Exercise DYNAMIC MOVE (DME14), a week-long naval mine counter-measures exercise hosted by the Belgium-Netherlands (BE-NL) Naval Mine Warfare School EGUERMIN (NATO Naval Mine Warfare Centre Of Excellence / NMW COE), wrapped up last week.
The annual NATO exercise, designed to test naval mine counter-measures (MCM) tactics, was directed by staff officers from MARCOM who provided the overall operational guidance and exercise control. The exercise is run on a bank of more than one hundred networked computers and servers, allowing the training audience to plan and execute naval mine warfare operations in a controlled environment.
120 officer and petty officers from 18 countries (Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, The United Kingdom and The United States) participated in the exercise. The training audiences for the exercise included the incoming command staffs for both Standing NATO Mine Counter-Measures Groups (SNMCMGs), and part of the intent of the exercise was to build these staffs’ ability to work together as multi-national forces supporting NATO missions.
This year’s exercise was focused on testing MCM forces’ abilities to enter an archipelagic environment, clear the way of sea mines, and ensure freedom of manoeuvre for forces involved in a humanitarian assistance operation. Each participant came away with an enhanced ability to conduct naval mine countermeasures operations in a littoral environment. The exercise had the added benefit of the exchange of experience and information between incoming and incumbent SNMCMG staffs and Partnership for Peace (PfP) nations’ MCM forces.
“DYNAMIC MOVE-14 clearly met NATO nations’ requirements to test their ability to perform prolonged MCM in a time constrained and very mine rich environment,” said Captain Geir Gade, the head of Training and Exercise Division, Allied Maritime Command.
[mappress] Press Release, March 28, 2014; Image: NATO