French Navy Frigate Bretagne Conducts Crew Exchange in Iceland.

FREMM Bretagne in Iceland

The crew swap in Iceland allows the frigate to spend more time in the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap to detect and track submarines.

The French Navy (Marine Nationale) conducted an in-theatre crew exchange for the Aquitaine-class FREMM Frigate Bretagne earlier this month. The crew swap (B crew relieving A crew) took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, on 7 December 2021.  The event marked the first time that the French Navy’s Atlantic Fleet Command (CECLANT) swaps the crew of one of its ship in an area of operation.b In August, a similar crew swap took place for FREMM frigate Languedoc in Abu Dhabi.  The frigate was then taking part in operation AGENOR.

The French Navy adopted the dual crew concept for some of its surface vessel in 2019. The shift to a dual crew concept increased the operational availability of the Aquitaine-class FREMM: They are expected to be able to spend 50% more days at sea (FREMM frigate typically spent 110 days at sea before the adoption of the dual crew concept). Another benefit is that the crews are more rested, therefore more operationally efficient when going back to sea (and less prone to committing mistakes in their tasks).

Bretagne (with her A crew) was deployed in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea since 19 October 2021. The primary mission of Bretagne during this deployment is to monitor and track underwater activities around the GIUK gap where submarine presence is on the rise.

Source: NavalNews