Photos from NATO's anti-submarine warfare exercise outside Harstad
Eight nations, seven surface warships, three maritime patrol aircraft and two submarines. Click on the gallery above to see the photos from Exercise Dynamic Mongoose 2018.
It started on June 26, this year’s largest NATO anti-submarine training in the North Atlantic. Sailing in the waters outside Harstad and Narvik, Northern Norway, the exercise is ´aimed to provide all participants with complex and challenging warfare training at discovering enemy submarines.
Further out from the exercise area, in the Norwegian Sea, most Russian submarines sailing out from the Northern Fleet’s bases on the Kola Peninsula dive deep en route to the North Atlantic. In June, the Northern Fleet held its largest Barents Sea exercise in 10 years.
Participating nations additional to the Norwegian navy are Denmark, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
The maritime patrol aircraft operates from Andøya Air Base. Planes belongs to Norway, Germany and the United States.
“NATO’s annual anti-submarine-warfare exercise DYNAMIC MONGOOSE remains one of the most challenging exercises and an excellent opportunity for NATO nations’ naval forces to practice and evaluate their Anti-Submarine skillset in a challenging environment.” said Rear Admiral Andrew Lennon, NATO Submarines Commander.
“This exercise is a unique opportunity to enhance naval forces’ warfighting skills in all three dimensions of Anti-Submarine-Warfare in a multinational and multi-threat environment. We are most grateful to Norway and the Norwegian Navy for offering to host our exercise,” the Commander tells.
DYNAMIC MONGOOSE ends on Friday July 6 after going on for two weeks.
Russian submarines
Last year, a similar though larger, exercise took place off the coast of Iceland with Reykjavik as support harbour and Keflavik as base for the maritime aircraft.
Russian submarine activities have increased substantially over the last decade with both more and longer patrols out to the North Atlantic. With bases along the coast of the Kola Peninsula, the Northern Fleet has received several new and many upgraded nuclear-powered submarines. Currently 13 new nuclear-powered submarines are under construction or testing at the Sevmash naval yard in Severodvinsk.
Trident Juncture
NATO has a special focus on Norway this year and will kick off the large-scale exercise Trident Juncture 18 in October. The exercise will include some 40,000 soldiers, 130 aircraft and 60 vessels from most NATO member countries and a few others like Sweden and Finland.
Trident Juncture will include most military arms from troop training at the tactical level to command over large forces; air force, army and navy. The aim of the exercise is to test and train NATO’s ability to plan and conduct a major collective defense operation.
