KDA is to undertake an MHC Design Excursion study to examine the suitability of a commercial design to meet the MHC OSV requirement. (KDA)
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has revealed plans to contract Norway's Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) for a study to assess the suitability of its Vanguard multi-purpose ship concept to a future mine countermeasures (MCM) ‘mother ship' role.
In a transparency notice released on 11 July, the MoD said the Mine Hunting Capability (MHC) Delivery Team in Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) intends to place a single-source contract with KDA for the provision of what it terms an MHC Design Excursion of the Kongsberg C2 Vanguard design.
According to the MoD, the initial eight-month contract provides for “a short study of a pre-existing commercial ship design proposed to the [Royal] Norwegian Navy to the MHC Delivery Team to develop and de-risk a potential UK requirement for MHC Offshore Support Vessels [OSVs]”. It added that the MoD was exploring opportunities to ascertain whether the representative pre-existing commercial design developed by KDA “can be used to demonstrate whether an indicative commercial design could be a suitable basis” to meet the MHC OSV requirement.
The MHC programme is designed to deliver the Royal Navy (RN) a next-generation MCM capability based on autonomous ‘system-of-systems' packages that will be capable of executing MCM operations both in home waters and overseas. The overarching aim of MHC is to exploit advances in technology in areas such as autonomy, sensors, and advanced data processing techniques in order to increase the tempo of MCM; improve survey ‘product'; enhance transportability of MCM systems through ‘modularisation'; and take crews out of the mine danger area.
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