The Royal Netherlands Navy’s Ocean-going Patrol Vessel (OPV) HNLMS Friesland was given its integrated mast in Vlissingen recently.
HNLMS Friesland is the fourth and final ship of the Holland class to have its integrated mast installed. The mast contains all of the ship’s sensors and communication systems.
The Naval Maintenance and Sustainment Agency builds the masts and Thales Netherlands supplies the systems. Thales are also responsible for fine-tuning, harmonizing and testing the systems. An integrated mast has a number of advantages over several separate antennas and masts mounted in different areas of the ship:
– significantly better performance due to unhampered 360° field of operation; prevents interference between the various systems; – less maintenance required due to the absence of moving parts; – the mid-life-upgrade can be mainly carried out by using software; – one month less needed for building and testing.