Operation SEXTANT

Transcript of video

Cmdre Denis Rouleau, Commander of SNMG 1

SNMG 1, the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1, is a group of ships that is basically formed by contributing nations so nations like Canada, Germany, Holland and the United States are with us. This mission, or my role is basically to take those contributions from the various nations and integrate them into a very cohesive group that can take any mission from the NATO response force mandate, and at the same time, I am also the commander for the task group of operation ACTIVE ENDEAVOUR in the entire Mediterranean, so we have units from the eastern Mediterranean as far as Cyprus all the way to the Western Mediterranean where we are operating right now, south of Toulon and we are basically controlling those units from an operation active endeavor point of view.

CDR Marc Dalton, USS Boone, USA

Cmdre Rouleau is very focused on operations and has gotten us a tremendous amount of training. His focus on operations has resulted in us having a lot of live aircraft services and submarine services and encounters with other countries as we have driven down the Atlantic Coast of Europe and throughout the Mediterranean. We've operated with just about ever country we've passed and those experiences have done a tremendous amount for the readiness and training of my crew.

Woman

This is Netherlands Board ship from Holland, Netherlands Board Ship from Holland, over.

Cmdre Han Vanloon, HNLMS Van Galen (Netherlands)

Because it is a NATO group, it just like within a couple of hours that they interconnect with each other and they start operating as if they have done this before, so that’s the beauty of working internationally. Since we joined SNMG 1 we already knew in the background that UNIFIL, a Lebanon service was playing a part and in fact we used SNMG 1 and the operational training and operations that we did as the training for ourselves to get into gear for UNIFIL. So for us, I think the operational side is the best preparation we could wish. 

Cmdre Denis Rouleau, Commander of SNMG 1

Navies of the world are used certainly from a NATO sphere, are used to operate from connectivity, communications wise, seaman-ship wise, fuelling from tankers, they work very well together, they integrate very quickly. It makes my job a little easier to work with this type of professional sailors but at the end of the day this is what makes the strength of those standing forces there. Over the past 11 months, in command of this multinational force, having seen a whole series of different ships from different nations and that the Canadians have held their ground from a level of how professional they are, how knowledgeable they are, how capable they are, they have performed their duty not only as a single ship, like Iroquois here but as a command ship, a flag ship, and I used to tell the crew here, that you have to keep in mind that the rest of the ships are all looking up to you to see how you do things because you are the flag ship. For me it has been a very positive experience, for Canadians it should be something they can be very proud of because all these sailors you see around the ship here, have done it with all their heart and they gave it with all that they had and it made a big difference.