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HNLMS is a De Zeven Provincien Class Frigate of the Royal Netherlands Navy and is serving as a Frigate of the Air Defense and Command Class vessel to Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 during exercise Trident Juncture 18. The ship is one of the 65 vessels assisting in the maritime portion of the exercise which involves around 50,000 participants from 31 NATO and partner countries.
The sailors were moored in Trondheim, Norway making preparations prior to departing for the exercise Wednesday (24 October 2018), where the crew will be able to test, train and learn from scheduled drills and maritime maneuvers alongside other navies.
Video by MC1(SW/AW) Abraham Essenmacher, U.S. Navy, Assigned to Allied Command Transformation, Strategic Communications.
SHOT-list
00:10:29
Commander N.W.B. Nico Kempers, MMS
Commanding Officer of HNLMS deRuyter
NLD, Royal Netherlands Navy
SOUNDBITE (English)
Question 1: What are some of the most important/critical preparations you make leading up to support an exercise such as Trident Juncture 18?
“What I do as a commanding officer in preparation for a big exercise like Trident Junctures make sure I have all the preparations in place for my team, make sure my ship is in material readiness, high enough to conduct the exercise, make sure we are all prepared as far as message traffic goes, and all the information we need to do the exercise and make sure my
team is well trained to actually conduct the exercise.”
Question 2: In the final hours prior to departing, what do you focus on most and why?
“In the final moments before we sail, for me as a CO, my focus will be mainly on actually the departure from the pier and much on the exercise itself.The exercise itself, all the preparations have been done, the team is ready for that so that doesn’t eat up much of my brain power at this stage in the game.”
Question 3: What is the best part of working alongside different nations for an exercise of this size?
“I think the best part of being in a multi-national environment is that both professionally and socially you can learn a lot from each other. So, besides practicing and training I always look forward to the time we can actually spend ashore and actually exchange some thoughts ideas
about how the world works, so to me, that’s always benefit.”
Question 4: What do you think your greatest asset is on this ship for the exercise?
“The greatest assets on this ship is I think a combination of a lot of things. First of all I have a very competent and motivated crew which of course is great to go to sea with. And on the other side I have a very capable air defense platform both with sensors and weapons systems so it’s
good to contribute to an exercise like this.”
Question 5: What do you hope your Sailors gain from this experience?
“In general I hope they gain the experience of working in one of the biggest exercises in NATO in years, so I think that’s a unique experience, working together with almost 70 ships, a lot of planes and of course all the things that are going on land-side as well, so that experience itself
will be unique.”
02:25:23
Lieutenant Gerard Faber
Navigation Officer of HNLMS de Ruyter
NLD, Royal Netherlands Navy
SOUNDBITE (English)
Question 1: As the Navigation Officer, what are some of the preparations you are making prior to going to sea as a part of Trident Juncture 18?
“The main preparations for the journey are in place so all the normal preparation that an SMG we ask for a ‘dip clear’ so the political way to enter TTW’s [Territorial Waters] of certain countries. So before we go into Norwegian waters there’s the twelve nautical miles you have to ask for permission of the host nation to enter those waters.”
Question 2: In the last few hours before going to sea, what are the highest priorities you look at?
“The bridge personnel checks that everything on the bridge is prepared for, that everyone is aware of what we are going to do. There’s a small briefing for key personnel where we discuss the waters we’re going to sail through. We make sure with the technical department that everything is in place, everything works and everything is fine. If there are problems, we identify them and make it work to still depart, but mostly without.”
Question 3: What do you hope your team gains from this experience?
“Well, it’s good to sail with other ships. Of course we all obliged to the NATO procedures, but it’s good to have other ships of other countries involved with other units so they can learn from each other, have all the force procedures with other ships, sailing information, having exercises with other nationalities, so it’s good for their awareness and involvement. We conduct exercises with foreign tankers for instance so that’s good for our operational training as a total.”
Question 4: What materials are you preparing and checking right before going to sea?
“Well, for our preparations for port for instance, just the entrance of Trondheim, in this case we made sure that the routes through the charts are completely prepared, mostly so we can sail everything officially in order to train the officer of the watch in sailing conditions where we might not have GPS for instance and we make sure we can every asset available to enter port. So we have our standards to oblige to in our preparation process and my job is actually to make sure the preparations are met up to that standard.
05:11:53
Lieutenant Commander Youri Linden
Group Repair Officer of HNLMS de Ruyter
NLD, Royal Netherlands Navy
SOUNDBITE (English)
Question 1: What are your top priorities you monitor in preparation for going into this exercise?
“Our top priority of course is always safety for our personnel so we make sure that all our safety systems are on-line. Further more, we need to go sailing so if our diesel engines running we have to guarantee safe navigation so all our radar systems are all operational.”
Question 2: What measures do you take to help the ship and crew ready for going to sea?
“We do a lot of training, a lot of practice, machinery break down drills. We train everything until we know everyone is up to speed and able to do their job.”
Question 3: What do you hope you and your team gain from an experience like Trident Juncture 18?
“It’s two-fold. First of all like to train personnel in their own job but it’s much more than that. It’s a big exercise and we would like to see the whole crew working as one team. Really connecting Op’s to the Engineering department and make sure the crew has one objective - to fulfill the mission of the ship.”
| Date Taken: | 10.24.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 10.27.2018 10:35 |
| Category: | Interviews |
| Video ID: | 635613 |
| VIRIN: | 181024-N-AD372-845 |
| Filename: | DOD_106158348 |
| Length: | 00:06:12 |
| Location: | NO |
| Downloads: | 2 |
| High-Res. Downloads: | 2 |
This work, TRIDENT JUNCTURE 2018 - Dutch Sailors assigned to HNLMS de Ruyter Interviews, by Abraham Essenmacher, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
