History
Its first warship was delivered in 1966. these were 2 Ham class minesweepers from the UK. Initially the effective force was limited to smaller vessels, but this changed after the rise of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 1969. From this time, Libya started to buy armaments from Europe and the Soviet Union. The Customs and Harbour police were amalgamated with the Navy in 1970, extending the Navy's mission to include anti-smuggling and customs duties. The total personnel of the Libyan Navy is about 8,000.
During the 2011 Libyan civil war several elements of the Libyan Navy were destroyed by NATO forces, including 8 warships in the night before 20 May and one on 17 August. Two were also captured by the rebels at Benghazi.
The Navy began the process of purchasing new boats in May 2012, mainly fast patrol boats for surveillance and border protection purposes, including the MRTP-20 fast attack boat.
As of June 2012, the Libyan Navy has been headed by Commodore Hassan Ali Bushnak, Chief of Staff of the Libyan Naval Force. The British Royal Navy along with the Libyan Navy held joint excersies together at Dartmouth Naval College in the UK in June 2012.
Read more about this topic: Libyan Navy
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“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
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“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)