The first decade of the 21st century was a particularly difficult time for many naval forces. After the end of the Cold War and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact many European Navies had a kind of identity crisis. Their old reason for existence now gone, they looked for new reasons to exist and new tools to solve newly found problems.  

The German Navy had one of these existence crises. During the Cold War the main mission of the German Navy was to keep the Warsaw Pact navies bottled up in the Baltic Sea, to prevent them doing amphibious operations against the Danish Straits and north Germany. However, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and consequently with Poland joining the EU, there was little for the German Navy to do.