Seen here on the day of her launch, 27 July 2003, is the 620-ton Swedish Navy guided-missile patrol combatant Helsingborg, the second of five units of the Visby class on order from Karlskronavarvet, a subsidiary of Germany's HDW, which is owned by a subsidiary of Bank One Chicago. The 239-foot long, 34-foot beam, 38-knot design formed the basis for one of the original six competing concepts for the U.S. Navy's littoral combat ship (LCS) but was not one of the three selected for further development. Nonetheless, the Helsingborg and her sisters represent cuttingedge signature reduction and nonmetallic structural fabrication technology, and when they enter active service between 2005 and 2007, they will be the most advanced examples of stealth technology warship design in any navy. Operated by a crew of 21 officers and 20 enlisted, the craft are able to carry eight RBS-15 Mk 3 antiship missiles below decks. The 57-mm Bofors Mk 3 dual-purpose mount on the bow is essentially the same weapon selected for the U.S. Coast Guard's larger Project Deepwater patrol ships but has a special low-reflectivity gunhouse. The Visby design also has provision for four 400-mm antisubmarine torpedo tubes and two 6-round antisubmarine rocket launchers, and an Augusta-Westland A-109 Power (Swedish designation HKP-15) helicopter will occupy a hangar beneath the flight deck aft. The ships will carry a dual hull-mounted and towed-array sensor antisubmarine and mine detection sonar suite, and the first four are to carry two mine detection and two mine destruction remotely operated submersibles and a reconnaissance submersible. Although the Swedish Navy had hoped to acquire 20 Visbys, the class will now be succeeded by a new, smaller design now in preparation.
The last of three Charles F. Adams (DDG-2)-class guided-missile destroyers in German Navy service, the Lutjens (ex-U.S. DDG-28), was retired on 18 December 2003 after 34 years of service. The 4,720-ton full-load displacement ship was one of three built for Germany by Bath Iron Works and was commissioned on 22 March 1969. The German trio differed externally from their 23 earlier U.S. Navy sisters in having "mack"-type combined mast/funnels. In their later years, the German ships received updated sensor systems, including the AN/SPQ-9 gun firecontrol radar for the two 127-mm guns. Two 21-round launchers for the Mk 49 RAM surface-to-air missile system were added toward the end of their careers, but the launchers had been removed by the time this photo was taken on 31 October 2003 at the end of the Lutjens's last trip to sea. Three sisters built for the Royal Australian Navy also have been retired, and the only two Charles F. Adams-class DDGs remaining in service are the Greek Navy's Kimon (ex-Semmes, DDG-18) and Nearchos (ex-Waddell, DDG-24), which were to remain active until 2010 but might now be retired sooner under recent cuts to Greek defense funding.
Although externally complete when this photo was taken last May, the Italian Navy intelligence-collection ship Elettra (A-5340) is not due for formal delivery until this April. Ordered for $67 million in December 1999 for construction by Fincantieri on the same hull and with the same 4,000-shaft-horsepower diesel-electric propulsion system as the NATO-owned acoustic research ship Alliance and the Taiwanese Navy's oceanographic research ship Ta Kuan, the 3,180-ton full-load displacement, 307-foot Elettra carries some 27 different electronic, optical, and acoustic intelligence-collection systems, plus oceanographic and hydrographic survey gear and a remotely controlled salvage submersible capable of operating at up to 1-km depths. The Elettra is intended to operate in the Black Sea, Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Persian Gulf and has a range of 12,000 nautical miles at 12 knots. The crew of 12 officers and 76 enlisted will include some 65 intelligence specialists.