Romania will build special military ships to be used by Netherland's sea defense strategy

In the context in which the drone war may unbalance forces made of complex, expensive ships, the Netherlands said it needed a new type of ship able to work with its modern, powerful freighter from the De Zeven Provincien class. The new ships will be built at Damen shipyard in Galati.   The Netherlands has four modern, large freiters of the De Zeven Provincien class specialized in antiaircraft defense, but recent world evolutions showed that such ships could be vulnerable to saturation attacks with drones and relatively cheap rockets. In order to offer additional protection to its ships, the Dutch Marine is equipped with two new types of ships which will act as aid to its air defence freighters. They will be manufactured by Damen shipyard, Galati. Damen is the Romanian branch of Damen, the Netherlands. 2,000 people from Damen work in Galati, according to data released by the company. 1,000 people are employed as subcontractors.   The two ships will be fully made in Romania, at Damen, Galati, but their arms supply with be done later in the Netherlands , sources from the industry declared for HotNews.ro.   Damen ships are called Multi Role Support Ships (MSS), are contracted this year and will be supplied as of 2026.   Multi Role Support Ships: Length: 55 meters Displacement: 550 tons Maximum speed: 27 knots (50 km/h) Crew: 8 Fix arms: remote controlled fight station; two .50 caliber machine guns Modular weapons: 4 containers with 6 Batak-ER antiaircraft rockets, container with IAI Harop kamikaze drones, jamming and electronic war equipment. The ships will be equipped with additional antiaircraft rockets to prevent any air attack, “Defense News”wrote.   The two MSS ships will also offer support fire for amphibious operations by using long range ammunition and will use underseadrones to follow and identify suspicious activities in the North Sea, said Gijs Tuinman, the Dutch secretary of state for defense.   The official describes the two support ships as “floating tool kits”for the main ship. The ships can transport lots of equipment, such as the additional firing power and antiaircraft long range missiles,”the Dutch official says.   The two MSS ships will act next to the more complex freighters of the De Zeven Provincien class. They will have several containers on board for the necessary equipment, either antiaircraft missiles, attack missiles or kamikaze drones.   The ships will be 55 m long, with a displacement of 550 tons and a crew of 8 sailors. In comparison, the freighters which will accompany them are 144 m long and have a displacement of 6,000 tons.The ships will use IAI solutions included in containers: Barak-3 antiaircraft missiles, twoHarop 3 kamikaze drones and jamming and electronic war systems.   Barak ER defense missiles to equip support ships, have an action area of 150 km and can engage in any air threat, the IAI producer says- from fighter planes to tactical balistic missiles and guided bombs, with 8 missiles packed in a vertical launcher, according to the company technical data.   The project made by Damen has at least four missile launching systems, 6 per container. Such a support ship could be armed with at least 24 antiaircraft missiles . The solution to store and launch directly from containers makes them very versatiles and easy to supply with ammunition if needed.   In case of an engagement, the freighter will use radar systems for support ships. Although present technology is not mature enough for these ships to be fully autonomous and without crew, they will offer the Dutch Marine experience in operating small crews as a first step to unmanned ships, Tuinmann declared.   The two support ships will be built by Damen at Galati, as of 2025, according to HotNews sources. The first ship will begin operations in the North Sea in 2026, and both ships will be fully operational by 2027.   De Zeven Provincien freighters are specially designed for antiaircraft defense, with 32 SM-2 antiaircraft missiles and 32 ESSM antiaircraft missiles as well as one or two Golakeeper CIWS systems .   An attack to saturation with swarms of hundreds of drones may rise serious problems to such a ship. Moreover, freighter missiles are very expensive, designed to thwart more complex threats such as latest generation crew or balistic missiles, not to destroy cheap missiles or kamikaze drones with lower manufacturing costs.