EUROMARFOR DIVEX23 – MINECOUNTERMEASURES (MCM) EXERCISE
This exercise is ongoing in Sesimbra village coastal area and surrounding waters, from 20th to 24th of March.
EUROMARFOR DIVEX23 is a maritime live exercise designed to improve Mine countermeasures diving units operational capabilities, training, and interoperability among EUROMARFOR navies.
This is made by supporting the training of personnel in diving operations in an Allied context, fostering the diving teams’ interoperability through the development of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP).
The first day (20th march) was mostly to prepare and setup up the equipment’s, execute warm up dives and rescue trials.
On the 21st and 22nd units started their MCM exploratory operations, executing TTP’s, bottom searches and using AUV’s for accomplish the mission.
There was also an Industry presentation of some technological systems that can be used in MCM environment.
Since the creation of EUROMARFOR in 1995, this is the first time that a MCM Diving TG is activated in order to work together and focus on their specific tasks.
Created in May 1995 as a follow-up to the Petersberg Declaration (1992), EUROMARFOR is a non-permanent maritime force capable of acting under the command of the European Union, NATO, UN, or even by simple agreement between the 4 member nations (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal). Its main missions are humanitarian, peacekeeping, crisis prevention and management, and maritime security.
Spain assumes the rotating command of this force since September 2021.