The 17th Sea Breeze was the most important exercise in this series to date, featuring many firsts for its key participants, as Vladimir Trendafilovski discovered.
Exercise Report
Sea Breeze 2018
The annual Sea Breeze multinational maritime exercise, co-hosted by Ukraine and the United States, has been held in the Black Sea and on Ukrainian territory since 1997. One of its main goals is to strengthen maritime security and stability in the region by improving co-operation and interoperability between participating nations. Attended by 19 nations (Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, India, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Ukraine and the US), this year’s manoeuvres took place between July 9 and July 21 and involved almost 3,000 soldiers, more than 30 vessels (including one submarine) and 20-plus aircraft and helicopters.
As is customary, the exercise had sea, land and air components and multiple phases conducted at various locations in Ukraine’s Kherson, Mykolayiv and Odessa districts, plus an at-sea phase conducted in Ukrainian territorial and international waters.
New features
As with past events, the main theme …
