And yes, the Holland Class OPV is a 'remarkable project'.
The seize, displacement, sensors and processing systems of a frigate, but with an armament of a small patrol boat and a speed of an auxiliary vessel.
Some people claim that the OPVs have a low maximum speed of 21,5 kts because they dont need to go faster than just above 20 kts, and that the long range (5000 nm while going 15 kts) the strong point is of the OPVs. Well, the 1692 ton SIGMA 9113 corvettes have a slightly shorter range of 4800 nm (14 kts) and a maximum speed of 28 kts.
Also the endurence of 21 days is exactly the same as the smaller and faster SIGMA 10514 class.
Another negative point of the OPV is that you can't just upgrade it to frigate level, from the beginning the low budget construction is unsuitable for ASW-operations.
To slightly correct what Walter said, they are classed as patrol ships not boats. Not to be pedantic but it does mean that you can't really compare it to a smaller patrol boat that is meant to run down smugglers. The concept was to have ships that could perform long range patrols and coast guard duties but had the staying power of something like a frigate. The FRISC seaboats and the helicopter could chase down the smugglers. And as station ships in the West, they are great! They are big and roomy, they can get there on their own and they can fulfill all the tasks they will be faced with from anti-smuggling to disaster relief. And they're cheap to operate and can be run with a modest staff.
But at the same time that's sort of the whole reason behind these ships. They're cheap and that's the problem. These ships where conceptualized in the early to mid 00's, a time when politicians where cheap and spineless... KUCH... I meant a time when money was short and defense where at the back of the line and people thought that in the future the armed forces would be very expensive, heavily armed policemen who bothered people in third world countries to make us feel better... I mean peace keeping and counter insurgency. In any case, peer power competition was a thing of the past. So there was little political will to spend any money at all, let alone do something as expensive as building new ships.
But the navy had actually seen their operational tempo shoot up in recent years. They went from a cold war force that basically did exercises with a large fleet available to the 00's where we had a war on terror and pirates in the Gulf of Aden while still having to fulfill all their previous commitments. Another result of the defense cuts was that defense had problems recruiting and retaining personnel as they could not be competitive on a labor market in a growing economy. THUS!!! The stage was set for a class of ships that is the bane of every Dutch navy enthusiasts existence!!!!!
And I think many, if not most people that know the Dutch navy would happily trade them in for four SIGMA's. And so would the navy, because that was their original proposal after another study had proposed something like what we have now. But as Walter mentioned above one of the prime reasons for these ships was their radars and to keep Damen busy. Because the M replacement was planned to start designing in 2015 and the LCF's would be done in the mid 00's, and Damen saw it's order book becoming a little thin and Thales had a really cool new radar that they wanted to put on a ship as a sort of demonstrator. There was enough pressure from the people who really matter to politicians to end up building the patrol ships.
But in the end the navy ended up having to sacrifice six frigates for four patrol boats. But the government was already under pressure from the right gaining popularity and you can't buy popularity in the Netherlands by investing in defense. So the ships had to be cheap enough to not upset people too much but still have enough money left to keep the important peo... KUCH to keep industry happy and buy the very expensive radars. So the ships are slower than for instance the SIGMA corvettes of the Indonesian navy because they have much... much less powerful engines. Because that was cheaper! But the sensors are very good. And they where very expensive... But they're kind of useless for something that is basically a police boat.
So the moral of the story is that you're right! The Holland class at many points outclasses it's role as a patrol ship. But that's because there's some capabilities that the navy could not give up on for operational reasons. Like the range and endurance and the helicopter, which are more like a corvette or a light frigate which was what the navy actually wanted. But everything else was done as cheap as was possibly acceptable.
But in the end it's not a corvette like the SIGMA and it wasn't built to be turned into something else. That's where it's really different from a SIGMA. Because the Holland class where a bespoke design, the government created the design together with Damen. Where the SIGMA is a design family where there's an emphasis on modularity to be able to customize the design to their customers wishes. And while I heard that the Indonesians had installed some systems into their new SIGMA frigates after they where commissioned for financial reasons. This is not really something that happens as often as some discussions on the internet might suggest.
Just like with that whole mission module malarky, there are big problems with this whole "fitted for but not with" and "we'll fit it in the future" business. Leaving the follies of modules aside, leaving things of a ship because you can't afford it saying of we'll buy that when we can afford it. Is usually just an excuse for politicians to replace a capability with a promise they won't have to honor anyway because they'll be out of power by that time. The reality is that a lot of the modern European frigates where built with "room" for extra VLS cells. But I heard that on the Italian FREMM for example that space where those cells would be is now a gym, and to fit more VLS would take a substantial redesign and rebuild of that section of the ship. And I assume it will be the same for most of the European frigates. Upgrading and refitting is expensive and time consuming. You can't just plant some ASM's on the deck and be done with it. You'd need sensors and data links and integrate them into your combat system. There's all sorts of wiring and design involved, and it's not something that can be done in a couple of weeks.
It's not that upgrading and refitting is impossible, in a lot of cases it's a good idea and I'm a fan of it. But these things usually require such an amount of time and effort that it's usually done during some kind of mid life maintenance period. But that means that the ship would have sailed around half it's service life with a political promise instead of a capability that could have been installed when it was built and employed in the defense of your country in the meantime. I'm not against replacing or upgrading materiel, or even leaving some space if you think that capability will take up more space in the future.
But I'm against building ships with political promises of capabilities and modular mission whatevers. Because the business of defense isn't that easy! If you have a ship in an area that has a number of possible capabilities, but you have to ship a container and spend days or even weeks installing that capability. You don't have that capability! If your LCS can sweep mines, and you need a mine sweeper, but you need to ship a module to that ship to install it. You need logistical capability near that ship to get your module there and you need maintenance support to install it. And the ship needs to come off station to install the module, and is that crew going to be as proficient at mine warfare as a dedicated crew? So you just use some ships in one role with that module and other ships in other roles, and then you train crews specifically for that role... right? But then you could just as well have made two different types of ships.
Or when, like the British, you build ships without ASM's with the promise that you'll install them later. Well what if Putin and Xi blow their collective lid and WW3 starts before you install them... Then what? And what if your FREMM only has 16 VLS when it could have had 32 but you where gonna install them later. Then you don't have that capability.
Anyway, if anyone's still reading. Sorry for the rant. If I had to give a conclusion about it. I'd say that long term planning is important for defense procurement. And most defense organizations should apply them more to make good plans for long term procurement and incorporate in those plans how they are going to get political support for their plans. Otherwise you end up with a high end yacht that's disguised as a patrol boat!
