Koninklijke Marine
Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN)
To protect the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba and the waters around them, the Navy has a frigate and a battalion of marines permanently stationed in the Caribbean. The Navy can also be deployed to help civil authorities enforce the law, respond to disasters or provide humanitarian assistance either in the Netherlands or abroad. The Navy commands the operations of the Coastguard around the Netherlands and in the Caribbean. The Coastguard provides a rescue service, inspects fisheries and enforces the rules of the sea. The Navy cooperates closely with the navies of Belgium and the United Kingdom. And Dutch naval vessels are permanently attached to NATO’s standing forces and fleet of minesweepers.
The Royal Netherlands Navy has an annual budget of 2,800 million Dutch guilders and a value added of 1,500 million Dutch guilders. The sector employs approximately 18,000 people. It generates a back-flow of 635 million Dutch guilders, consisting of the social contribu-tions of employees, income tax and value added tax (VAT), among other things.
The Royal Netherlands Marine Corps is part of the Navy. It is a versatile and rapidly deployable expeditionary force that can be sent in to defend the territory of NATO countries, control crises, keep peace and provide humanitarian assistance. Since the early 1970s, a number of units of the Marine Corps have formed part of a British marine brigade, together forming the UK/NL Landing Force. Its Special Support Team can be deployed to combat terrorists at the request of the Ministry of Justice.
The Navy has frigates, supply vessels and an amphibious transporter: the backbone of the Dutch fleet. Other Navy units are the Mine Countermeasures Service and the Submarine Service. The Naval Air Service’s helicopters can operate either from land or from vessels. Helicopters stationed on vessels have anti-submarine equipment, and those stationed on shore conduct transport flights, reconnaissance activities and rescue missions.
In the 1990s, the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) concentrated mainly on tactics and procedures developed within the context of NATO. In December 2005 it published its own Service doctrine, the Guideline for Maritime Operations (GMO). It relies particularly on NATO’s perspective on naval operations and the views of main Allies. Traditionally the Netherlands navy has been focused on anti-submarine warfare in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, and land-attack capability in the Netherlands navy is virtually non-existent. In the new operational environment, the role of the Netherlands navy will be defined by how well they can contribute to a joint and combined operation that eventually focuses on land.
