Exercise Argus 2022 participants USCGC Oak and HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen (P571) meet off Greenland. U.S. COAST GUARD

Forbes gives us a look at Exercise Argus which was sponsored by Denmark and conducted off Greenland. Author Craig Hooper also looks at the challenges facing Greenland as tourism and offshore traffic increase exponentially.

Off Greenland, the Danish Joint Arctic Command just finished hosting Exercise Argus, an annual Danish-led training event. The exercise, designed to enhance search-and-rescue and marine environmental responses in the Arctic, offers the U.S. Coast Guard an opportunity to obtain some experience operating in Polar waters.

For the exercise, a range of U.S. Coast Guard elements, joined by units from France—an Arctic Council observer state—worked with Danish and Greenland-based assets. The international team prepared for a complex maritime accident, a catastrophe that most Arctic observers suspect will be inevitable in the years ahead.

Before the exercise commenced, a 225-foot seagoing buoy tender, the Coast Guard Cutter Oak (WLB 211) arrived in Sisimiut, Greenland, becoming one of only a handful of U.S. ships that have operated north of the Arctic Circle. At sea, the tender was joined by a French patrol boat, FS Fulmar (P740), and the capable Danish Knud Rasmussen-class patrol boat, HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen (P571), as well as by smaller local law enforcement and pollution-response craft.

For a view of an earlier similar exercise, a comparison of the Knud Rasmussen class OPV with the 270 foot WMECs, and some great photographs take a look here.