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Kiiski-class mine clearing boats

The Kiiski-class mine clearing boats were made to "grub up" the impulse mines and are also suitable for clearing contact mines. The vessels are glass fibre-reinforced. There are six ships in the Kiiski class. In spite of its small size, the Kiiski class ship is a powerhouse: apart from clearing equipment, the ship can accommodate a small galley and bunks for a crew of four, and is also praised for its seaworthy capabilities. The Kiiski class is suited to the same duties as Kuha. but smaller in size and power.

The Clearance Department Sääksi is a maritime unit of the Coastal Navy Provincial Force. The Volunteer Reserve Unit operates under the 4th Mine Fleet and exercises 4 to 10 times a year in volunteer and commanded exercises. During the peace, the Kiiski and Kuha-class minesweepers were the training equipment of the provincial army.

Activities to establish a clearing department date back to the mid-1990s, when voluntary national defense - or in this case voluntary maritime defense - took its first steps under the Blue Reserve Association. Back then, marine reserve operations were being developed in the context of mine action, with clearance itself being a less-than-dominant training topic.

At a later stage, the practical responsibility for volunteer defense, whether on land, at sea or in the air, shifted to the National Defense Training Association (MPK), with the Blue Reserve being the non-profit organization behind the guilds. The first MPK-led mine clearance course was held in the fall of 2005, after which the practical transition to provincial force format was no longer distant. In the fall of 2006, as the provincial community became more concrete, the MPK MITO course leaders were involved in the preliminary planning of the clearing department, and some of them still form the core of the provincial group.