holland class OPV WIP

Holland class offshore patrol vessels
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The Holland class offshore patrol vessels are foreseen to be bought for the Royal Netherlands Navy to fulfill the new patrol and intervention tasks against lightly armed opponents (such as smugglers and pirates). As such this new class has an important role in the ever changing task of a navy.

The ships are designated offshore patrol vessels. If considering their size and sensor/radar capacity they are close to corvettes or even frigates, the limited planned armament, however, does not justify this designation. These ships are armed for low to medium combat activity and patrolling shores, but can also be tasked to patrol in deeper waters like the North Sea or the Caribbean. Their speed is lower than that of the current Dutch frigates (22 knots vs 30 knots), this is however supplemented with three RHIBs, with a speed of about 40 knots, for interceptions. An important advantage of this class over the current frigate class is that its crew is much smaller (about 50 compared to 200 and 150 for the frigate classes in operation) while it allows relatively much space for additional troop transport (40). This limited crew makes the operating costs of this class of ships much lower than that of frigates.

Operators: Royal Netherlands Navy
In commission: 2011-2013
Building: 4
Planned: 4
General characteristics
Type: Offshore patrol vessel
Displacement: approx. 3,750 tons full load
Length: 107.9 meters
Beam: 16.2 meters
Draught: 3.2 meters
Propulsion: 4 x MAN Diesel & Turbo SE 12V 28/33D diesel engines
Speed: 22 knots
Range: 5000 nm @ 15 kts
Boats and landing
craft carried:

* 1 x Super RHIB[1]
* 2x Fast Raiding Interception and Special Forces Craft (FRISC)

Complement: 50 (+ additional space for 40)
Sensors and
processing systems: Thales Sensor Integrated Mast, RNLN Combat system Guardion and Rohde & Schwarz / / EID's communication systems where on-board users have access to internal and/or external communication channels and integrated remote control of communications equipment.
Armament:

* 1 x 76mm Oto Melara Super Rapid (possible being fitted with Davide ammunition in the near future)
* 1 x 30 mm Oto Melara Marlin WS
* 2 x 12.7 mm Oto Melara Hitrole NT
* 2 x 12.7 mm M2HB machine guns
* 6 x 7.62mm FN MAG machine guns[1]

Armour: 10-20mm (first ship since ww2 to be fitted with armour in Dutch service)
Aircraft carried: 1 x NH90 helicopter[1]
Aviation facilities: fully equipped hangar for one medium-sized helicopter