HMS Iron Duke has returned to Portsmouth from a successful six-month deployment, where it worked with a multi-national NATO task group in Northern Europe.
The ship has returned after two deployments, spending the first in Norway and the second in the Baltic. In the exercise HMS Iron Duke played the role of an enemy warship to give a NATO fleet a realistic threat which it worked to counter.
The ship was deployed as part of Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 and is now set to take part in exercise BALTOPS. BALTOPS is an annual exercise which tests the 16 allied and partner maritime nations taking part and aims to reassure nations of NATO’s commitment to the security and stability of the region.
Commander Ben Aldous, commanding officer of HMS Iron Duke, commented: “This has been an enormously successful deployment for Iron Duke. My ship’s company has earned themselves an outstanding reputation among our NATO allies.”
The Royal Navy said: “The role of the opposing forces is to simulate a threat, and Iron Duke along with her attached patrol boats have been injecting increasingly threatening behaviour towards their real-life NATO Allies to force them to react and train together.
“The scripted scenario is all carefully stage managed by Exercise Control, the headquarters responsible for developing the scenario safely and achieving all training objectives.
“As part of her temporary role as the ‘bad guy’, Iron Duke has been approaching BALTOPS warships, hailing them to keep clear and releasing propaganda via simulated news websites and social media feeds to provide a realistic narrative to which the Strategic Communications officers in the NATO formation can react.”
