The Indian Navy has decided to despatch three naval warships including its largest amphibious vessel INS Jalashwa to evacuate its citizens stranded in trouble-torn Libya.
The other two would be destroyers. I assume a support ship or two would go with them.
This beats the Chinese effort:
The missile frigate Xuzhou was ordered to break off from anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden and is sailing toward Libya, the Defence Ministry said in a notice reported by state media Friday. ...
The ship's mission, approved by the Central Military Commission headed by President Hu Jintao, marks the first time China's entaglement-wary leaders have ever sent a navy ship to take part in the evacuation of civilians.
I heard that we too are moving naval forces to the region to actually make the 6th Fleet real again for this crisis. It will dwarf both in capabilities, I assume. It will include a Marine Expeditionary Unit (battalion-based reinforced task force) flown in to meet an amphibious warship that left its MEU in Afghanistan heading for the Mediterranean. An aircraft carrier appears to be on call in the Red Sea. We could move land-based air power, too, but I don't know what we have in mind. But since almost everyone actually believes 6th Fleet is a real force as it was in the Cold War, we won't get much credit for putting a naval task force off of Libya.
UPDATE: Well, we are sending 400 Marines to join the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge and the amphibious transport dock Ponce.
Unless there are hundreds of Marines still on the Kearsarge after taking a MEU to Afghansitan, it sounds like this might just be an ad hoc provisional light battalion mostly intended for humanitarian missions and not a true offensive force as loading another MEU would represent. But I'm guessing. I heard a couple destroyers are also heading for the scene. No mention of the carrier task force holding station in the Red Sea, which would turn the US naval task force into a potent force.
If the carrier group doesn't head for Libya, the West will have to rely on the French and Italian (and Spanish?) navies for the main punch. They should be more than capable of putting sufficient naval power off of Libya and sending enough ground forces ashore if necessary.
