NATO, Russia Military Drills
NATO and Russia are conducting military exercises on land, sea and in the air. The Western alliance had a live exercise called Ramstein Legacy 2024. 20 NATO countries took part in the biannual Integrated Air and Missile Defence-IAMD-drills across nine locations in Bulgaria and Romania. The exercise marks Finland’s first foreign deployment for NATO since joining the Alliance in April 2023. The Ramstein Legacy exercise is NATO’s IAMD flagship exercise. Members test command and control, airborne early warning, and air defence system weapon firing. French, German, Polish and Romanian troops demonstrated several weapons systems including the PATRIOT surface-to-air missile system. The war in Ukraine and the widespread successful use of drones was also gamed.
NATO Military Spending
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is travelling to allliance capitals in preparation for the July Summit in Washington D.C. He told U.S. President Biden many more allies have raised military spending since Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine joining NATO is one of the primary redlines for Russian President Vladimir Putin, currently in Vietnam after a red-carpet visit to North Korea.
Russia Flexes Military Might
Russia is also flexing its military muscle. The Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet is holding 10-day exercises till the 18th of June in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. The exercises also involve the long-range anti-submarine Ilyushin-38 and Tupelev-142M3 aircraft. As well as 40 ships, boats and support vessels, and 20 naval aircraft and helicopters.
Submarine Launched Cruise Missiles
In other exercises, in the Barents Sea, nuclear-powered submarines of Russia’s Northern Fleet launched cruise missiles at sea targets. Two nuclear-powered submarines fired Kalibr and Granit cruise missiles about 170 kms away at a target simulating landing ships of a mock enemy. A Fleet statement said “The missiles have once again confirmed their inherent characteristics and high reliability.” The Barents Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, is located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and is divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.
