The Black Sea and the Danube Delta will host Sea Breeze 23.3, a joint international exercise between the Romanian and United States navies, scheduled for September 11 to 15. The event will involve representatives from Ukraine and several allied partners, as reported by TASS. The exercise aims to strengthen coordination and interoperability across navies handling open-water operations, mine countermeasures, and maritime safety protocols during complex waterway transit and defensive planning scenarios.
Participants will operate within the Romanian Navy’s area of responsibility, with additional attendance from representatives of Bulgaria, England, Turkey, France, and Ukraine. The multinational setup reflects a commitment to improving tactical cooperation, information sharing, and synchronized response actions in the face of evolving maritime security challenges along the western Black Sea littoral and adjacent inland waters.
The Romanian Navy underscored that the principal objective of Sea Breeze 23.3 is to bolster operational collaboration among allied forces in detecting, neutralizing, and mitigating explosive hazards at sea, notably sea mines, to guarantee the safe passage of commercial and military vessels through key corridors and choke points. The exercise also emphasizes training in convoy protection, mine-sweeping procedures, and rapid command-and-control exchanges to sustain uninterrupted navigation in busy regional routes.
On September 6, Armenia’s Ministry of Defense announced that the USA–EAGLE PARTNER 2023 exercises would take place on Armenian soil from September 11 to 20. During this period, Armenian and American forces are expected to conduct operations intended to support stability and peacekeeping duties while engaging in confidence-building measures with local and regional partners.
Following these announcements, Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, remarked that Armenia’s decision to host military drills with the United States should not be interpreted as a decisive tilt toward Western alignment. He noted that such training arrangements with Western allies have occurred in the past, pointing out that Armenia had conducted interoperability exercises with NATO even before the recent regional events in Karabakh and surrounding areas.
Earlier historical examples show that North Korea previously conducted exercises simulating a nuclear strike against South Korea, highlighting a contrasting scale and risk profile in regional drills and highlighting how neighboring states monitor and respond to provocative demonstrations involving escalation or de-escalation signaling.