well seems that intresting conversation has passed by me...
As for our new minesweepers, i think they eventually are bad deal to us. The ships themsleves seems rather fine, and I dont doupt their effectivety and state of the art desing in general MCM role, also they come handy multipurpose enveriomental protection vessels to face the growing oil trafic in the gulf of finland and imporves our oil-sweeping capacity...BUT few things speaks for their unfavor
1) Their size. Those would biggest minesweepers ever fielded by our navy, in fact biggest ships currently after the minelayers. They seem to be rather well suited for oceaninc MCM, but our coastline comes whit complex hydrological and oceangraphical conditions and I seriously doupt the purposefullness of such large ships whit relatively large draugth (3.1 meter) if compared to our current sweepers (2.3m) or to the FACs (<2.3 meter). They wont be able to go into all parts of our archipegalo and also, i believe that best possiple solution would have achieved, if the MCM system with its sonar suite should have been desing expecially work in our domestic waters. All of their capacity smells like NATO led distant deployment to foreing waters:dodgy
2) They pretty much opens the door for foreing, cheaper bidders to build our possiple other future naval units and in the modern competition enverioment, our domestic shipyards cannot compete whit the bigger ones and that would eventually lead into disapear of our domestic warship shipbuilding. Not only that would be a pride issue, it will mean that the century old know-how to answer most effictively towards our special needs will also be lost in same pace...
Ps. the third ship would be only fitted out in here, not entirely build, or at least thats the impression our yardworkers concerns have left me....
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But to the actual topic, In modern times (during cold war and beyond) also, Romanian navy had build minelayers, Soviets did have the Alesha class, China has currently one or two, Japan had two quite large ones, and I belive that their still have dual use MCM support ship that can lay mines... and most recent addition have been the South Korean navy, with their single unit (cannot remember its name thought)...
I think Minelayers will keep their place as long as the mines will keep and having dedicated minelayers are highly important to the smaller navyes with favorable coastline. Modern minelayers also come handy as dual purpose units, as the mines need lot of storage space, and cleverly desing can turn that same space act also as stowage for class rooms for school ships, supply for other vessels, transport troops and cargo or house MCM support facilityes...So minelayers wouldn't be useless outside the minelaying trips...far from it. Air crafts and submarines cannot carry that much mine that they would be effective in other than percission minings of offensive nature
...of course USN will drop them from satelites if nessery, but...
