This year exercise BALTOPS was led by the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet and brought together 6,000 personnel, 20 ships and forces from 15 NATO Allies. This long-running exercise is designed to strengthen maritime readiness, improve interoperability and demonstrate the Alliance’s ability to deter and defend in a strategically vital region – the Baltic Sea.
This year’s exercise was controlled by NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum – for the first time since 1972 - enabling participants to train under a NATO command structure.
Forces conducted a wide range of maritime operations, including amphibious landings, air defence, anti-submarine warfare, mine counter-measures, crisis response and experimentation with uncrewed systems....
At the NATO Summit in The Hague, NATO leaders recognised that in order to deter any future military conflict, Allies will have to pledge to spending 5% of their GDP to defence (of which up to 1.5% may be spent on defence-related investments). This has created the conditions for Allies to channel robust funding into governmental contracts with the defence industry in order to meet the new Capability Targets that are assigned for each Ally to...
