The Sea Breeze exercises have kicked off in Glasgow, Scotland. Ukrainian Navy ships are also participating in the drills.
Sea Breeze is a multinational military exercise held in Ukraine since 1997, in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation in Defense and Military Relations between the Ministries of Defense of the US and Ukraine. In different years, the drills were conducted in Crimea, Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Bulgaria.
The Ukrainian Navy stated that this year’s main focus of the exercises is preparing and evaluating the mine action staff of the Ukrainian Naval Forces for planning and managing a designated set of mine action forces during operations and training Ukrainian mine action ship crews to operate within a multinational tactical group.
In addition, training of Sea Fox system operators, who will directly carry out mine search and neutralization tasks, is planned.
Amphibious operations staff are also planned to be trained to plan amphibious operations involving a training group of US expeditionary forces.
This year, 13 participating countries have joined the Sea Breeze exercises, including Ukraine and the US as organizers, Bulgaria, Sweden, Estonia, Germany, France, Georgia, Greece, Romania, Poland, Japan, and the UK as the host country.
“Commander of the Ukrainian Navy training preparation Commodore Dmytro Kovalenko mentioned during the opening ceremony that the Ukrainian Naval Forces are working not just for the future and post-war sea demining but are already performing combat missions today and have acquired the necessary capabilities that we need,” the Ukrainian Navy report said.
According to him, Ukrainian ship crews must achieve compatibility with allies to perform tasks in the world ocean jointly.
During the next stage of the drills, participants will engage in mine action planning, coordination of forces at sea, and execution of training elements as part of designated sea tactical groups.
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