The Swedish Navy has laid the keel for its new special-purpose signal intelligence (SIGINT) ship during a ceremony at the Polish Armaments Group (PGZ) Stocznia Wojenna shipyard in Gdynia, Poland.
The 74m-long SIGINT ship has a displacement of 2,200t and has been specially designed to replace the Swedish Navy’s existing signals intelligence-gathering vessel, HSwMS Orion, which was originally launched in 1984.
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Saab was awarded a Skr730m ($82.79m) contract by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) for the design, construction and delivery of the SIGINT vessel in April last year.
Poland-based Nauta Shiprepair Yard, a part of the PGZ Group, was selected by Saab later the same month to carry out the ship’s construction, launch and early sea trials.
Saab and PGZ previously entered a partnership agreement for the planning and delivery of naval programmes in late-2016.
Saab Kockums head Gunnar Wieslander said: “Special-purpose ships are primarily used for the interception and analysis of radio-transmitted signals and need to be highly reliable and available.
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By GlobalData“Therefore you need highly skilled shipbuilders to build this kind of ship.
“We are very pleased with the progress of the construction process, and it was a pleasure to attend the keel-laying ceremony at the Nauta Shiprepair Yard, our partner in this project.”
The Nauta Shiprepair Yard cut the first steel for the SIGINT vessel on 1 March, which officially commenced the construction phase of the Swedish Navy ship.
Saab Kockums in Karlskrona is expected to conduct the final sea trials and installation of the special-purpose ship’s equipment prior to its delivery to the Swedish Navy.
