Integrated Mast Module (IMM) installed on Oceangoing Patrol Vessel

Inte­grat­ed Mast Mod­ule (IMM) installed on Ocean­go­ing Patrol Ves­sel (OPV) Hol­land for the Roy­al Nether­lands Navy.

After suc­cess­ful plat­form tri­als, han­dover to the Nether­lands Defence Materiel Organisation(DMO) and ini­tial tests by the Roy­al Nether­lands Navy the first OPV Hol­land returned to DAMEN Schelde Naval Ship­build­ing in Vlissin­gen for the instal­la­tion of the Inte­grat­ed Mast Mod­ule (IMM).

PATROL VESSEL (OPV) HOLLAND Source: Damen Schelde

The instal­la­tion was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed in the past weeks and the ship inte­gra­tion tests are present­ly in progress. The instal­la­tion of the Inte­grat­ed Mast Mod­ule is the last major step before the ship will be trans­ferred to the Roy­al Nether­lands Navy.
The inno­v­a­tive and state of the art IMM was devel­oped by Thales Ned­er­land where­as the mast’s struc­tur­al design and con­struc­tion was car­ried out by the Naval Main­te­nance Estab­lish­ment in Den Helder. After an exten­sive test­ing peri­od of six months, which took place in Hen­ge­lo, the IMM was trans­port­ed by ship to DAMEN Schelde Naval Ship­build­ing in Vlissin­gen for installation.

The IMM, type I‑400, is equipped with, among oth­er things, ‘high def­i­n­i­tion’ and infrared cam­eras, air and sur­face sur­veil­lance and track­ing radars, as well as an exten­sive inte­grat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem includ­ing Satel­lite Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. With the IMM-400 the OPV’s of the Hol­land class are able to effec­tive­ly con­duct Mar­itime Secu­ri­ty and Safe­ty Oper­a­tions as well as tra­di­tion­al low end naval tasks. This includes oper­a­tions with the organ­ic Heli­copter (NH-90) and two organ­ic Fast Raid­ing, Inter­cep­tion and Spe­cial Forces Craft (FRISC) as well as oth­er ships, air­craft, heli­copters and interceptors.

After trans­fer of the ship to the Roy­al Nether­lands Navy an exten­sive test & tri­al pro­gram is fore­seen that will be con­duct­ed by the Nether­lands DMO organ­i­sa­tion and Roy­al Nether­lands Navy in coop­er­a­tion with Thales Ned­er­land. There­fore, for the larg­er part of a year the Holland’s crew, led by Com­man­der Chris van den Berg, will be involved in test­ing all the mast’s sys­tems. Accord­ing to DMO’s project leader, Rob Zuiddam.

Patrol ships
The Hol­land is the first ship in the Hol­land class, a series of four Ocean­go­ing Patrol Ves­sels (OPV) for the Roy­al Nether­lands Navy. These 108-meter long, flex­i­bly deploy­able patrol ships, with a crew of 50, will make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to inter­na­tion­al law enforce­ment and secu­ri­ty (Mar­itime Secu­ri­ty Operations).

The first two patrol ves­sels, “Hol­land” and “ ‘Zee­land” have been built at the ship­yard of Damen Schelde Naval Ship­build­ing in Vlissin­gen, with a num­ber of sec­tions being sup­plied by the Damen ship­yard in Galati. The Hol­land, which was chris­tened on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2010 by Her Majesty Queen Beat­rix of the Nether­lands, is expect­ed to for­mal­ly be com­mis­sioned by mid 2012.
The third and fourth ves­sels, “Fries­land” and “Gronin­gen” are built at the Damen ship­yard in Galati under the super­vi­sion of Damen Schelde Naval Ship­build­ing. Par­tial SAT for the “Fries­land” have been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed last Sep­tem­ber. Present­ly she is at the Damen Schelde Naval Ship­build­ing yard for final out­fit­ting of cer­tain sys­tems and components.

DAMEN SCHELDE NAVAL SHIPBUILDING:
The Damen Ship­yards Group offers a com­plete range of naval and patrol ves­sels rang­ing from 7 to over 200 meters.
Part of this port­fo­lio are the Damen Schelde Naval Ship­build­ing (DSNS) naval com­bat­ants and aux­il­iaries, embod­ied by the SIGMA and ENFORCER series.
At present DSNS also has under con­struc­tion for the Roy­al Nether­lands Navy: a Joint Logis­tic Sup­port Ship (JSS), the largest mil­i­tary ves­sel built by DSNS so far. For the Roy­al Moroc­can Navy DSNS has two SIGMA frigates under con­struc­tion, the first SIGMA frigate was trans­ferred to the Roy­al Moroc­can Navy on 10 Sep­tem­ber 2011.
Pub­li­ca­tion date: 28-11-2011

Inte­grat­ed Mast pass­es Fac­to­ry Accep­tance Test with Fly­ing Colours

The first Inte­grat­ed Mast IM400 has suc­cess­ful­ly passed the Fac­to­ry Accep­tance Test. The FAT was attend­ed by a del­e­ga­tion from the Netherland’s Defence Materiel Organ­i­sa­tion and the Roy­al Nether­lands Navy. 

