Sweden has been hosting since yesterday, for five consecutive days, joint military maneuvers with the participation of eight NATO member states in the Baltic Sea. The goal is to strengthen joint capacity for uncovering and tracking submarines.
Manufacturers, called Dynamic Merlyn, are organized annually and aim to enable participating countries, Canada, Germany, Finland, France, Great Britain, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, to improve submarine detection and tracking techniques, which are extremely difficult to detect.
It’s a professional skill that can be lost if not exercised. That’s why we have to keep training, because as long as we’re unable to make the oceans completely transparent, the submarines will remain a threat, declared counteradmiral John Caddock, commander of the alliance’s submarine forces.
The Baltic Sea presents particular challenges to these operations. The shallow waters, dense sea traffic, low salinity, and temperature changes may contribute to the spread of sound waves essential to submarine detection.
Under water, the sound is the main source of information. Through passive sonatas, a submarine can listen to and identify the sound of other ships ‘ engines and propellers, without naming itself sound signals that can detect its position.
Several thousand military men, two submarines, a German and a Swedish, surface warships and sea patrols are engaged in this exercise, which ends Friday.
In the face of the worsening security situation, NATO has increased its maritime presence and monitoring activities in this region.
However, according to counteradmiral Nicolas Molitor, commander of the Alliance’s First Marine Group, the Baltic Sea faces other threats besides submarine-related ones.
On its bottom are many telecommunications cables and strategically important pipelines.
There is also danger from vehicles or robots that can operate underwater but also from surface ships that, for example, by attracting anchor to the bottom of the sea, can damage underwater infrastructure, which is essential to the normal functioning of our countries, Cruddock noted. /abcnews. al
Source Layer: Insander
