There were main guns blazing through foggy forenoons, ships charging in synchronized patterns and formations, and helicopters and submarines above and beneath the Mediterranean’s surface swells from October 13 to 26, as Canadian Navy’s HMCS Toronto participated in Exercise Noble Justification.
Toronto is currently deployed on Operation Reassurance. Exercises such as this provide crucial opportunities to strengthen key relationships with NATO allies and security partners in order to share security principles, defence professionalization, and capacity building amongst participants.
Exercise Noble Justification (NJ), called Exercise Noble Mariner in previous iterations, is designed to increase interoperability of allies and partners to collectively defend each other and their mutually agreed upon interests.
This year’s Exercise NJ saw Toronto sail more than 2,500 nautical miles of salt water, conduct five replenishment-at-sea evolutions with both French supply ship Marne and Spanish supply ship Patiño, participate in a series anti-submarine warfare and defence exercises, and accumulate 50.7 flying hours in the embarked CH-124 Sea King helicopter.
For Toronto, Exercise Noble Justification was a resounding success in enhancing interoperability, mutual confidence and proving systems and technology, while contributing to training the alliance’s response forces and reinforcing maritime security and commercial fluidity in the region.
Press release, Image: Canadian Navy