli-Style again.
Some nations do not revoke old, proven international treaties for short term benefits without considering like the Bush administration regularly does.
So, the Navy is ordered to deliver aid, but actually is not capable to do so.
The USS McFaul was sheduled to be in the black sea anyway, for exercises with above mentioned NATO frigates. That destroyer allready has permission to stay in the black sea for 21 days.
So they loaded her with MREs and whatnot and turned her into the first destroyer-transport since the APDs of World War 2.
The USAF is perfectly capable of delivering everything needed via C-17s, maybe even more than is needed, since aid goes only to the "right" kind of civilians, those on the georgian side.
Nothing will go to the Ossetian side, because these people did not want to be bombarded by a democratic nation
