Sea Breeze 21, which continues through July 10 in the Black Sea region, focuses on amphibious warfare, land maneuver warfare, diving operations, maritime interdiction operations, air defense, special operations integration, anti-submarine warfare and search and rescue operations, according to a 6th Fleet news release.

Thirty-two countries from six continents are providing 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft, and 18 special operations and dive teams to the exercise.

“The United States is proud to partner with Ukraine in co-hosting the multinational maritime exercise Sea Breeze, which will help enhance interoperability and capabilities among participating nations,” said Chargé d’Affaires Kristina Kvien, U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. “We are committed to maintaining the safety and security of the Black Sea.”

The exercise gets underway just five days after Russia announced that one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs in the path of British destroyer Defender to drive it away from waters near the Crimean city of Sevastopol, the main Russian naval base in Crimea. Britain denied that account, insisted there were no warning shots or bombs dropped near its ship and that it was sailing in Ukrainian waters.

The Russian Defense Ministry said June 23 a patrol ship fired warning shots because the HMS Defender ignored a notice against intrusion and sailed 1.6 nautical miles into Russia’s territorial waters. It claimed a Russian Su-24 bomber also dropped four bombs ahead of the vessel to persuade the Defender to change course. Minutes later, the Defender left Russian waters, the ministry said.

Britain insisted the ship was making a routine journey through an internationally recognized travel lane and remained in Ukrainian waters. The U.K., like most of the world, recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine despite the peninsula’s 2014 annexation by Russia.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would not say whether he had personally approved the Defender’s voyage but suggested the Royal Navy was making a point by taking that route.

“The important point is that we don’t recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, this is part of a sovereign Ukrainian territory,” Johnson told reporters. “It was entirely right that we should vindicate the law and pursue freedom of navigation in the way that we did, take the shortest route between two points, and that’s what we did.”

The incident marked the first time since the Cold War that Moscow claimed tp have used live ammunition to deter a NATO warship, underlining the rising threat of military collisions amid Russia-West tensions.

Exercise Sea Breeze, which began in 1997, brings most Black Sea nations and NATO allies and partners together to train and operate in the pursuit of building increased capability.

The nations taking part include: Albania, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Morocco, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Senegal, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tuesday’s SINKEX of the Oliver Hazard Perry-class Ford gathered a formidable force 170 nautical miles off the coast of Guam, including the Air Force’s 69th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, the Navy’s Maritime Patrol Squadrons 1, 5 and 47 and Singapore’s multi-role stealth frigates Formidable and Intrepid, which pounded the decommissioned vessel with Harpoon missiles.

AGM-114 Hellfire missiles from MH-60S Sea Hawks flown by Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25 also sliced and diced Ford.

But the highlight of the day might’ve been the debut of the Independence-variant littoral combat ship Gabrielle Giffords, which fired its new Raytheon/Kongsberg-made Naval Strike Missile, which can reach an enemy ship from more than 100 nautical miles away, skimming the sea at high subsonic speed while its electronic brain homes in on its target.

That’s about 30 nautical miles farther than the published range of the Harpoon and it’s so precise that sailors can pinpoint where it will spear into a vessel, such as blowing apart an engine room or decapitating a bridge.

Navy officials, however, did not release which munition actually sank the hulk.

And although they later disclosed that the Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine Key West was present during the Exercise Pacific Griffin 2019 event, they didn’t say if it delivered a torpedo deathblow to the former frigate.

“This exercise provided important opportunities for realistic at-sea training with live ordnance, conditions that cannot be duplicated otherwise,” said Capt. Matthew Jerbi, commodore of the Japan-based Destroyer Squadron 7 and co-commander of the Task Group for the exercise, in a prepared statement.

“Training alongside our Singapore partners in a complex exercise like this is invaluable.”

Although the date of the SINKEX in the Philippine Sea was a secret, Ford’s fate really wasn’t.

On Sept. 11, Military Sealift Command announced that its fleet ocean tug Sioux successfully transferred the hulk to its rescue salvage ship Grasp off the coast of Hawaii.

Sioux had towed it from Bremerton, Washington, where it had been stripped of environmental contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), transformers and capacitors, trash, mercury and petroleum products, leaving what officials called “nothing more than a shell” for Navy Sea Systems Command to certify for destruction off Guam.

