Royal Navy ends four-month command of NATO task group

Commodore Maryla Ingham has handed command of Standing NATO Maritime Group One to French Rear Admiral Nicolas Molitor after four months spanning Baltic Sentry, Arctic operations, major anti-submarine exercises and a deployment across the Atlantic.

The Royal Navy has completed four months in command of Standing NATO Maritime Group One, handing leadership of the alliance task group to France after operations stretching from the Baltic and High North to the eastern seaboard of the United States, the UK Defence Journal understands.

Commodore Maryla Ingham formally handed command to French Rear Admiral Nicolas Molitor in Reykjavik, Iceland, bringing to an end a tenure that began in April and included Baltic Sentry, Arctic Sentry, Exercise Dynamic Mongoose and the US-led FLEETEX 250. According to a Royal Navy news update, the task group also supported protection of critical national infrastructure, anti-submarine warfare, boarding operations, gunnery, casualty evacuation and multinational integration across several maritime theatres.

The handover follows an interview with UK Defence Journal last month in which Ingham described the pace and breadth of the deployment while speaking from her flagship at sea in the middle of a gunnery shoot. She said the group had moved almost immediately into Baltic Sentry after taking command, spending around a month on the operation before heading north for Dynamic Mongoose 26 off Norway, a major anti-submarine exercise involving three live submarines, five maritime patrol aircraft and a multinational surface force.

Ingham told UK Defence Journal: “We started off in April. We went straight into enhanced vigilance activity, Baltic Sentry, which is to protect critical underwater infrastructure, and we were there for about a month.” She continued: “Then we went up off Norway, and we were the lead for Exercise Dynamic Mongoose 26, which was a major ASW exercise, multinational, three live submarines, five MPAs. Goodness, I can’t even remember how many ships we had.”

From there, the group crossed the Atlantic for FLEETEX 250, a US Second Fleet-led exercise which at one point expanded to ten ships, before taking part in the International Naval Review marking the 250th anniversary of the United States Navy in New York. The Royal Navy said the wider exercise involved 30 warships operating off Virginia and North Carolina. Ingham subsequently described the group’s integration into the Commander Task Force Atlantic activation as particularly important because it demonstrated multinational command and control across the surface, air and underwater domains.

She told UK Defence Journal that the activity was “all about demonstrating command and control of multinational forces on the sea, in the air, and underwater, and that’s the first time that’s been practised.” After returning across the Atlantic, the group called at Glasgow before heading back to sea for gunnery and operations in the High North ahead of the eventual handover in Iceland.

One of the most tangible operational changes during Ingham’s command came through Baltic Sentry, where NATO has increased its focus on protecting subsea cables, pipelines and other critical infrastructure. Ingham said the operation had reduced NATO’s reaction time to incidents involving critical underwater infrastructure from around 17 hours to approximately one hour. She also described a Baltic operating picture in which almost all activity could now be observed or tracked by the alliance.

“It’s also reduced our reaction time to critical underwater incidents from around 17 hours to an hour,” she said. “And it’s really enhanced our situational awareness.” She added: “I’m really confident that there is very little that happens in the Baltic without us being aware of it.”

The group encountered Russian naval forces during the deployment, although Ingham characterised those interactions as routine and professional rather than confrontational. “Did we have interactions with the Russian Navy? Yes, we did. But they were all safe and professional,” she said. “At the end of the day, a lot of those areas are international waters, and we all patrol them together, because that’s the nature of the sea.”

She repeatedly spoke on the protection of seabed infrastructure as one of the group’s central missions, arguing that the Baltic operation had improved not just the quantity of forces available but the way they were coordinated. British, French, Spanish and Turkish ships were among those contributing to Baltic Sentry, alongside aircraft and other NATO capabilities. Ingham said the alliance now had considerably more maritime assets available for such tasks than Russia and was using them in a more structured way.

Another distinctive feature of the deployment was the way the British command staff operated from allied warships. Ingham and her Royal Navy battle staff initially commanded from the German frigate FGS Sachsen before transferring to the Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Québec, the first time a Royal Navy-led task group had commanded operations successively from ships belonging to two different allied navies. The Royal Navy said this reflected the level of trust and integration within the group.

Ingham made the same point more practically during her interview with UK Defence Journal, describing NATO naval interoperability as something embedded in everyday procedures rather than simply an aspiration. “Out of the 32 nations in NATO, over 25 of them are maritime nations, and we all operate using the same tactics, techniques and procedures,” she said. “So it’s actually really, really seamless to be able to operate in another ship, and we’ve proven that.”

She used replenishment at sea as one example. NATO ships use common fittings and procedures, allowing vessels from different nations to refuel from one another without lengthy adaptation. “Any NATO ship can fuel off any NATO tanker,” Ingham said. “Everybody knows what to expect. Everybody knows how to do it. Everybody practises it. And so when you need to fuel, you’re literally in, fuel, gone.”

The Royal Navy also contributed a Wildcat helicopter from 815 Naval Air Squadron while the staff was embarked in FGS Sachsen, adding surveillance, reconnaissance and force-protection capability. Ships from France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, Spain, Norway, Canada and the United States served with the group at different points during the deployment.

Ingham said, as quoted in the Royal Navy update: “Leading Standing NATO Maritime Group One has been a great privilege. I am incredibly proud of my Battle Staff and the ships from across the Alliance that have served alongside us, demonstrating NATO’s unwavering commitment to collective defence and deterrence.”

She added: “Throughout my tenure, we have shown that our strength at sea comes not from any one Nation, but from the unity, trust and professionalism that bind us together as Allies. In an increasingly complex security environment, that solidarity remains our greatest strategic advantage.”

That reflected the argument she made to UK Defence Journal when asked what the standing maritime group ultimately exists to achieve. “The first one is deterrence, and we mustn’t ever forget that this is a deterrent alliance,” she said, before pointing to Britain’s dependence on maritime trade and undersea communications. She cited 95% of UK imports arriving by sea, around half of its food and 97% of internet data travelling through subsea cables.

For Ingham, the deployment also demonstrated the less visible value of a standing multinational force. “We’re specialist mariners. We are professional, calm, getting on with our jobs. We are not looking for trouble,” she said. “We’re a defensive alliance here to defend over a billion people.”

The handover in Reykjavik brings Ingham’s fifth command at sea to an end and her first commanding a multinational battle staff. Her own description of command remained notably simple despite the scale of the task group: “Execute the mission. Two, keep the ship safe. Three, look after your people.”

Rear Admiral Nicolas Molitor now assumes responsibility for SNMG1 as the standing force continues NATO’s maritime deterrence and defence mission across northern European and Atlantic waters.