BALTOPS-2010.

This is coolbert:

For those of you who live in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Poland, etc., keep your high-frequency receivers tuned to the military bands. You are probably going to hear a lot of interesting activity in the next few days.

Starting 7 June is BALTOPS-2010.

NATO naval exercise with Russian involvement!!

"Russian warship to join NATO naval drills"

"An amphibious assault landing ship, the Kaliningrad, will take part in the BALTOPS-2010 naval exercises in the Baltic Sea on June 7-18, Russia's Baltic Fleet spokesman said on Tuesday."

The Soviets/Russians at one time did deploy coast defense units [division size] - - according to the wiki - - THE EXISTENCE OF WHICH WAS UNKNOWN TO NATO INTELLIGENCE!!

"a rather sudden emergence of three so-called coastal defence divisions (including the 3rd at Klaipeda in the Baltic Military District, the 126th in the Odessa Military District and possibly the 77th with the Northern Fleet), along with three artillery brigades/regiments, subordinate to the Soviet Navy, which had previously been unknown as such to NATO." [as reported in the wiki - - as of 1990]

The existence of these commands, "units", was totally UNKNOWN TO NATO, at least prior to 1990, ONLY made public by the Soviets/Russians at that time?

Various combat arms military units integrated under NAVAL command and designated solely for coastal defense. Consisting, I would think of coastal artillery, to include conventional guns, anti-ship missiles, an air defense capacity consisting of AAA and surface-to-air missiles [SAM], and perhaps marines as the combat ground force element!!

My hunch would be that NATO "knew" about the various constituent units of the coastal defense divisions, but was unable to determine the exact command structure, subordination, mission, etc.

NATO too felt that dedicated coastal defense units were an anachronism, passe', out-dated and out-moded. Obviously the Soviets/Russians thought otherwise.

coolbert.