Balt Military Expo 2016. Waiting for a decision
An interesting novelty was the visions of the Swordsman and Heron presented by Damen. Here is a vision of their construction at the Navy Yard.
From 20 to 22 June, the 14th Baltic Military Expo Balt Military Expo was held at the AmberExpo Gdańsk International Exhibition Center. The event brought together about 140 exhibitors from 15 countries in Gdansk, who presented their offer mainly for the maritime type of the armed forces and maritime components of public order services. Moreover, for the first time in many years, in addition to the exhibition, at the “under the roof” stands, the guests were able to see ships from Poland, Sweden and Estonia, which during the exhibition moored in the port free zone of the port of Gdansk. .
This year, the Balt Military Expo (BME) took place at a rather interesting time - the operational program "Combating threats at sea" of the Plan for the technical re-equipment of the Armed Forces for 2013-2022, the purpose of which is, among other things, the modernization of the naval forces of the Polish Navy gradually enters the implementation phase.
Ships that still don't exist
So far, the Ordnance Inspectorate has initiated tenders for the purchase of six tugs and a supply vessel. The former, according to behind-the-scenes negotiations, are at the stage of choosing a “short list” of applicants who will go to the final, and a supplier should be selected from among them this year. In the case of a supplier, and in the future there may be two, the procedure is at an early stage. In addition, negotiations between the IU and the Polish Arms Group, which will be responsible for the construction of new warships - three Chapla patrol ships and the same number of Mechnik coastal defense ships, are at an advanced stage. It is no secret that PGZ and domestic shipyards do not have the appropriate capacities to independently perform the above task, so they will look for know-how suppliers among foreign magnates. We must not forget about the Orka program, i.e. the purchase of three new submarines, or already implemented projects for the construction of an experimental mine destroyer of project 258 Kormoran II and a patrol ship Ślązak. At the time of publication of this issue of WiT, the Kormoran II prototype should already have been in the early stages of sea trials.
The above programs do not go unnoticed by potential suppliers of building structures and technologies and components. Among them were regular visitors to the Gdansk Fair, as well as debutants. The group of shipbuilding exhibitors included enterprises already well-known in our country - the French concern DCNS, the German TKMS, the Dutch Damen, the Swedish Saab, as well as domestic companies: Remontowa Shipbuilding and Naval Shipyard.
Encouraged by the success of the Shortfin Barracuda in Australia (for more details see WiT 5/2016), the French are consistently presenting a proposal to Poland consisting of Scorpène 2000 submarines and Gowind 2500 multipurpose corvettes. The latter, after their successes in Egypt and Malaysia, are of interest, for example, in Vietnam , where the plan to purchase the Dutch SIGMA 9814 corvettes was abandoned and a re-selection of larger units has now begun. In addition to Gowind, the Vietnamese are also considering acquiring a larger version of the Dutch type series - SIGMA 10514. In the case of submarines, TKMS and Saab have prepared competitive proposals - the latter, after being excluded by the Norwegians, have launched active marketing activities to convince Polish decision makers take part in the A26 program. The fact that a prototype was built for Svenska Marinen helps, as well as an "additional" proposal that may be related to the presentation of the Södermanland submarine in Gdansk. Taking into account the current political declarations from Warsaw, it cannot be ruled out that the Swedish proposal will include the lease of this unit (of course, if the A26 is chosen in the Orka program). The Germans did not exhibit new products, and the well-known proposal concerned the 212A and 214 units with the transfer of their technology to Polish shipyards. A marketing opportunity not used by the TKMS was the first visit to Gdynia by a Portuguese unit of type 209PN (ie 214 in fact), which failed to take journalists and dignitaries.
In the case of surface ships, Damen led the way with the ASD Tug 3010 Ice models (this model is offered by MW RP) and the SIGMA series corvettes. The latter showcases a new modular cargo space solution located under the helicopter landing pad as well as a full premiere which was the vision of Mechnik and Heron based on the largest model 10514 built thanks to technology transfer in Indonesia (see WiT 3). /2016).