Since the IM400 con­sists of var­i­ous sub­sys­tems, the actu­al FAT com­prised sev­er­al tests. After the suc­cess­ful tests the con­tract part­ner accept­ed the first Inte­grat­ed Mast. 

Thales Nederland’s CEO Ger­ben Edeli­jn says: “this FAT proves that we are capa­ble of design­ing, engi­neer­ing and build­ing a com­plete­ly new con­cept in naval sen­sor and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy in a rel­a­tive­ly very short time, which once more demon­strates our lead­ing posi­tion in this field.” 

Fol­low­ing the FAT, the IM400 was shipped to Damen Schelde Naval Ship­build­ing and suc­cess­ful­ly installed on the first patrol ves­sel “Hol­land”.

The sec­ond IM400 is present­ly being built by Thales in Hen­ge­lo. It will be installed on the sec­ond Patrol Ship “Zee­land” ear­ly 2013. 

About the Inte­grat­ed Mast

The inte­grat­ed mast is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent design approach from the tra­di­tion­al sen­sor lay­out on board of naval ves­sels. One cen­tral mast struc­ture hous­es the radar, optron­ic, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sen­sors and anten­nas as well as all cab­i­nets and periph­er­als. The advan­tages of this sen­sor con­cept are huge: bet­ter oper­a­tional per­for­mance, high­er oper­a­tional avail­abil­i­ty, reduced ship-build­ing time, reduced main­te­nance require­ments and enor­mous sav­ings in below-deck space. 

About the sensors

Sea­Mas­ter 400 is a non-rotat­ing S‑band radar with four faces for air and sur­face sur­veil­lance. It is derived from the proven SMART and APAR radar sys­tems. SM400’s unique con­cept of multi­beam vol­ume search with four active scan­ning faces ensures the simul­ta­ne­ous per­for­mance of all oper­a­tional tasks at a high update rate and very low false alarm rate. SM400 also pro­vides heli­copter direc­tion and approach capa­bil­i­ties and has three fire con­trol chan­nels. The system’s high num­ber of par­al­lel trans­mit and receive chan­nels pro­vide a high degree of redundancy. 

Sea­watch­er is a four face non-rotat­ing active phased array X‑band radar for naval sur­face sur­veil­lance. The high res­o­lu­tion sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly detects and tracks asym­met­ric threats and very small objects such as mines, periscopes. Sea­watch­er can also be used for heli­copter guidance. 

Gate­keep­er is a 360° panoram­ic elec­tro-opti­cal sur­veil­lance and alert­er sys­tem based on IR/TV tech­nol­o­gy. Designed to counter emerg­ing asym­met­ric threats down to small boats and swim­mers, Gate­keep­er increas­es short-range sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness in lit­toral environments. 

ICAS, the Inte­grat­ed Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Anten­na Sys­tem facil­i­tates the use of stan­dard VHF/UHF com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment, is fit­ted with Link 16 inte­gra­tion, pro­vides excel­lent transmit/receive iso­la­tion, offers estate for aux­il­iary anten­nas such as GSM/GPS and is designed for future growth. 

NR IFF, the non-rotat­ing Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Friend or Foe, uses a cylin­dri­cal array fit­ted to the top of the struc­ture. It is designed to oper­ate with stan­dard interrogator/transponder sys­tems. It is opti­mized for oper­a­tion with a non-rotat­ing pri­ma­ry radar and offers accu­ra­cy com­men­su­rate with Mode 5/S.

About Thales

Thales is a glob­al tech­nol­o­gy leader for the Defence & Secu­ri­ty and the Aero­space & Trans­port mar­kets. In 2010, the com­pa­ny gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of €13.1 bil­lion with 68,000 employ­ees in 50 coun­tries. With its 22,500 engi­neers and researchers, Thales has a unique capa­bil­i­ty to design, devel­op and deploy equip­ment, sys­tems and ser­vices that meet the most com­plex secu­ri­ty require­ments. Thales has an excep­tion­al inter­na­tion­al foot­print, with oper­a­tions around the world work­ing with cus­tomers as local part­ners. www.thalesgroup.com

Thales Ned­er­land employs about 2,000 staff mem­bers. The com­pa­ny, estab­lished in 1922, is one of the lead­ing com­pa­nies in inte­grat­ed naval sys­tems for sur­veil­lance, weapon con­trol, com­bat man­age­ment and sys­tem inte­gra­tion world­wide. www.thalesgroup.com/nl

Press con­tact:

Frank van de Wiel

Thales Ned­er­land

+31 74 24 82 951

frank.vandewiel@nl.thalesgroup.com