With the Strategic Defence Review 2025 (SDR), the UK is formulating a new security policy direction. The Labour government is focusing on conventional deterrence, nuclear modernisation and technological leadership in NATO. However, the plan is ambitious - and faces structural legacy issues and budgetary conflicts of interest. A turning point for British defence With the SDR, the UK has...
Not at home in the north The NRV "Alliance" is a ship that you rarely see and hardly anyone knows. Even experienced naval personnel have never or rarely seen this ship. And now it's in the Baltic Sea! The research and measurement vessel of the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE)...
The German Maritime Search and Rescue Service (DGzRS) was founded in Kiel on 29 May 1865 and over the past 160 years has laid the foundations for a sustainable, donation-financed and therefore independent sea rescue service in Germany with selfless helpfulness, constantly renewed rescue equipment and good organisation. Until the middle of the 19th century...
Major maritime manoeuvre BALTOPS starts for the first time in Rostock Baltic Operations, or BALTOPS for short, has been around for decades. It is NATO's most important US-led naval manoeuvre in the Baltic Sea. The multinational exercise usually lasts two weeks and ends in Kiel at the start of Kiel Week. Rather unnoticed for years, the...
The Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group One (NATO abbreviation SNMCMG1) will be visiting Lübeck from Friday, 30 May to Monday, 2 June 2025 The group will be exercising in the Baltic Sea with a combination of mine countermeasures and patrols. It is intended to strengthen the security of the Critical Underwater Infrastructure (CUI). Previously...
A few hundred metres past each other When the Russian corvette RFS "Stoikiy" (Steregushchiy class) "turned" into the Langelandbelt on Friday last week (we reported) after passing Fehmarn to the north-west, the French reconnaissance ship FS "Dupuy de Lome" (A 759), which was on the opposite course, had a convenient "found food" ....
Currently, all Steregushchiy-class corvettes in active service have left the Baltic Sea for deployment. Before the Steregushchiy-class corvette RFS Stoikiy (545), which for many observers is a well-known unit assigned to the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy, the modified RFS Merkuriy (734), which only entered service in May 2023, has...
The hydrographic survey ship HNLMS "Snellius" (Snellius class, 81 metres in length) of the Royal Netherlands Navy has been assigned to the Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1 (SNMCMG 1) for three months since mid-April and has replaced its sister ship HNLMS "Luymes" (A 803). As a rule, the tasks of the NATO naval unit include the defusing or...
It can happen that quickly: can you come to terms with such a "role model"? The photos of the new Damen ASD 3010 ICE class multifunctional tug LNS "Lokys" (H 24) for the Lithuanian Navy were taken on the delivery voyage from Rotterdam to Klaipeda on 4 May 2025 in the Kiel Canal. On Monday, 12 May, nine...
Return to the Baltic Sea On 7 May 2025, the Russian submarine "Krasnodar" (B-265), a boat of the improved Kilo class (project 636.3, Russian "Varshavyanka"), passed through the Danish straits together with the ocean-going tug "Evgeniy Churov" (SB-921) in the direction of the Baltic Sea. A few days later, the unit arrived at its home port of Kronstadt as planned. The escort unit...
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