“This isn’t something we do very often, but it is something we can do, if we have to,” said Michael Howell, Military Sealift Command Pacific’s Combat Logistics Force Tow and Salvage Ship scheduler, at the time.

“In this case, we couldn’t bring Sioux and the tow into Hawaii because of environmental concerns, so we had to go with the decision to transfer at sea.”

The former frigate was named for Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Patrick O. Ford, who posthumously received the Navy Cross for his heroism during the Vietnam War.

On June 21, 1968, Ford was Patrol River Boat 750′s aft machine-gunner along the upper My Tho River near the village of Cai Be.

After capturing an enemy sampan, PRB 750 and a sister boat were ambushed by Viet Cong guerrillas firing rockets and machine guns.

Six B-40 rockets killed Ford’s patrol leader and coxswain and set the boat ablaze. Ford fired back. Then, with his clothing still on fire, he assisted three wounded shipmates into the river and was the last man off 750.

A Viet Cong machine gun blast killed him when he entered the water, according to the Navy’s official history of the battle.

The frigate honoring his legacy was laid down by Todd Pacific Shipyards Corp., in San Pedro, California, on July 11, 1983, launched less than a year later and commissioned on June 29, 1985, in its homeport of Everett, Washington.

The Navy decommissioned Ford in 2013 after more than 28 years of service providing anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine protection for U.S. warships and merchant vessels.

“I am pleased to announce that Seattle, Washington, will be the home of the Coast Guard’s new Polar Security Cutters,” said Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl L. Schultz in a Monday statement emailed to Navy Times.

“The Pacific Northwest has been the home of our icebreaking fleet since 1976, and I am confident that the Seattle area will continue to provide the support we need to carry out our critical operations in the polar regions.”

Coast Guard officials said that Seattle won out over other potential locations because of “operational and logistical needs.”

Two months ago, the Navy and Coast Guard awarded Mississippi shipbuilder VT Halter Marine, Inc. a contract that could be worth as much as $1.9 billion to build three heavy icebreakers.

The Polar Security-class vessels will be designed to conduct search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, environmental response and national defense patrols missions in areas often covered in heavy ice.

A longtime resident of the Seattle suburbs, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell cheered the announcement in a prepared statement released Monday evening.

“This is great news. Homeporting new icebreakers in Puget Sound shows the significant role Washington state has to play in securing our waters and protecting our environment in the Arctic. The Puget Sound region supports a cutting-edge maritime workforce, which is poised to meet the needs of these new world-class vessels,” said Cantwell, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, one of the panels overseeing the Coast Guard.

“I am excited to welcome new polar icebreakers and their Coast Guard crews to Seattle in the near future.”

Cantwell has long fought to maintain and expand the Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet, including sparring with President Barack Obama’s administration over funding to build the new icebreakers.

Construction on the first icebreaker is slated to begin in 2021 with delivery three years later, but there are financial incentives in the contract for early delivery, according to the Pentagon.

Congress also indicated that it expects the heavy breakers and other vessels to spend more time in Alaska. Lawmakers earmarked $53 million to construct cutter support facilities in Alaska.

That hasn’t been the preferred destination for the Coast Guard’s heavy icebreakers, which are down to one semi-working vessel and the skeleton of another that’s used to harvest spare parts to keep the other one running.

Commissioned in 1976, the Polar Star annually crunches a channel through miles of thick ice to reach McMurdo Station, the main logistics hub for the National Science Foundation’s personnel in Antarctica, including researchers at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and remote field camps.

Supply vessels follow behind the breaker, but by the end of Operation Deep Freeze, its 11,200-mile journey, it’s usually so battered that it spends much of the rest of the year in dry dock, undergoing repairs.

Last year, it caught on fire.

During a May 28 meeting with reporters in Alaska, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan grumbled that the new breakers need to spend more time in the Arctic and less at the bottom of the world.

“I write the Coast Guard bill. I chair that subcommittee; we’ll see,” he was quoted as saying.

Sullivan chairs the Security Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation panel.

The Coast Guard’s medium breaker Healy draws the nation’s Arctic duties.

During last year’s 129-day deployment, it plied the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Although it mostly supported scientific exploration during that tour, Healy also is used for search and rescue missions, escorting warships and other vessels through ice-jammed waterways, environmental protection and enforcing the law in an Arctic region increasingly under pressure from Russia and China.