Exercise Narrow Waters 25 to be led by the Finnish Navy will be held in the Archipelago Sea, the Gulf of Finland and on Finland’s southern coast from 21 - 28 May.
The Navy’s spring main exercise, earlier executed chiefly as a national exercise, has developed into an international exercise bringing together, this time, a tight group of Allied countries from the Baltic Sea region. In addition to Finland, also Sweden, Germany and Estonia will participate with vessels and personnel.
Narrow Waters 25 will train vessels and troops to conduct joint naval operations in the unique environment of the Baltic Sea. With its Allies, the Navy will train execution of naval operations including, for example, transport of troops and combat tasks in the archipelago and on the coast.
In addition to the Navy’s naval and coastal troops, the exercise will include detachments from Border Guard and Finnish Defence Forces Logistics Command. The Army will also deploy helicopters, and the Air Force will conduct sorties related to the exercise over the southern coast and northern Baltic Sea.
In the exercise, the know-how of Contingent 1/25 and 2/24 conscripts who will muster out in June will be evaluated in their unit compositions, and reservists will be trained for their wartime tasks. The total strength of conscripts, reservists and regular personnel participating in the exercise will be approximately 2700.
The exercise will involve live-fire exercises as follows.. The live-fire exercises may cause noise.
- Örö: fleet 22 May.
- Kotka, Rankki: coastal artillery 21-25 May.
The troops will also rehearse and move in the Hanko-Raasepori area 22-25 May and in the area of Porvoo-Kotka archipelago 24-28 May. Marching detachments will be on the move both on land and at sea between Hanko and Kotka 24-25 May and between Kotka and Raasepori 27-28 May. The training troops will be using blank ammunition, which may cause noise.
The events of the exercise can be followed on the Navy’s social media channels using #merivoimat and #NAWA25.
