page_title: Brazilian Navy
section_title: Lebanon
hierarchical_section_title: Brazilian Navy / History / Peacekeeping operations (2004–present) / Lebanon
caption_attribution_description: Português: A Corveta Barroso - construída pela Marinha do Brasil
context_page_description: The Brazilian Navy is the naval service branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces, responsible for conducting naval operations. The Brazilian Navy is the largest navy in South America and in Latin America, and the second largest navy in the Americas, after the United States Navy.
  The navy was involved in Brazil's war of independence from Portugal. Most of Portugal's naval forces and bases in South America were transferred to the newly independent country. In the initial decades following independence, the country maintained a large naval force and the navy was later involved in the Cisplatine War, the River Plate conflicts, the Paraguayan War as well as other sporadic rebellions that marked Brazilian history.
  By the 1880s the Brazilian Imperial Navy was the most powerful in South America. After the 1893 naval rebellion, there was a hiatus in the development of the navy until 1905, when Brazil acquired two of the most powerful and advanced dreadnoughts of the day which sparked a dreadnought race with Brazil's South American neighbours. The Brazilian Navy participated in both World War I and World War II, engaging in anti-submarine patrols in the Atlantic.
context_section_description: On 15 February 2011, Brazil assumed command of the Maritime Task Force (MTF) of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
  On 4 October the Brazilian Ministries of Defence and Foreign Relations informed authorities that Brazil was sending a Navy vessel with up to 300 crew members, equipped with an aircraft, to join the fleet in Lebanon and the vessel was authorized by the National Congress. On 25 November 2011 the frigate União with 239 officers and sailors aboard joined the task force, bringing to nine the number of vessels assisting the Lebanese Navy in monitoring Lebanese territorial waters.
  The frigate served as the flagship for Rear Admiral Luiz Henrique Caroli of Brazil who had been Commander of UNIFIL-MTF since February.
  On 10 April 2012 the frigate Liberal left Rio de Janeiro bound for Lebanon to join the force. It was relieved in January 2013 by the frigate Constituição which joined a multinational group comprising nine ships; three from Germany, two from Bangladesh, one from Greece, one from Indonesia and one from Turkey. The crew comprised 250 military officials. The return to Rio was scheduled for August 2013.
  On 8 August 2015 the corvette Barroso left Rio de Janeiro to replace União and later that month carried out maritime interdiction operations and provided training to the Lebanese Navy. On 4 September 2015 it rescued 220 Syrian migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, as reported by the Ministry of Defense in a statement released on its website. The Brazilian ship was sailing towards Beirut in Lebanon when it received an alert from the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) about a sinking vessel taking immigrants to Europe.
caption: Brazilian corvette Barroso
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