Newbuild Italian Navy SDO-SuRS ordered

Kongsberg Maritime has been enlisted to provide equipment for a replacement for the Italian Navy’s 45-year-old submarine rescue vessel Nave Anteo.

The company will provide equipment for a naval Special and Diving OperationsSubmarine Rescue Ship (SDO-SuRS), which as well as searches for and rescues damaged submarines, also carries out other military and civilian underwater support activities and special operations. The Italian shipyard T. Mariotti will carry out the build.

Crucial to the order, says Kongsberg, is a pair of its Elegance propulsion pods on board the SDO-SuRS, which combines the direct electric permanent magnet motor-driven pods with a Kongsberg electric power system, including batteries and power management. The pods, it says, provide propulsion ‘for precise and efficient vessel propulsion’, and give optimal efficiency over a large speed range, combined with a hydrodynamic design developed in Kongsberg’s Hydrodynamic Research Centre.

“The compactly designed pods have a low oil content and double barrier seal solution, to protect the ocean, while offering vessels the ability to operate in fully electric zero emissions mode in port or for limited offshore operations,” the firm says.

Kongsberg will also supply three of its tunnel thrusters, an Mcon propulsion system, DP2 system and single and multi-beam echo sounders. It says it is seeing the order as a potential opportunity for it within autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

The vessel build program offers further potential opportunities for Kongsberg Maritime in the shape of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles.

“This contract represents the start of an exciting market development for the Elegance pod propulsion systems,” said Ottar Ristesund, SVP sales, Kongsberg Maritime. “The quiet, efficient operation of these traction propeller equipped units aboard the SDO-SuRS will help show the naval shipbuilding industry that the way ahead is with permanent magnet pod propulsors. Not only do they offer the end user an efficient, noiseless, carbon-reducing future-proof propulsion platform, shipyards love them too as the units utilize simple interfaces that allow safe and easy fitting to the hull.”