On Wednesday, April 3, 2024, a ceremony was held at the Swedish naval base Karlskrona to christen the new electronic intelligence gathering vessel HSwMS Artemis (A202) of the SIGINT class (SIGnals INTelligence, Signalspaningsfartyg), which thereby replaced the Orion (A201) in service in the 1st Submarine Flotilla of the Swedish Navy (Svenska marinen).
Photos: Jimmie Adamsson/Försvarsmakten
In the presence of the commander of the Swedish Navy, Admiral Ewa Skoog-Haslum, the ceremonial christening was performed by Björn Lyrvall, the Director-General of the Swedish National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt, FRA) – a government agency responsible for communication intelligence and subordinate to the Ministry of Defence, following which the nameplate on the vessel was unveiled.
Thus, HSwMS Artemis (A202) replaced HSwMS Orion (A201) in service, which was launched almost exactly 40 years ago, in June 1984, at the Saab Kockums shipyard. In practice, the vessel had not been operational for 14 years. On April 22, 2010, the Ministry of Defense removed it from the list of units in active service due to failure to meet safety standards at sea and commissioned the development of its successor.
And so, on April 11, 2017, at Saab Defence and Security, a new vessel was ordered for 730 million SEK (at that time 321 million PLN), and on April 26 of the same year, a subcontracting agreement was awarded to the Polish PGZ Stocznia Wojenna (PGZ Naval Shipyard) in Gdynia, with partial outfitting at the Shiprepair Yard Nauta (also in Gdynia). The design of the unit was handled by the Polish firm MMC Ship Design & Marine Consulting.
The first steel cutting ceremony took place on March 1, 2018, and the keel laying on June 15 of the same year.
According to the agreement, between 2017 and 2020, it was to build the complete floating unit and conduct its initial sea trials. It was planned that after completing the work in Poland, Artemis would sail under its own power to the shipyard in Karlskrona, where specialized reconnaissance equipment would be installed on it, and by the end of 2020, the fully prepared vessel would be handed over to the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV).
The collaboration with the PGZ Stocznia Wojenna resulted in the launching of the vessel on April 17, 2019. Subsequently, the ship was transferred to Nauta, where equipment installation works were carried out, but they were interrupted in the spring of 2020. This was due to the poor economic situation of the company, which had been incurring increasing losses annually for years. These losses grew from 4.3 million PLN (1.2 million USD) in 2015 to 57.9 million PLN (16 million USD) net in 2018 and approximately 50 million PLN (13 million USD) in 2019. To avoid creditors filing for the company’s bankruptcy, accelerated arrangement proceedings were initiated on April 15, 2020. By early 2021, the outstanding debt of Shiprepair Yard Nauta to 639 creditors under the arrangement amounted to 320 million PLN (82.9 million USD). Ultimately, on February 15, 2021, the vessel left Nauta and sailed to Sweden. On November 2, 2022, the Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten) press service announced on social media that Artemis had begun factory sea trials. On April 28, 2023, the vessel was handed over to FMV, and on November 15, it was handed over to the navy, which commenced crew training.
From the left: Orion and Artemis
Artemis is 74.6 meters long, 14 meters wide, has a draft of 3.8 meters, approximately 2200 tons of standard displacement, and approximately 3000 tons of full displacement. The maximum speed is 14.7 knots, thanks to four diesel-electric propulsion generators each of 990 kW. The crew consists of 40 officers, sailors, and intelligence specialists.
Meanwhile, in Poland, the construction of two vessels based on the Artemis project is underway for the Polish Navy as part of the Delfin program, serving as successors to the vessels of the project 863: ORP Hydrograf (263) and ORP Nawigator (262). They were ordered from Saab on November 25, 2022, for approximately 620 million USD net (2.91 billion PLN net). The vessels of project 107 will be named ORP Jerzy Różycki (261) and ORP Henryk Zygalski (264), and their keels were laid on July 27, 2023, and January 23, 2024, respectively, at the Remontowa Shipbuilding in Gdańsk (Keel laying for 107/2 (Henryk Zygalski) reconnaissance ship).
