Today and tomorrow the NATO-Admirals Committee CHANCOM – responsible for the North Sea and the English Channel – is meeting in Hamburg today to discuss the maritime challenges of this important sea area. The region is of strategic importance for the defense of the alliance and also for Germany’s national defense.
NATO’s Channel Committee, or CHANCOM for short, was retained after the end of the Cold War and has become increasingly important again in recent years, as the North Sea and English Channel have regained strategic importance due to the return to national and alliance defense – especially as a gateway to the Baltic Sea. This development has now extended NATO’s northern flank as far as Poland and the Baltic states. https://militaeraktuell.at/schweden-wie-sich-land-auf-krieg-vorbereitet/ The five naval chiefs from the UK, France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands are permanent members of CHANCOM. Germany, in the person of the Chief of Naval Operations, Vice Admiral Jan C. Kaack, will chair the annual meeting in 2024. The general theme of this year’s conference is “Use and Combat of Unmanned Systems”. The naval chiefs from Italy, Spain and Portugal have also been invited to the meeting this year. Even before the meeting, all participating states agree that increased maritime cooperation is needed in the future to ensure the safety of maritime traffic in the English Channel and beyond. Due to developments in recent years, unmanned systems are also becoming increasingly interesting for the navy. By 2035, the German navy wants to equip warships so that they can wage naval warfare in the North Atlantic multidimensionally and at long range. Unmanned systems will complement the coverage of large areas. The increasing number of ships that have been deployed since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine (-> current news from the Ukraine war), the intensifying threat situation in the Baltic Sea therefore requires unmanned weapon systems that are as simple and inexpensive as possible and available in the largest possible numbers.
Here for more news about NATO.
