29 November 2022

Saab to build two signals intelligence ships for Poland

by Kate Tringham

The new SIGINT ships will replace the Polish Navy's Modified Moma-class (Project 863) intelligence-collection ships, ORP Nawigator (pictured) and ORP Hydrograf , which have been in service since the mid-1970s. (Jaroslaw Cislak)

Swedish defence and security company Saab has been awarded a contract by the Polish Armaments Agency to design and build two signals intelligence (SIGINT) ships for the Polish Navy.

Under the contract, announced on 25 November and worth EUR620 million (USD644 million), the two new SIGINT vessels will be delivered in 2027. The scope of supply also includes follow-on support. The vessels are expected to be built at Remontowa Shipbuilding shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, and then retrofitted with specialist equipment at Saab Kockums' shipyard in Karlskrona, Sweden.

The new ships are being procured under the Polish Navy's Delfin programme as replacements for the service's two Modified Moma-class (Project 863) intelligence-collection ships, ORP Nawigator (262) and ORP Hydrograf (263), which were built by Northern Shipyard, Gdańsk, in the mid-1970s.

Under the Delfin programme, the new SIGINT vessels were originally planned to be in service by around 2023–24; however, the programme has experienced slippage. As a result, from 2018, Nawigator and Hydrograf received refit work (including modernisation of their SIGINT systems) to maintain capability until the mid-2020s when the replacements are due.

The latest announcement comes as Saab Kockums nears completion of a new SIGINT ship for Sweden under a design and construction contract awarded by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) in 2017.

The future HSwMS Artemis

Swedish defence and security company Saab has been awarded a contract by the Polish Armaments Agency...

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