A teaming of Intermarine and Leonardo have signed a contract with the Directorate of Naval Armaments of the Italian General Secretariat of Defence and National Armaments Directorate to provide five New Generation Minehunters/Coastal (NGM/C) for the Italian Navy, the companies announced on 26 July 2024.
The contract is initially worth EUR 1.6 billion to provide the five vessels along with integrated logistical support, but also includes around EUR 1 billion in options.
Intermarine’s share of the committed funding is EUR 1.165 billion, corresponding to approximately 73% of the programme value, while Leonardo’s share is approximately EUR 0.43 billion, which corresponds to approximately 27%. A similar breakdown applies to the optional funding.
Intermarine, which is leading the teaming, is the design authority for the NGM/Cs and will provide the platforms themselves, while Leonardo is the design authority and supplier of their combat systems.
“The contract signed today is the result of a process characterised by massive investments in research and development on new materials and innovative and cutting-edge manufacturing technologies,” the companies stated in a joint press release. “It follows an intense preliminary studies activity following the contract signed in 2021 between Intermarine and the Directorate of Naval Armaments focused on ‘Risk reduction studies and definition of the NGM Vessel project’.”
The NGM/Cs, the hulls of which will be resistant to shocks generated by underwater explosions and have a low magneto-acoustic signature, will be around 63 m long and displace around 1,300 tonnes. According to the two companies they will be “distinguished by their capacity for conducting mine countermeasures operations operating inside the minefields, guaranteeing the safety of the crews and using different types of autonomous vehicles as force multipliers and capability gap-fillers”.
In addition to search and clearance operations, the NGM/Cs will conduct seabed surveillance operations for the control and protection of critical underwater infrastructures (such as oil and gas pipelines and maritime data networks) as well as operations to protect maritime cultural heritage and the marine environment.
The vessels will be built at the Intermarine shipyard facilities in Sarzana (La Spezia), leading to a significant increase in the company workforce there, while the entire combat system, comprising the cyber-resilient SADOC 4 command-and-control system, advanced radar and electro-optical sensors, a new broadband sonar with mine detection and classification capabilities, as well as an integrated multi-communications bandwidth and datalink to ensure the highest and most effective level of interoperability, will be produced and supplied by Leonardo.
Intermarine and Leonardo are billing the NGM/Cs as “the most innovative mine countermeasures units in the world, reaffirming Italy’s role as a leading country in terms of technology and doctrine in the sector of mine warfare and the underwater domain”.
