The Netherlands Ministry of Defence (Ministerie van Defensie; MinDef) has signed an agreement with Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to procure a new Naval Strike Missile (NSM) system for the Royal Netherlands Navy (Koninklijke Marine) fleet of De Zeven Provinciën-class guided missile frigates. The four De Zeven Provinciën-class frigates are highly advanced air-defence and command frigates in service with the Royal Navy of the Netherlands. This class of ships is also known as LCF (Luchtverdedigings, air defense and command frigate). The frigates are equipped with the ageing Harpoon anti-ship missiles, which will be replaced by the new NSM system.
“KONGSBERG is very proud to have been selected by the Netherlands Ministry of Defence to provide the NSM to the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) Air Defence & Command Frigates. This is another great achievement for the NSM program and we are very pleased to welcome the RNLN as a member of the NSM User Group,” says Eirik Lie, 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). The English marketing name Naval Strike Missile was adopted later. According to Kongsberg the NSM/JSM is selected by Norway, Poland, Malaysia, Germany, the United States (as RGM-184), Japan, Romania, Canada, Australia and Spain as of 2022. The Joint Strike Missile (JSM) is a multi-role air-launched version of the NSM currently in development.
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 (115 mi; 100 nmi). 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.
