EMPA Conference in Finland

Besides the sightseeing of Helsinki, many interesting programs awaited the journalists, who also visited several bases of the Finnish Navy, such as the Gulf of Finland Naval Command. The Command is responsible for a nearly 280 kilometre long stretch of land of the coastline and the Finnish territorial waters between Hanko and Hamina. Their primary task is the continuous surveillance of the traffic of the 200 sea vessels per day, to which they process information received from the radar-, camera- and underwater acoustic systems, in co-operation with the coast guard and the air force. The Finnish Navy Diving School is operating at the Kirkkonumi based Command, where conscripts and career personnel are trained for reconnaissance, technical and special operational tasks.

Three Jurmo-class landing gunboats flew the participants to the next station of their excursion, to Lammö-island. During the “flight", it soon dawned upon them, why each seat had the protection of safety belts and unique hydraulic springs… With the gunboats later, a Finnish land unit assaulted the island. The demonstration of the conscripts doing the third month of their service was spectacular.

The EMPA-members could go round the two units of the HAMINA class. The low-draught assault ships, armed with anti USVs (Unmanned Surface Vehicles) and anti UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) missile systems and a 57-millimetre Bofors automatic gun defend the shallow coastal region and the islands. The structure of the vessels makes them hardly detectable: almost everything is placed under the tilt deck superstructure.

The Suomenlinna Fortress operating since 1973 as a museum island, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a touristic spectacle hides the Finnish Naval Academy as well, where the EMPA-members got information about the structure, tasks, strengths, units and future objectives of the Finnish Navy. A separate presentation was devoted to the NORDEFCO, the military organisation based on the voluntary co-operation of the Northern states, which is not the rival of NATO, but an auxiliary resource of that.