Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace AS (KONGSBERG) signed two contracts, valued at MNOK 1,426, with the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency (FMA). KONGSBERG will deliver a new batch of Naval Strike Missile (NSM) to the Norwegian Navy’s frigates and corvettes. The existing inventory of missiles will go through a series of maintenance actions to extend their operational timeline and continue providing state of the art defence capabilities for the Navy. The Naval Strike Missile’s initial serial production contract was signed in June 2007. It has been chosen by the Royal Norwegian Navy for its new Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates and Skjold-class patrol boats.
“The triangular collaboration between KONGSBERG, the Norwegian Armed Forces and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) is the key to our ability to develop such advanced and complex systems. We are also very proud to sign a maintenance agreement that will extend the missile’s shelf life, ensuring that the Navy will remain operational with this important capability. Contracts such as this support KONGSBERG’s and FMA’s sustainability goals, and helps to secure further employment, not only for our employees, but also for our national subcontractors. We cannot produce nor deliver such advanced and state-of-the-art products alone,” says Øyvind Kolset, Executive Vice President of Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.
The Naval Strike Missile (NSM) is an anti-ship and land-attack missile developed by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA). The original Norwegian name was Nytt sjømålsmissil (literally New sea target missile, indicating that it is the successor of the Penguin missile). Like its Penguin predecessor, NSM is able to fly over and around landmasses, travel in sea skim mode, and then make random manoeuvres in the terminal phase, making it harder to stop by enemy countermeasures. The English marketing name Naval Strike Missile was adopted later.
The state-of-the-art design and use of composite materials is meant to give the missile sophisticated stealth capabilities. The missile will weigh slightly more than 400 kg (880 lb) and have a range of more than 185 km (100 nm). NSM is designed for littoral waters (“brown water”) as well as for open sea (“green and blue water”) scenarios. The usage of a high strength titanium alloy blast/fragmentation warhead from TDW is in line with the modern lightweight design and features insensitive high-explosive. Warhead initiation is by a void-sensing Programmable Intelligent Multi-Purpose Fuze designed to optimise effect against hard targets.
