Grey Havoc

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A new ship that can launch drones to keep the seabed under surveillance for threats to underwater cables and pipelines will be purchased for the Royal Navy immediately because "I need it now", the Defence Secretary has said.

The “seabed warfare ship” will be specially modified to counter the increased threat from Russia in the wake of a suspected sabotage attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany.

Ben Wallace stopped short of blaming Russia for the attack in an interview with The Telegraph, but said it was clear that it was a "deliberate act".

Drones and other undersea technology will be launched from the ships, in a bid to better protect critical national infrastructure. Design work on a second, bespoke vessel will start in 2023.

Ben Wallace said: “Britain [is] deeply vulnerable because we are so dependent on our internet cables.

“We will have to do a lot more work to look at those infrastructures to satisfy ourselves that there is no more vulnerability.”

On Monday night, the Royal Navy moved a Type-23 frigate to the North Sea to work with Norwegian counterparts, providing security to workers on gas pipeline infrastructure.

HMS Enterprise, an Echo-class survey vessel, is already patrolling the area following concerns about Russian naval activity.

The first of the two 'Multi-Role Ocean Survey Ships', to be known as the Seabed Warfare variant, will be operational by the end of next year.

This vessel will be specifically equipped with underwater drones and other sensitive technology similar to the Russian micro spy submarine Losharik, which is thought to be capable of tapping or destroying internet cables.

The second ship, to be used for “deep water military data gathering”, will be a longer programme and built in the UK.

The defence secretary said the reason for buying and modifying an existing vessel from the open market was that “I need it now”.

He said the world is “too vulnerable” to take the risk of delaying the purchase to design a ship from scratch.

“We’ll commission a second one with slightly different functions.

“We often see - and have done over months and years - suspicious activity by Russian spy ships and Russian vessels doing things in the region of our cables and pipelines.

“It’s not uncommon [to see] Russian spy ships.”

He said it was “no secret” the Russian Navy’s Special Mission Submarine programme, run by GUGI (the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research) and based in Olenya Bay on the Kola Peninsula on the coast of the Barents Sea, was targeting critical national infrastructure in the North Atlantic.

Investigations are still ongoing into the blasts on the Nord Stream pipelines on Sept 26, for which western countries had no warnings, Mr Wallace said.

“We didn’t have any direct warning that this was going to happen, I don’t think anyone did.”

Although no country has yet been blamed for the explosions, Mr Wallace said “it looks like a deliberate act” which could draw a response from Nato.

“If it was a deliberate and malicious act by a hostile state [the response] would probably be planned through NATO,” he said on a visit to British troops in Poland.

“Nato would have to think about how it would respond.

“In parallel, depending on how the pipeline was damaged, there would be work for all of us to check our own infrastructure and protect it.”

Mr Wallace said the pipeline attack was being treated as a crime by Danish and Swedish authorities.

“The legal status is that it's in the economic zone of both Sweden and Denmark but is in international waters,” he said, cautioning “if the Russians wanted to turn up and investigate - to help - there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

“They could just turn up and do it, so it’s important we keep an eye out.”

However, the defence secretary said any potential offer of help from Russia during the ongoing investigation would not be taken up.

“I always think it’s best to keep the fox away from the chicken coop,” he said.
 
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And it felt somewhat inevitable that the flagship would finally be sunk by unarguable competition for the defence budget from the need to supply British arms to Ukraine to fight off its Russian invaders.

In the end, Defence secretary Ben Wallace told MPs that the national flagship was being replaced by a ship to protect the UK's undersea internet cables. And who could argue with that?
 
That is assuming that they are procured/built of course. Given all the other defence related promises that have been already broken by Sunak though, I am not very optimistic.
 
Looks like this is the first ship...purchased for 40m EUR....the CSV Normand Jarl. Likely to be converted at Cammell Laird and run by the RFA.

Image


https://www.solstad.com/vessel/normand-jarl/


Sale of vessel - Normand Jarl - Solstad Offshore ASA

Skudeneshavn, Norway, 12 December 2022 – Normand Ships AS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Solstad Offshore ASA (Solstad Offshore, OSE: SOFF), have sold the CSV Normand Jarl to a Buyer outside of the offshore industry.


Some stats...


Built 2013
Design MT 6022
Flag NIS
LOA 107,6m
Breadth Moulded 22m
Cargo Deck Area 1170m²
Total Accommodation 116 Persons (34 x 1 Person, 41 x 2 Persons)
ROV No
Yard Kleven Verft / Yard No. 359
Main Class +1A1, SF, E0, DK(+), LFL, COMF-V(3), SPS, CLEAN DESIGN, ICE-C
Classification Society DNV GL
Dynamic Positioning DP 2 from Kongsberg
Helideck Diameter22m, 12,8mt
Draft (max) 7,05m + 0m Skeg/Nozzle
Deck Cargo Capacity 3060mt (CoG 1,0m above main deck)
Deck Strength Main dk:Fr.#-3-#95 10mt/m². Moon pool hatch 5mt/m²
Deadweight 6400mt (d= 0m)
Moonpool 51,84m² (7,2m x 7,2m)
Main Crane 1 x SWL 250mt@ 12m - Single fall -

View: https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/1603467086667436032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1603467086667436032%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=
 
Turns out it wasn't the Normand Jarl at all....

It's the MV Topaz Tangaroa...soon to be RFA Proteus.

Similar style ship, slightly smaller but only 2 years old....


 
Turns out it wasn't the Normand Jarl at all....

