The Vanguard-class multirole warship is a design proposalKongsberg unveils Vanguard warship design that could 'rock the market'
Andrew Chuter,

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, 2019-10-01 by

Kongsberg Gruppen Kongsberg Gruppen is a Norway, Norwegian multinational company, that supplies High tech, high-technology systems to customers in the merchant marine, Defense industry, defence, aerospace, Offshore drilling, offshore oil and gas industries, and Re ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

for a design of modular warship based on commercial design and shipbuilding principles. It is intended to meet a requirement for a mix of "Search & Rescue, Harbor and Assets Protection, Subsea Survey, Exercising Authority and Sovereignty,

Anti-Access/Area Denial Anti-access/area denial (or A2/AD) is a military strategy to control access to and within an operating environment. In an early definition, anti-access refers to those actions and capabilities, usually long-range, designed to prevent an opposing ...

, Anti-Submarine Warfare and Mine Clearance, and Detection and Disposal."Kongsberg Gruppen ASA (KONGSBERG) in a ceremony in Oslo today unveiled a new naval ship design called Vanguard.

, 2019-09-26

Design and description

Kongsberg collaborated with Salt Ship Design of Leirvik, Norway to develop the conceptual designs. The design is intended to be built in commercial shipyards at a considerable cost saving over dedicated naval shipyards, taking as little as two years to build. The multirole ship has positions for role-specific ISO containers that can be swapped to change roles. The design has one helicopter spot at the back, for up to medium-sized aircraft. There is no

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

. A fully enclosed

boat deck A deck is a permanent covering over a compartment or a hull of a ship. On a boat or ship, the primary or upper deck is the horizontal structure that forms the "roof" of the hull, strengthening it and serving as the primary working surface. V ...

at roughly the middle of the ship's length opens at both sides to allow

gantry crane A gantry crane is a Crane (machine), crane built atop a wikt:gantry, gantry, which is a structure used to straddle an object or workspace. They can range from enormous "full" gantry cranes, capable of lifting some of the heaviest loads in the wor ...

s to deploy both sides to lower boats to the water. Additionally, a smaller seaboat is sited on the port side. The two

propeller A propeller (often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working flu ...

s are above the

keel The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element of a watercraft, important for stability. On some sailboats, it may have a fluid dynamics, hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose as well. The keel laying, laying of the keel is often ...

. Two

bow thruster Manoeuvering thrusters (bow thrusters and stern thrusters) are transversal propulsion devices built into or mounted to either the Bow (watercraft), bow or stern (front or back, respectively) of a ship or boat to make it more manoeuvrable. Bow th ...

s are sited just behind the

bulbous bow A bulbous bow is a streamlined flaring or protruding bulb at the bow (or front) of a ship just below the waterline. The flare or bulb modifies the way the water flows around the hull, reducing drag and thus increasing speed, range, fuel effici ...

. With likely limited speed requirements, the fuel consumption is likely to be low.

Armament

Depictions of the ship show a single mount for a small calibre gun on the foredeck.

Crew

Crew numbers could be as few as 16 to 20 in some role configurations.

Royal Norwegian Navy

Following the

collision In physics, a collision is any event in which two or more bodies exert forces on each other in a relatively short time. Although the most common use of the word ''collision'' refers to incidents in which two or more objects collide with great for ...

and sinking of the

Royal Norwegian Navy The Royal Norwegian Navy () is the branch of the Norwegian Armed Forces responsible for navy, naval operations of Norway, including those of the Norwegian Coast Guard. , the Royal Norwegian Navy consists of approximately 3,700 personnel (9,450 i ...

ship in November 2018, the repair cost has been estimated at 13 billion Kroner (

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it int ...

$1.4 billion), nearly three times the cost of the original build, there has been speculation that the Navy would instead invest in another class of ships. Vanguard is intended to meet this as-yet unstated requirement.

References

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External links

Kongsberg Vanguard

Vanguard unveiled
Proposed ships