No, you aren’t seeing a gag, this is a real thing that runs 12 months a year not just in October.
The above image comes courtesy of the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 and was taken while the Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Fredericton was recently conducting what is termed a replenishment at sea (RAS) with the British Tide-class tanker RFA Tide Race in the waters off Northwest Scotland, known as the Minch during exercise Dynamic Mariner.
“A RAS is a method of transferring fuel, munitions, and stores from one ship to another while underway so that the receiving ship does not have to leave its designated area of operations to obtain and other provisions ashore,” explains NATO.
In short, the two ships, in this case the gas-thirsty frigate and the floating gas station tanker, steam close enough to pass lines between the two ships. First goes a thin rope fired by a blank in the M16A2 style rifle (Colt Canada-made C7 in Canadian parlance) which is then used to heave across the much heavier refueling hose.
The orange paint is likely just to designate that the C7 is a non-lethal (or at least less-than-lethal) gun.
The same thing is done by police departments and other LE agencies in the States with less-lethal shotguns that are used to fire bean bag rounds and the like.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. Navy, they just use M14s as well as a few (still black) M16s.
While the Coast Guard makes do with converted M1903s they have had since the 1920s. Because shoestrings…
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