The first day of our side-by-side Naval Damage Control (NDC) and Maritime Search And Rescue (MSAR) conferences has more than lived up to our high expectations.
We’ve had a fantastic turnout for both elements, not least perhaps because NDC25 remains the world’s only dedicated conference focused exclusively on naval firefighting, survivability, and damage control.
And the quality of our MSAR agenda has been turning heads too, taking in everything from the ongoing war in Ukraine to the less immediate — but equally salient — perils of climate change.
In the MSAR conference, we had a presentation from RNLI Chief Executive and retired Rear Admiral Peter Sparkes, just as his organisation launches a new five-year strategic plan, part of its “Launching into our third century” roadmap to 2040.
The service is aiming to update its lifeboat and lifeguard services to adapt to changing water safety needs, introducing new coastal and offshore lifeboat types, developing a new hovercraft fleet, and driving home its safety advice, including its “Float to live” message helping people to survive by finding their natural buoyancy.
“The emphasis has shifted significantly,” R. Adm. (Ret) Sparkes told the audience, revealing how in contrast to times past, nowadays about 46% of RNLI operations involved rescuing individual people rather than boats or yachts, with 98% of those rescues happening within five miles of the coastline, and just 0.2% beyond 25 miles offshore.
And he cited stats revealing about 27 million people a year are going to British and Irish beaches for leisure each year, about a third of whom are unable to swim. “That makes the need to get our water safety message out to the public even more important,” he observed.
Moving further afield, another fascinating session was delivered by Admiral Viktor Sudarev, Ukraine’s Director of MSAR. Speaking via a translator, he gave a fascinating and stark account of the impact of Russian conflict on their maritime search and rescue operations.
A gripping talk took in how his civilian teams had been carrying out SAR operations while combat raged in the Black Sea, with multiple tankers and other commercial vessels attacked and sometimes sunk in the first few days following the invasion.
Some 16 seafarers’ lives had been saved, including those of Russian crewmembers working on civilian ships. We learned of the difficulties of working under combat conditions: not just the dangers of direct attack from enemy aircraft and missiles, but also the hazards posed by mines and electronic warfare compromising communication networks.
Adm. Sudarev also recounted the fate of the Ukrainian SAR boat Sapfir, boarded by Russian special forces after being despatched on a rescue mission to Zmiiniy (Snake) Island.
The boat was impounded in Sevastopol, and her crew were imprisoned in the Kursk region in temperatures of -20C. After lengthy negotiations they and their boat were repatriated as part of PoW swap that also involved the Russian sailors who had been saved by Ukrainian SAR crews in the initial Black Sea attacks.
Impressively, in spite of their ordeal, after returning home most of the Sapfir crew have since resumed their former SAR duties.
And Caroline Jupe, Chief Executive Officer of the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF), spoke about the challenges posed to MSAR by climate change.
“We are at a crossroads,” she told the audience, stressing how organisations needed to act now to plan for the problems warming temperatures would pose around the world in the decade ahead.
To list but a few, these included rising sea levels, more extreme weather events, higher-intensity storms, and dynamic and shifting sea currents.
She said she already knew of at least one organisation which had already had to relocate its SAR lifeboat stations to higher ground, and warned that organisations everywhere needed to observe how climate change was already affecting their environment or likely to do so soon, and plan and act accordingly.
In the NDC arena, meanwhile, the opening plenary day was exploring how navies need to respond to new DC challenges posed by lean-manned and uncrewed vessels; and adopt and adapt to new fire prevention, detection, and suppression technology.
Topics covered including designing both the platforms themselves to maximise survivability, and the ship’s companies to man them, the latter topic with particular reference to the Royal Navy’s planned Type 83 destroyers.
Other interesting topics included the potential tensions between maritime safety and damage control considerations and what DC might mean in the context of uncrewed surface vessels.
Later in the day the audience was briefed on the work of the Defence Accident Investigation Branch, an MoD-wide multi-domain investigatory body which looks into major accidents involving military assets and makes recommendations for future avoidance.
Case studies included footage and explanations of incidents including an F35 fighter jet lost off the takeoff ramp of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2021, and a collision involving HMS Chiddingfold and HMS Bangor in Bahrain in 2024.
The DAIB does not seek to apportion blame for incidents, instead focusing on establishing root causes of accidents and the best ways to ensure they are not repeated. The DAIB has four active investigations ongoing, including one involving the now-decommissioned Type 23 frigate HMS Northumberland, the results of which are expected to be made public in December this year.
Elsewhere, fire suppression topics covered a fascinating explanation of lithium-ion battery fires and strategies for coping with them. The presentation warned against conflating the vapour cloud which lithium-ion battery failures produced with either smoke or steam. And it explained the concept of thermal runaway, as well as demonstrating the fires that could result and the dangers of reignition.
Foam came to the fore too, with informative presentations on why using aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs) containing fluorinated materials to fight fires does not look like a viable long-term strategy, the dangers of such so-called “forever chemicals,” and the potential costs of switching in the future, rather than now.
As ever, there was far more discussed across the course of the day than one could ever hope to encapsulate in any written summary, let alone a short synopsis such as this — which is why attending in person is the optimal strategy!
We hope and confidently expect that days #2 and #3 will prove equally thought-provoking and rewarding for all present.