Swedish Marine Brigadier General Ola Truedsson on March 10 visited the participants of NATO exercise Dynamic Move 16 (DME16) taking place in Oostende, Belgium.
DME16 is an annual Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) tactical-level Mine Counter Measure Command Post Exercise and is designed to train participants from NATO and Partner Nations on naval mine counter-measures (MCM) tactics and procedures.
During the visit, the general was briefed by various participant groups on their progress thus far in the exercise and shared why he thought a multinational training exercise, like DME16, was important for Sweden to participate.
Ola Truedsson said: “I think it’s great for a small country like Sweden to come together with other nations to exercise various scenarios so when we come into a real operation we have the same way of doing things, the same operating procedures, and this exercise brings it all together.
“We can’t see a scenario in our area where we will be alone, so we can come together with our Nordic partners and challenge ourselves to learn.”
DME16 is scheduled to run from March 7-18 and has nearly 160 participants from 17 NATO and two Partner Nations. The exercise is facilitated by a team of MARCOM staff officers, naval mine warfare experts, and scientists from NATO and Partnership for Peace nations, and hosted by Belgium’s Eguermin Naval Mine Warfare School.