HMS Portland has joined the largest submarine hunt of the year in the Atlantic, a two-week NATO workout called Exercise Dynamic Mongoose!

The Royal Navy say here that the Devonport-based warship has locked horns with ‘the enemy below’, joining colleagues from eight allied navies and nations concentrating their efforts in the Norwegian Sea on Exercise Dynamic Mongoose.

“Hosted by either Iceland or Norway – this year participants are gathering in Reykjavik before the training begins in earnest on Monday – Dynamic Mongoose is one of two large-scale anti-submarine exercises NATO runs.

The current exercise tests collective abilities in the cold, open, deep waters of the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic. Dynamic Manta, held earlier this year off Sicily, does the same, but in warmer, shallower, more confined waters of the Mediterranean.

Depth, temperature, salinity and water layers in the ocean are key factors in submarine warfare, directly impacting on the effectiveness of sonar. The Royal Navy is committed to both; a Merlin flight from RNAS Culdrose was dispatched to Manta to demonstrate its prowess in hunting submarines.

And one of the helicopters is also embarked on Portland: the combination of Merlin and a Type 23 frigate is the most potent in the Royal Navy’s anti-submarine warfare arsenal.”

There are three boats to chase down, with ten warships and more than a dozen maritime patrol aircraft – including an RAF P8 Poseidon – and helicopters involved in the hunt. You can read more on this directly from the Royal Navy here.

George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison

16 COMMENTS

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  1. So the article says that 10 frigates hunt down 3 subs…

    We have 8 on order. Allies are great but the Falklands was fought alone.

    Simplistic I know, but, one T26 and a working Merlin is probably not enough… we need more ASW frigates in this cold war fight versus China and Russia.

    • The Merlin is a much more advanced sub hunter than the Seaking. I won’t say how much more, just much, much more.

      • It was fiction.
        It was 50ish years ago.
        But, Tom Clancy wrote Red Storm Rising with some impressive contributors:
        2 ffgs, 2 helos working one contact because of cross vectoring and thermoclines… has physics changed so much in the years passed ?

  2. It never fails to amaze me how f-ing stupid loved up service men and women can be:
    British Submariners’ Emails Put U.K. Nuclear Deterrent At Risk, Judge Rules
    An affair between two U.K. Royal Navy officers serving on nuclear submarines threatened the security of the country’s nuclear deterrent, according to the judge at a military court. The two individuals have both been formally discharged from the navy and have received suspended prison sentences.

    Details of the 2020 incident were made public following a recent court-martial. The two officers, Lt. Sophie Brook and Lt. Cdr. Nicholas Stone, were serving aboard the Vanguard class ballistic missile submarine HMS Victorious and the Astute class nuclear attack submarine HMS Ambush, respectively. Lt. Brook was a watch leader aboard Victorious at the time and, after joining the Navy in 2011, became the first female warfare officer aboard a British nuclear submarine. The role of warfare officers is to operate sonar, tactical, and communications systems, providing situational awareness for the submarine. Lt. Cdr. Stone had joined the Navy in 2003 and was a security officer on Ambush. Both officers were described in the British media as “highly respected.” Media accounts also suggest that Lt. Brook had been seen as a candidate to become the first female captain of a Royal Navy submarine. The service first allowed women to serve on submarines in 2011.
    However, email messages sent by Brook to Stone’s Yahoo email account were found to have contained sensitive information about Royal Navy submarines, in particular threatening the security of HMS Victorious and, in turn, the British nuclear deterrent. The fact that a Yahoo account was used is also of interest, with that provider having in the past been responsible for serious data breaches after being targeted by hackers, perhaps state-sponsored ones. Back in 2017, the company admitted that these breaches had affected all 3 billion of its user accounts.

    As well as references to the location of the SSBN, it seems the emails contained other specifics of the submarine’s performance that could be of considerable interest to possible foes. According to Cdr. Peter Barker, for the prosecution, information in the emails — sent while the SSBN was still in port — included “the location of the submarine for the next few days, the direction of travel, speed, diving depth, and confirmation of the sailing time.”

    • Different circumstances, but we had to cancel an op on HERRICK when quite innocently one of the blokes put on FB “bit nervous about going into xxxx tomorrow.”

      He was mortified when it got cancelled and he was being interviewed by SIB and Int.

      • That I can understand. A mistake by a soldier and he and all around him learned a valuable lesson.
        The officers in the navy should and do know better. To share the information about sub ops outside of who is allowed to know is really bad. Then to do it not even in person and over a yahoo account! They had no need to share the info. It’s not like they were going to meet up for date night in the sea. I didn’t even know people still used yahoo. Thought it was defunct. So stupid.

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