Largest amphibious exercise on Braunton Burrows since WW2
Source: gov.uk (2025-06-12)

Exercise Catamaran brought together more than 3,000 personnel from several NATO allies to carry out training on the North Devon coast.

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) has enabled a major multi-national training exercise alongside NATO allies on Braunton Burrows Training Area, demonstrating its crucial role in supporting military capability.

Exercise Catamaran ran between 30 May and 7 June, bringing together military personnel from France, the UK, Brazil, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the US. Royal Marines from 40 and 47 Commando led British involvement in the exercise.

It is the largest amphibious exercise of this scale to have been conducted on the training area since it was used by US troops in 1943 to rehearse for the D-Day landings on Utah and Omaha beaches.

Ex Catamaran formed part of the wider French-led POLARIS 25 exercise, a month-long training exercise which sees more than 3,000 military personnel from allied nations working on warfighting skills together. The amphibious exercise involved more than 20 surface ships and 40 aircraft in the Atlantic and the Channel and included landing exercises taking place on the beach at Braunton Burrows.

Braunton Burrows Training Area is home to one of the largest sand dune systems in the UK and offers a unique place to train.

DIO’s Overseas and Training team played an important part in planning and facilitating the exercise. The Foreign Forces team acted as the liaison between the French exercise planners and the Ministry of Defence. They provided expert advice on how the training area could be best utilised to meet training objectives, ensuring that all partners were informed and engaged.

Alongside that, Braunton Burrows’ Deputy Training Safety Officer led safety briefings for military personnel, flexibly supported training requirements and ensured a safe place to train was maintained, carefully managing the balance between military training and public access on the area. This technical guidance proved crucial in developing realistic training scenarios that couldn’t be replicated elsewhere in the UK.

Braunton Burrows: Enabling Exercise Catamaran (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CioHmjZZrxM)

Brigadier Gavin Hatcher CBE, DIO’s Head of Overseas and Training Region, said:

As custodians of the Defence Training Estate, DIO proudly provides a safe and high-quality environment for our Armed Forces and allies to train. While we enable and support important military training year-round, the scale and complexity of Exercise Catamaran has really showcased the versatility and diversity of what we can facilitate.

My team has been working closely with the French military for some time to meticulously plan this phase of the exercise on Braunton Burrows Training Area. It has been great to see this collaboration brought to fruition this week with UK military personnel training alongside our allies as they prepare for potential deployments.

Major Martyn Heenan, Royal Marines, said:

Braunton Burrows and the amphibious training it allows is so important as it is one of the most complex operations you can carry out and there’s very few places you can do it. It allows the allied nations involved in this exercise to get onto the same space in a challenging area and work together, which is very difficult to do anywhere else in the world.

It’s been a long planning process but DIO have been there all the way through, be it the Foreign Forces team, the Training Safety Officers or the regional commanders, they have really helped with the planning and delivering everything to make this a success.

Braunton Burrows has to remain accessible to the public at all times, and the site’s Deputy Training Safety Officer conducts careful planning and continuous monitoring alongside colleagues from our industry partner, Landmarc, to ensure military activities can go ahead safely without endangering personnel or members of the public.