Minehunting in style
The first City-class mine countermeasures vessel in active service has arrived on station, with the Belgian mine hunter Oostende (M940) pulling into Zeebrugge earlier this week.
The soon-to-be-donated Tripartite class mine hunter Lobelia (M921) met her at sea and escorted her home.
The 1980s vintage Tripartites are being replaced in Belgian, French, and Dutch service with the City-class vessels, which, as you can see above, are a huge upgrade.
The 2,800-ton, 270-foot City class carries a BAE Bofors 40mm Mk4 DP mount forward and two FN Herstal Sea deFNder remote mounts with FN M3R .50 cal heavy machine guns (one on the starboard bridge wing and the other overlooking the port stern). There are also four multipurpose mounts for GPMGs, LRADs, and water cannons for more constabulary sort of work.
The aviation deck is designed to carry and operate a pair of 500-pound UMS Skeldar V-200 rotary UAVs, also enabling vertical replenishment, personnel insertion/extraction, and HIFR via manned helicopters.
The boats carried include a 40-foot waterjet-propelled Exail Inspector 125 sonar-equipped USV mine buster and two 23-foot RHIBs.
The Skelar UAVs and Exhail Inspector USVs are depicted in use below:
In addition to a 33-man crew, they can carry another 30 transients, including divers and security teams/marines.
Compare this to the 600-ton/169-foot Tripartites, which still rely mainly on on-board sonar and surveys to dispatch clearance divers. Their armament is a 20mm gun and four MGs.
The Belgians had 10 Tripartites and have since passed seven of them on to Pakistan, France, Ukraine, and Bulgaria, with the final three set to be donated to Bulgaria in the coming months.
The Dutch had 15 Tripartites but have passed on all but the final three to Latvia, Pakistan, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. They plan to move the last trio to Bulgaria by 2028.
France had 10 original Tripartites and has decommissioned and disposed of five, with six remaining.
The plan is to replace them all with City-class vessels, with all three countries ordering six ships each.
Wouldn’t it have been great if the 14 retired/retiring 40-year-old U.S. Navy Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships had been replaced with a dedicated design more akin to this and less, well, LCS?