London (AFP) - NATO should beef
up its maritime arm in response to the rising threat from an
increasingly "bold" and "aggressive" Russia, commanders said on
Wednesday.
The 28-member
defence alliance's naval forces have in recent years focused on issues
such as counter-terrorism and piracy, but speakers at a London
conference said the group needed to prepare more to counter Russian
military ambitions.
"Russian
international maritime presence has grown significantly in recent years,
specifically since the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014," senior NATO
commander General Adrian Bradshaw, told a conference in London on NATO's
naval future.
"The Russian Federation is shadowing and presumably
collecting intelligence from NATO nation naval units in the Baltic, the
Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, using methods that can
be considered bold and sometimes aggressive," he said.
One
area that NATO will focus on is how to better project maritime force on
land using amphibious units and air power, said British Vice Admiral
Peter Hudson.
"At the height
of the Cold War in the 60s and 70s, the striking power of the US Navy,
the delivery of large amounts of land forces to support Europe was quite
a sophisticated art," he said.
"You'll see a lot of our
exercises in recent years, and certainly ones that are coming up in the
future, are working hard to bring that capability back."
NATO
will from September to November launch its largest exercises in more
than two decades, in regions including the Atlantic Ocean and the
Mediterranean Sea.
"We have to reinforce their approach to
high-intensity crisis," said General Jean-Paul Palomeros, a senior NATO
commander, referring to NATO's maritime arm.
In a rare move, the
US military released a video last month of a Russian Su-24 bomber flying
past an American warship in the Black Sea, while Sweden last year
launched a massive hunt for a suspected Russian submarine in the
Stockholm archipelago.
Russia
is upgrading its naval capabilities, and in May unveiled designs for
two new major warships, a multi-purpose heavy aircraft carrier called
the "Shtorm" and a new class of destroyer called the "Shkval".
Russia
considers the NATO military presence in formerly Soviet-ruled central
and eastern Europe is encroaching on its sphere of influence.
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