Royal Navy patrol vessels to depart for two-month deployment in Baltic Sea

Four of the Royal Navy’s smallest patrol ships will leave Portsmouth this weekend for a two-month deployment with allies in the Baltic Sea.

The Archer-class 20-metre patrol boats HMS Dasher, HMS Express, HMS Puncher and HMS Pursuer will spend the next ten weeks away from home – eight of them on a string of exercises, as they focus their efforts between the Kattegat and Gulf of Finland.

The fast patrol craft will practise a range of missions including harbour defence, escort duties, acting as motherships for minehunting drones, and as enemy forces trying to intercept shipping.

The vessels will first join 13 other NATO nations off Germany’s Baltic shore for Exercise Northern Coasts, a series of land, sea and air manoeuvres involving more than 2,700 personnel and 40 warships.

The four ships will host experts from the Royal Navy’s Mine Threat Exploitation Group, who have been working with them to launch autonomous minehunting kit.

The vessels will later sail further east to take part in exercises with Finnish, Swedish and Latvian counterparts.

The Royal Navy said the exercises will be under the banner of the Joint Expeditionary Force, a regional defence and security coalition of northern European nations.