NEW GENERATION OF MINE WARFARE SHIPS DESCRIBED
Bonn WEHRTECHNIK in German May 83 pp 42-51
[Article by Heinrich Schuetz: "Fast Mine Warfare Ship 343: The New Generation of Minesweepers Takes Shape"]
[Text] On 1 March of this year the Federal Office of Military Technology and Procurement [BWB] awarded the firms AEG-Telefunken in Ulm and MBB-Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke in Bremen the contract for the definition of Fast Mine Warfare Ship Class 343 (shortform: SM-343). Both firms will undertake the definition in competition with one another, while, however, the marine engineering definition work will be transferred to a common subcontractor—the newly formed study group formed for this purpose by the firms Schiffs u. Yachtwerft Abeking & Rasmussen, Fr. Luerssen Werft and Froegerwerft Rendsburg (ARGE SM-343). Awarding the definition work for SM-343 to industry was seen as a clear signal that the elimination of the old mine warfare ships, the life of which could no longer be extended arbitrarily over 20 years of service, was now seriously being approached with new weapons systems. In the following report,the project director for this program, Construction Director Engineer Heinrich Schuetz, discusses the basic planning considerations and introduces the boat.
The jump from the old to the new generation required a long approach run that began as early as 1974 in the responsible naval command staff committee and proceeded through such necessary and time-consuming intermediate steps as:
—1978—the Directive of the Tactical Requirement for Minesweeper Class 343,
—1980—the Directive of the Tactical Requirement for Minesweeper Class 332(short form: MJ-332),
—1980—the study "Basic Concept of the New Generation of Mine Warfare Ships",
—1980/81—achievement of the "technical concept of SM-343" through the armament sector in cooperation with the firm MTG Marinetechnik and —all the way to the Directive of Military-Technical Goal-Setting (MTZ) as the final-phase decision for Project SM-343 in 1981.
Three results of the studies and investigations of the first phases had a particular influence on the development of the technical and tactical concept of the new generation of mine warfare ships:
—For mine-laying and mine countermeasures—at least in the operational areas of the Federal navy—for the next 20 to 30 years, primarily conventional surface ships will be necessary. The tactical use and the technical concept of the new ships for the time being will have to be oriented on the proven weapons systems that are now in use. The necessary performance increases must be reached by further development and improvement of individual technical areas and components.
—The ships of the new generation must be equipped both for minelaying, that is, for the transport!and laying of mines, and for minesweeping. The term that covers both these concepts is "mine warfare".
—The requirements and technical solutions for the two recently planned ship classes, SM-343 and MJ-332, are quite similar. In considering the advantages of standardization in development, construction and use of the ships, a unified ship design should be established for both classes. The term "standard weapon carrier" has been used for this concept.
In the following discussion, this thought will be clarified further and then some basic planning considerations will be derived. Attention has been consciously placed primarily on technical solutions, because for this purpose the results of the work of the two definers and the evaluation of these results by the armament section are expected.
