The Navy

The tasks of the Navy include the surveillance or our territorial waters and ensuring their integrity, maritime connections and the protection of maritime traffic and the prevention of attacks by sea. The Navy carries out its tasks in cooperation with the other Services and the Frontier Guard. The Navy is made up of naval and coastal troops. The base of the naval troops is made up of mine layers and coastal mine layers as well as minesweepers. The coastal troops include e.g. coastal artillery batteries, coastal forts and a coastal jaeger company.

Conscript training in the Navy

Conscripts also enter naval service in January and July. To begin with, all conscripts receive the standard basic training of a combatant. After this, training is divided into specialised training in naval and coastal troops. The requirement for entry into service aboard as well as diver and coastal jaeger training is fitness class A. Only in exceptional cases is it possible for a class B conscript to be accepted into the naval troops. Those in training for tasks on deck and those applying to naval training on the Naval Reserve Officer Course must have normal colour vision and vision must without eyeglasses be at least 1.0 in the better and 0.5 in the lesser eye. Radio communications men, machine engineers and ship’s cooks form an exception to this rule.
The service period for normal rank and file tasks in coastal training is 180 days and in naval training 270 days. In the Navy, a large part of the conscripts in the coastal troops are trained as specialists whose service is at least 270 days. Officers’, Non-Commissioned Officers’ and special rank and file tasks (military boat and E-drivers) service period is 362 days.

Coastal troops

The service locations of the coastal troops are the naval units that provide coastal artillery and naval infantry training. Training for the coastal troops is given in all naval brigade-level units. During the basic training period a soldier’s basic skills are taught.
The special training period for those serving six months lasts nine weeks, during which time they specialise in one specific crisis task of the training branch and gain the knowledge and skills of the branch. The many-sided training of the costal troops is given in demanding conditions in five of the coastal brigade-level units.

Coastal Jaegers are trained in the Swedish-language Uusimaa Brigade

The physically demanding coastal jaeger training is given at the Uusimaa Brigade in Tammisaari. Versatile training is provided in a maritime environment with modern equipment. The coastal jaegers move through the archipelago by e.g. Jurmo-class assault boat and fast raiding craft. Also trained in the Uusimaa Brigade are infantry and maritime surveillance men as well as coastal engineers. Training in the Uusimaa Brigade is carried out in Swedish but the language of order is Finnish.

Naval troops

The service locations of the naval troops are among the naval vessel units. Naval training begins with a basic training period in the Gulf of Finland Naval Command. The actual service aboard is carried out aboard the vessels of the Gulf of Finland Naval Command, Archipelago Sea Naval Command and Kotka Coastal Command. After the basic training in Upinniemi, a five-week training period (J-period) begins. During this time those serving in the naval troops acquire the basic knowledge and skills needed by a coastal combatant.
After the J-period, conscripts go on to service aboard and the special training periods E I and E II. During E I, the men are familiarised with service aboard a vessel as well as with the general tasks of their branch of training and training programmes. During E II, conscripts learn the tasks of their own training programme and add to the knowledge and skills they have already acquired.