The Finnish Navy will host a Nato exercise in June focused on unmanned systems, amid anticipated calls from Nato's leadership for a dramatic increase in collective defence capabilities.
The operations will be conducted in maritime areas west of the Porkkala peninsula, extending down to waters off Hanko, with the Finnish Navy monitoring the designated zones.
"Unmanned systems have enormous potential and diverse applications. Smart and autonomous systems can be used, for example, to monitor areas and targets, freeing up valuable resources for other tasks," said Commodore Marko Laaksonen, Chief of Operations at the Finnish Navy.
Training in Finland's shallow, archipelagic coastal environment is seen as an opportunity to improve the development of systems suited to the challenging conditions of the Baltic Sea.
Rutte: Quantum leap in collective defence
The exercise comes as Reuters reports that Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte is pushing member states to radically increase their military capabilities ahead of the Nato summit in The Hague later this month.
In a speech at London's Chatham House on Monday, Rutte will argue that Nato must increase its air and missile defence capabilities by 400 percent to maintain credible deterrence.
"We see in Ukraine how Russia delivers terror from above, so we will strengthen the shield that protects our skies," he will say, Reuters reported, citing pre-released extracts.
He is also expected to call on member countries to raise defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP and allocate an additional 1.5 percent to broader security-related measures — meeting US President Donald Trump's call for a five-percent total commitment.
"The fact is, we need a quantum leap in our collective defence. The fact is, we must have more forces and capabilities to implement our defence plans in full. The fact is, danger will not disappear even when the war in Ukraine ends," Rutte is expected to say.
