Russian fleet can block ALL traffic to Finland and that’s a LOT. Export of trees and timber, import of chemicals etc. would just come to a halt.

Actually we would have more change to bottle neck Russian fleet into Kronstad and St Pettersburg, than they have to do with us. During WWII our main naval strategy was to keep Russian submarines out of the actual Baltic that we could use the Ålands archipegalo as a degence line that would protedt our trade to sweden in the Gulf Of Botnia…and in 1941-1944 we managed (with little help from the nazis) mine the Finnish Gulf so effectively that the Soviet Baltic fleet layed in the idle the most parts of the hostilityes. With the current state of the Russian fleet, I wouldn’t be suprised that same outcome would come…Its the huge land formations, Airsuperiority (and our lack of ground support air arm) and unlimited stocks that allows them to stall our imaginary attack forces untill our own small stocks are exhausted. It would be as silly as Taiwan tryes to invade the mainland, their navy migth succee but otherwise….

Do you have any additional information on the last Hamina? Does it have a different armament from the first ones?
I do wonder why they will buy Italian things… AFAIK they could have gotten really good Tripartite minehunters from the Netherlands and Belgium. They are both selling some of them and the customer is not yet defined. Greece and Pakistan have however been mentioned. I think Finland would be better off with these units as they can then participate in the NATO mine clearance missions in the Baltic. The Tripartites are well known there and very well integrated in those NATO forces.

Well I dont have. Thougth its name is Pori and propaly will have the Umokhoto and RBS-15mk3 fitted from the beging…But I found the strattegic meassures of the new MCMs

length: 52meters, displacement: 680 tons, draugth: 3,1 meters and speed: 13 knots

and some pics…

But if one wants to look the positive side of things, these ships would be the first ship class minecountermeasure vessels of our navy since the old tsars heritage worned out. The preciding Kuha class were small boats of under 100 tons…
But big ships need bigger draugth and that will mean that these ships cannot navigate in all waterways of our coastline….

But have´nt years of experience showed us that if you can master littoral tasks in the baltic sea the rest of the world is a peace of cake? I don´t think there is any sea in the world that is so hard to search, detect and hunt something under the surface as in the baltic sea. The finns have experience in that that and yet they buy their ships from Italy? Or is it just the ships and they put in other minehunting weapons on the ships?

No, its the whole ships. Only one of them would be partly fitted in here…I agree that it is an outrage for going such way. Our shipbuilding, expecially taliroled naval building has good traditions and almoust all of the ships have been succses.
And what comes to the submarines, the money is the main issue. To start re creating submarine arm would be huge investment and it would be politically way too ambitious and suspicious plan. Such small country and small budget… No party would dare to take that sort of responsipility. Also, all the winds in the defence area seems to blow towards africa and to the european trend of making armedforces more of humanitaritan relief and NATO comparable peacekeeper force. Submarines are way too traditional and would only mean that Finland starts to rearm against conventional war with its neighbours…and that Is just too weird to even think of now..

I think Finland need to focus on army more. It is shame that many Finland people forget that Karelia is lost to Russia and that Karelia people (they are finnish u know)is suffering there.

we allready tryed the re-match in the 40’s ….and lost. So no way of picking blood out of our nose no more. And thecnically all Karelia, even the parts where my brother lives, Was first claimed (by internationally regogniced ruler) By the Novogorod dutchy and all that has been gained then are just Swedish anxestion.
And the Karelian people are more of them own than finnish, and they have suffered there always, so no need to make fuzz about something that doesent really exists. There isent any finnish people living in the lost territory, and the small minority of Karelian people live in lands that has never belonged to Sweden or the independent Finland that pretty much legimates its exsistance from the old swedish rule and stuff…. (If you dont count the small period of 15th century when it was conqured by the Swedish super power, but even then it was treaded administrationally as other gained terretory such as Pommer in germany)

Karelia has been source of downfall to our extrem-rigth (by advocating useless crusades in the 20’s and ultimately attacking there whit the nazis in ’41) and extreme-left (the refugees of the failed 1918 revolution tryed to build a substitute socialistic finland out of the false imagination that karelian orthodoxian people had somethign common on lutherian finns…they sticked to that too eagerly than trying to affect affairs in actual Finland and where later executed by the Iron man due too nationalistic ideas)
….So please, no more Karelia for us…the part we have left is already too much 😀

So better check things before next time making such wild comments. That sort of mentality isent anymore relevant here in europe

oh, for a moment I thougth that was one of those hitchigging trips… :rolleyes: