According to the announcement of the Ministry of Defence of Poland, the ORP “Albatros” (Pennant Number 602) minehunter was launched and baptized, and the keel of the ORP “Mewa” twin unit was laid at the Remontowa Shipbuilding shipyard in Gdańsk. The ships are built on the order of the Ministry of National Defense for the Polish Navy.
“Albatros” and “Mewa” are being built under a contract that was signed at the end of December 2017. The contract concerned the delivery of two Kormoran minehunters with three logistic support packages. The lead ship in the class, ORP Kormoran, was commissioned in November 2017.
On Thursday (10th November), a ceremony was held at Remontowa Shipbuilding, during which ORP “Albatros” was launched and baptized and the keel of ORP “Mewa” was laid. The position of the keel marks the completion of work on the first batch of unit components and the commencement of the hull assembly.
Kormoran Class :
Kormoran-class minehunters are intended for joint operations conducted by the Polish Navy in the Baltic, the North Sea and other areas as part of NATO’s joint maritime operations.
The main tasks of such ships are the search, classification and identification of sea mines, their destruction; leading ships through mine threat areas, mine protection, recognition of fairways, remote control of self-propelled surface mine platforms (trawls, sonar towing vehicles), searching for and combating diversion forces and means in the areas of ports and anchorages, participation in rescue operations.
The length of the Kormoran class is 58.5 m, width is over 10 m, and the displacement is 830 t. The crew consists of 45 people. The main weapon of the prototype Kormoran is unmanned aerial vehicles for mine combat. The first ship of this series was armed with a 23 mm cannon, three large-caliber 12.7 mm machine guns and three Grom anti-aircraft missile launchers. The unit was equipped with the SCOT-M combat management system.
