PORTLAND PORT, England – From July 12-24, 2026, in the shallow shoreside waters of Portland, England to the ocean depths of the English Channel, critical unit integration of unmanned and autonomous technology proved successful. Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) coupled with expert Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams ensure that close proximity mine countermeasure (MCM) operations during exercise Seabreeze 26-2 were executed with maximum safety while enhancing collective interoperability across the Allied and partnered maritime force. By training side-by-side, these international forces learned to communicate and operate seamlessly as a single unit.
“With the advancement of unmanned underwater vehicle technologies, it allows us to use those systems instead of putting a diver in the water,” said Lt. Alexander Holt, assigned to U.S. Navy Mine Countermeasures Group (MCMGRU) 6, detachment Rota. “With integrated UUV training you can mitigate and avoid potential personnel mishaps that may happen while searching for and locating underwater mines with traditional underwater divers.”
While underwater mine clearance remains the primary objective of the MCM mission, the adoption of autonomous and AI technologies has transformed risk management, drastically increasing personnel safety and mission effectiveness. To ensure safety and precision, the exercise emphasized a practical "crawl, walk, run" methodology. This philosophy reinforces the step by step, standard operating procedures that crews use to systematically find, identify, and clear underwater hazards in the safest and timeliest manor possible.
“Your personal experience can only take you so far,” said Bjorn, a Swedish EOD technician. “That is why you also need standard operating procedures to help act as guard rails for timely, textbook and effective decision making in the field.”
During Sea Breeze 26-2, Allied and partner nations deployed Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) to scout hazardous, unmapped waters before committing crewed vessels, significantly reducing risk to naval personnel. Utilizing these cost-effective, replaceable drones as frontline sensors protects multi-million-dollar warships from entering shallow, mine-threatened harbors prematurely.
Using robotic submarines, self-driving boats and other UUVs to collect, process and share information with the command-and-control team makes missions much more successful and serves as a critical force multiplier. Most importantly, these unmanned systems do the dangerous work in risky areas, keeping human divers safe and farther away from underwater mines enabling more rapid courses of action and accelerating decision making and execution cycles.
Navigating the hazards of deploying underwater dive technicians for subsurface mine countermeasures entails extreme physical risks, ranging from operating in near-zero visibility to facing decompression sickness and the constant threat of accidental detonation. In addition to environmental hazards, divers must navigate highly volatile explosives obscured by marine growth or compromised by corroded casings and unstable fuses. The danger is further compounded by advanced multi-sensor underwater mines equipped with highly sensitive pressure, magnetic, and acoustic fusing systems.
Enhancing a team’s ability to solve complex and challenging maritime mine detection, engagement, clearing and disposal situations goes beyond drills by creating immersive, training opportunities that enhance multinational cooperation, sharpen tactical skills, and boost readiness for modern security threats.
“Seabreeze 26-2 is a key interoperability exercise in Europe,” said Commander Alasdair Magill of the British Royal Navy. “Bringing individual units together into a cohesive multinational force working together in a dynamic security environment.”
Each iteration of exercise Seabreeze builds on accrued lessons to strengthen Allied partnerships and interoperability, focusing on critical unit, group and force level tasks such as command-and-control in the mine countermeasures ecosystem—including mine hunting, underwater explosive ordnance disposal, and the deployment of unmanned surface and underwater vehicles. This collaborative effort ensures collective readiness to maintain safe and open waters while adapting to modern security challenges in the maritime environment.
As regional and global MCM challenges continue to increase in complexity, exercises like Seabreeze 26-2 are critical for preparing armed forces to operate effectively in real-world scenarios as a manned and unmanned mesh network of allied and partner maritime forces.
Sea Breeze 2026 included forces from Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Japan, Latvia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Türkiye, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and NATO Allied Maritime Command. Throughout both iterations, participating nations strengthened interoperability, refined multinational command-and-control processes, and increased collective readiness to respond to maritime challenges in the Black Sea region and beyond.
View more online content on Seabreeze26-2 here