It's the MV Topaz Tangaroa...soon to be RFA Proteus.

Similar style ship, slightly smaller but only 2 years old....



Also suitable, and nice to see a newer hull.

But this does raise the question of who is buying Normand Jarl after all, and what role "outside of the offshore industry" they plan for her.

Edit: One source saying that it's the Australian Government. Do they have a requirement similar to MROSS, or is it likely to be something else? Long-range SAR? Submarine rescue? Could possibly not even be naval, I suppose. Does the Australian government have a public-sector role in building offshore wind farms or anything like that?

Solstad confirms Normand Jarl sold “outside offshore industry”. Buyer is understood Australian Government. Delivery is in first quarter and includes walk-to-work equipment already on board. Solstad Offshore will recognize a gain on the sale of about MNOK 420 (USD 43 million) to be reflected in the first-quarter 2023 accounts. The vessel is already in Taiwan on wind-farm work. Source: Solstad and Clarksons

Edit 2: I should really just do the research first. Very likely to be an Emergency Towage Vessel, presumably to replace Coral Knight around the Great Barrier Reef. If so, the customer is the Aus Govt, but the actual owner is likely to be a private sector company. It seems there's been a bit of a saga around the replacement of Coral Knight.



 
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Edit 2: I should really just do the research first. Very likely to be an Emergency Towage Vessel, presumably to replace Coral Knight around the Great Barrier Reef. If so, the customer is the Aus Govt, but the actual owner is likely to be a private sector company. It seems there's been a bit of a saga around the replacement of Coral Knight.
Thing is the Normand Jarl is rather expensive for just a towing vessel, and far more complex. Far cheaper Anchor Handling Offshore vessels are out there for that capability at a fraction of the cost. Normand Jarl is around 3 times the size of Coral Knight, and its not like Coral Knight is old. She's the same age as Normand Jarl.

I think you got it right initially. Every developed nation with a coastline will be looking at MROSS style ships now, particularly after Nordstream.
 
Thing is the Normand Jarl is rather expensive for just a towing vessel, and far more complex. Far cheaper Anchor Handling Offshore vessels are out there for that capability at a fraction of the cost. Normand Jarl is around 3 times the size of Coral Knight, and its not like Coral Knight is old. She's the same age as Normand Jarl.

I think you got it right initially. Every developed nation with a coastline will be looking at MROSS style ships now, particularly after Nordstream.

Possibly. Maybe they've replaced the purpose-built design envisaged under SEA 2400 with something commercial?

 
Possibly. Maybe they've replaced the purpose-built design envisaged under SEA 2400 with something commercial?
Maybe they're doing what the UK is doing. Commercial vessel purchased for quick conversion with a second purpose built, with all bells and whistles later.
 
Sounds like the actual kit has been sitting around waiting for a platform to put it on.
 
Sounds like the actual kit has been sitting around waiting for a platform to put it on.
Definitely sounds like they've been a little bit advanced than we thought. Some of the amendments for RFA service will be fairly standard though (additional firefighting, DC equipment and small magazine). I do wonder how ready we are for the more specialised kit though.
 
Good write up at Navy Lookout.

She's now called RFA Proteus.


Some additional pics

View: https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/1616727510238089217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1616727510238089217%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=


She also has a sister ship...the Topaz Tiamat....might make some sense for the RN to buy that as well...

 
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I see Navy Lookout reports that a purpose-built MROSS is still to be built. It does seem like buying the sister ship commercially might be expedient, but perhaps a bespoke design is better suited to the task in the long term.
The thing I worry about is goldplating...if this is a 90% solution I'd say its good enough. A 6,000 tonne, 3 year old ship like that for £70m (lets call it £100m after they've added comms, some military kit etc) is spectacularly good value. She should be good for 30 years work...

From the outside the Topaz sisters appear to have everything you'd want in an MROSS. The only things I could see being added are quiter propulsion and an ASW fit (perhaps containerised towed array like the SEA Krait system) so that unmanned submersibles could be tracked/hunted as they could be the main threat in the decades to come. But even then the modular systems that are being built appear to be fine for commercial builds. Perhaps better aviation facilities are required...
 
I see Navy Lookout reports that a purpose-built MROSS is still to be built. It does seem like buying the sister ship commercially might be expedient, but perhaps a bespoke design is better suited to the task in the long term.
The thing I worry about is goldplating...if this is a 90% solution I'd say its good enough. A 6,000 tonne, 3 year old ship like that for £70m (lets call it £100m after they've added comms, some military kit etc) is spectacularly good value. She should be good for 30 years work...

From the outside the Topaz sisters appear to have everything you'd want in an MROSS. The only things I could see being added are quiter propulsion and an ASW fit (perhaps containerised towed array like the SEA Krait system) so that unmanned submersibles could be tracked/hunted as they could be the main threat in the decades to come. But even then the modular systems that are being built appear to be fine for commercial builds. Perhaps better aviation facilities are required...

A hangar might be desirable, but that adds a lot of complications, in terms of both arrangement and equipment.

For ASW, I'd say that something like MROSS might be a mother ship for an XLUUV sort of thing. Don't tow the array behind the ship, use your own unmanned submersible deployed as needed.
 
Was lucky enough to get a very brief tour of Cammell Lairds today on an old Birkenhead Corporation bus, so snapped a few shots of Proteus as we went passed, rest of the yard is gearing up for Dreadnaught class module builds... there are jigs everywhere...

Zeb
 

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