Now NG has won the Walrus replacement competition on the basis of the March 15, 2024 decision of the Dutch Council of Ministers. But the lower House of the Dutch Parliament, from debate beginning March 18, 2024, still needs to approve this decision. Best description of political situation is from the Netherland's Jaime Karremann the founder of Marineschips.nl.
Figures as at March 19, 2024 | |
Class overview | |
Name: | Naval Group Orka-class for the Netherlands. "Variant chain" is Barracuda to Shortfin to Blacksword to Orka-class. |
Operator: | Envisaged only for the Royal Netherlands Navy so far. |
4 planned | Netherlands requires 2 commissioned (Orka and Zvaardvis) by 2034–2035. Then the 2 others (Barracuda and Tijgerhaai) before 2040. To be built at NG's Cherbourg shipyard in France? |
Preceded by: | Walrus class . |
Pressure hull steel | Likely to be 100 HLES high-yield pressure hull steel, see US HY-100 and HY-130 . Also see Submarine Matters article Table that uses a Japanese document. |
Officers and Crew | Between 35 and 43 standard + 16 extra bunks for divers/special forces or intelligence intercept/linguist officers (depending on mission) |
Speed/range and Endurance | 14 knots (surfaced), 22 knots (submerged). 15,000 nm. All improvements over Walrus specs. Endurance est 70 days depending on fuel, food & crew exhaustion. Typical mission profiles may be: Transit + Ops Netherlands to Dutch Caribbean and return. Transit + Ops Netherlands to Arabian Sea and return. North Sea and Arctic Ocean against Russia. |
Displacement: | 3,300 tonnes (surfaced) so 3,700 tonnes (submerged) is estimated |
Length | 82 m See Artwork with Specs below. |
Diameter (Beam) | 8.2 m |
Height | ? meters (hull + fin/sail) |
Pumpjet, Propeller | Pumpjet unlikely no pumpjet on NG artwork. Likely skewback propeller |
Acoustic stealth | Rubber/elastic mountings for moving and reverberating parts inside. Noise cancelers. |
Capable of projecting | Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) Underwater decoys (against torpedoes and mobile mines) |
On hull behind fin/sail. | Dry dock shelter for divers, diver delivery vehicles and large displacement UUVs (XLUUVs) |
Weapons | 6 × 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes. 30 heavyweight (HW) weapons. Maybe Walrus weapons will be transferred ie Mk 48 HWTs, Harpoon SSMs, even Tomahawk land attack SLCMs and Stonefish mines. Or maybe French weapons. This is a big area of uncertain debate? |
Sensors | Mainly French NG-Thales UMS-3000 ? |
Combat System | |
Max Depth | 300+ meters |
Exterior stealth | |
Propulsion: | 4 x MTU 16V 396 SE or 4 x MTU 12V 4000 diesels. Likely no AIP. Jeumont Electric Motors (Jeumont now subsidiary of NG-Framatome). with 4.5 to 5MW of power. Saft Lithium-ion batteries also see on the LIBs. |
Artwork with Specs courtesy Naval Group (March 16, 2024) via (Mr) Jaime Karremann's website https://marineschepen.nl/nieuws/Wat-we-nu-weten-over-de-nieuwe-Nederlandse-onderzeeboten-160324.html