Royal Navy ships including Portsmouth-bases HMS Diamond to lead huge 'war' around UK as international exercise Joint Warrior returns

Ranging from the North Sea to the Channel, naval forces from across NATO will join the exercise.

Portsmouth-based HMS Diamond, along with seven other Royal Navy ships, will lead an international flotilla of more than 20 warships.

Nations joining the trials include the USA, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, France and Latvia.

Royal Navy vessels taking part include HMS Kent, Northumberland, and Somerset, as well as several of Royal Fleet Auxiliary tankers.

Commander Jez Brettell, at the helm of Portsmouth-based frigate HMS Kent, said: ‘Exercise Joint Warrior is a fantastic opportunity to fully demonstrate HMS Kent’s wide-ranging capabilities in close consort with other Royal Navy units, ground units, air assets and multinational forces.’

‘Having recently proven ourselves at Operational Sea Training, the exercise is ideally timed to consolidate our training at the very start of our deployment so that we are ready for anything that may follow.’

Anti-submarine ships, aircraft and helicopters will hunt down live submarines, while land operations will test gunners from 29 Commando Royal and elements of the US Marine Corps.

More than 30 aircraft - including RAF Typhoon fighters and long-range maritime patrol aircraft – will be committed, as well as drone technology and exercise planners intend to use ‘virtual’ aerial assets alongside live ones to test the response of participants.

Joint Warrior will be directed from RAF St Mawgan, near Newquay in Cornwall.

This latest exercise casts its net across the British Isles, with naval task groups testing each other in both the North Sea off the coast of Scotland and the north-east coast of England, as well as western Channel off Cornwall and Devon.

Joint Warrior is due to end on October 12.

The navy says it is the largest military exercise in Europe, which as well as seeing other nations participate, sees the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the British Army, working together. It is run in the spring and the autumn.

It comes as the Royal Navy celebrates sending its first warship to join a major Australian military exercise, with patrol vessel HMS Spey taking part and contributing some of its sailors as ‘smugglers’.