BALTOPS

BALTOPS (Baltic Operations) is NATO's largest annual maritime exercise in the Baltic Sea, running since 1972 as a demonstration of Allied commitment to Europe's northern maritime flank. The exercise typically involves 15 to 20 Allied Nations and a mix of surface ships, submarines, aircraft and amphibious forces, covering anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures, amphibious operations and air defence.

For its first fifty years BALTOPS was run as a US Navy-led exercise. Since 2026 it has been conducted under a NATO command-and-control structure led by Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, a change in institutional ownership that is expected to persist in future editions. BALTOPS has also become a bellwether for NATO's maritime modernisation more broadly, with successive editions since 2022 progressively incorporating uncrewed and autonomous undersea systems into what was historically a crewed-platform exercise.