A joint venture of the navies of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, the Tripartite class of minehunters were a follow on design to the French Circé-class minehunters. All three nations would build their own hulls while each country was responsible for a different aspect of the vessels; France provided the minehunting and electronic systems, the Netherlands provided the main propulsion systems and Belgium supplied the minehunting propulsion system as well as the electrical generating systems. Each country intended to order 15 of the vessels, with Belgium's initial order being 10 with the option of 5 more. However, France cut their initial order to ten due to budgetary reasons.
All vessels in the class are named after flowers and are thus sometimes called the "Flower" or Aster class. In 2001 the remaining Belgian minehunters had their engines upgraded. All remaining Belgian vessels have undergone an extensive upgrade during 2004–2008 involving replacement of the anti-mine warfare equipment. This included receiving the same sonar package as the French versions. The complement of the Belgian ships varies between 33 and 46 depending on mission.
Initially, Indonesia intended to order ten hulls. However, funds were lacking and only two were built. The first was ordered on 29 March 1985 and the second on 30 August 1985. The two ships were initially part of the Royal Netherlands Navy production and were given Dutch names. They were renamed upon sale to Indonesia.
The Netherlands and Belgium are doing a joint procurement for the replacements of the Tripartite-class/Alkmaar-class minehunters. Both countries want to procure six new mine countermeasure (MCM) vessels, which makes for a total of 12 MCM ships. The new MCM ships will include a range of unmanned systems including unmanned surface, aerial and underwater vehicles alongside towed sonars and mine identification and neutralization ROVs.
Belgium gave the green-light to start the procurement on 26 January 2018 and approved a budget of 1.1 billion euros for the six Belgian MCM ships. Besides the Tripartite-class minehunters, the ships will also replace the Belgian logistical support ship Godetia.
There were three contenders. A Franco-Belgium consortium made up of French shipbuilders STX France and Socarenam together with Belgium's EDR bid for the 12 new MCM vessels. Their plan included the construction of MCM vessels named Sea Naval Solutions and a multi-role frigate named Deviceseas, which will serve as mothership to the MCM vessels. All ships having a strong focus on autonomous systems operations. France's Naval Group and ECA Group [fr] established Belgian subsidiary Naval & Robotics to bid for the program. The third group was Imtech Belgium and Damen Group.
On 15 March 2019, the team led by Naval Group was selected to produce the 12 new vessels.
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