Maritime capabilities are displayed for distinguished visitors before the at-sea portion of Exercise Dynamic Mongoose starts June 26,  2017. NATO photo by FRAN CPO Christian Valverde. 

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - NATO Submarine Surveillance Exercise Dynamic Mongoose 2017 began June 26, 2017 off the coast of Iceland, with ships, submarines, aircraft and personnel from 10 Allied nations gathered in the North Atlantic Ocean for anti-submarine and anti-surface training. 

Submarines from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States, under operational control of NATO Submarine Command (COMSUBNATO), will join 11 surface ships from Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and a NATO Research Vessel, NRV Alliance, under the command of Standing NATO Maritime Group One (SNMG1) Commodore Ole Morten Sandquist. Host nation Iceland is providing support from both the Reykjavik Harbor and the Keflavik Air Base.

The aim of this exercise is to provide all participants with complex and challenging training to enhance their interoperability and proficiency in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare skills.  

This year, NATO Research Vessel ALLIANCE, operated by the Italian Navy for the NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) based in La Spezia (Italy), will participate to the exercise.  

CMRE's contribution to DMON17 is to deploy and test Maritime Unmanned Systems for ASW, specifically autonomous underwater vehicles (OEX Explorer AUVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (Wave-Glider USV). CMRE will also be participating to some ASW serials for the first time integrated under the command of the Officer Conducting the Serial (OCS). 

This is an important Operational Experimentation for CMRE and offers the chance to expose the current generation of ASWs to the future of unmanned systems for ASW.  It also will help Allied Command Transformation, which funds CMRE's activities in this area, to capture requirements for future Autonomous Security Networks for ASW.