The German Navy held this year's version of its Northern Coasts exercise series last month.
700 sailors from nine NATO nations in primarily smaller ships took part at sea - usually the exercise is significantly bigger than that. In addition naval base Kiel with a few hundred men was involved. No list of participating ships was published this year. Taskforce command ship was the German Elbe-class tender Rhein, according to Latvian sources 14 other ships, a submarine and four aircraft were involved. From published pictures it looks like the largest ship was a Polish OHP frigate.
Scenario this year was a defense of the German baltic coast in its entirety with a focus on area denial through minelaying, along with naval operations in own minefield areas, mineclearing and anti-ship warfare. Exercise command staff was advised by offensive mine warfare specialists from Finland and Estonia. Training minefields were laid in the Bay of Kiel, where Germany had used its first sea mines in 1848 for similar area denial purposes against the Danish fleet.
The exercise was interfered with a bit by Russian ships through both the usual electronics and visual intelligence shadowing, but also directed GPS jamming, radio message falsifications etc. To some extent the exercise was therefore also training of operations under such conditions (e.g. traditional messaging methods) and own intelligence gathering on Russian assets. This of course included Russian Navy ships just passing by with switched-on AIS, such as a supply group headed to the Russian base in Syria.
