News Oct 14:AMR
9/29/14
2:54 PM
Page 3
REGIONAL NEWS
south A N D
east
asia
D E V E L O P M E N T S
INDONESIAN SHIPBUILDERS INITIATED BUILDING ON FOUR ‘CLURIT’ CLASS MISSILE CRAFT
The construction of four ‘Clurit’ class Fast Attack Craft (FAC), due to enter service with the Indonesian Navy (Tentera Nasional Indonesia Angkatan Laut/TNI-AL), has begun and is going according to schedule, said Captain Suradi Agung Slamet, the TNIAL public affairs spokesperson. The announcement was made during Capt. Slamet’s 17 July 2014 visit to the PT Palindo Marine Industry Shipyard Batam (PMSB) and PT Citra shipyard where the OPVs are being manufactured. Both yards are located on the Riau Province island of Batam, a free trade zone part of the SIJORI (the Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore Growth Triangle), located approximately eleven nautical miles (20 kilometres) off Singapore’s south coast. The SIJORI is a partnership arrangement between Singapore, the Malaysian state of Johor, and Indonesia’s Riau Islands established in the late 1990s to combine the competitive strengths of the three areas in a common effort to make the region more attractive to regional and international investors.
THAILAND ACQUIRES ARTHUR RADARS, BOOSTS EFFORTS TO MODERNISE ITS ARMED FORCES
The Royal Thai Navy (RTN) naval secretariat department has announced the RTN and signed a contract with Swedish aerospace and defence company Saab to procure an undisclosed number of the company’s ARTHUR (Artillery Hunting Radar) C-band (5.25-5.925 gigahertz) weapons locating radars for
PMSB will be manufacturing three of Indonesia’s new vessels, while PT Citra has started manufacturing the fourth vessel. The launch of all four vessels, which will considerably strengthen Indonesia’s regional maritime interdiction capabilities, is scheduled for the end of 2014. The TNI-AL currently operates a class of four ‘Clurit’ class vessels out of an expected eventual class size of up to 24 vessels (see Marty Kauchak’s AMR Naval Directory 2014 in this issue). The ‘Clurit’ class is an Indonesia-made 44-metre (144-feet) long vessel capable of reaching top speeds of 30 knots (55 kilometres-per-hour) and accommodating a crew of 35. The vessels can carry a Denel Vektor G12 20mm main gun, two 12.7mm machine guns and four
Chinese Aerospace Group C-705 anti-ship missiles. The TNI-AL has already fitted two of the craft, namely the KRI Clurit and the KRI Kujang, with the KBP Instrument Design Bureau AK-630 close-in weapon systems in May 2014, with the intention of gauging the system’s suitability for eventually use on all of the country’s ‘Clurit’ class FACs. The weapon’s operational status remains unconfirmed. The vessels will assist the TNI-AL in its ongoing efforts to tackle maritime piracy in the Strait of Malacca, a narrow stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra which connects the Pacific Ocean to the east to the Indian Ocean, and will help Indonesia secure its maritime borders and wider interests at sea.
According to recent figures produced by the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP), the past years have seen a clear deterioration in the Southeast Asian maritime security situation. The counterpiracy organisation recorded eight incidents in the Malacca and Singapore Straits during the first quarter of 2014. A total of five incidents had been recorded for the whole of 2012 and 2013. One of the most notorious incidents included the 23 April 2014 hijack of the oil tanker MT Naniwa Maru No.1 near Port Klang, Malaysia, the country’s largest port and the main gateway by sea into Malaysia. The attack resulted in the disappearance of three crewmembers and the theft of 2500 tonnes of marine diesel.
use by the Royal Thai Marine Corps (RTMC). Thailand’s Naval Commander Admiral Narong Pipattana and Per Jakobsson, director of marketing and sales for Saab’s Asia Pacific business, signed the purchase contract for the radars during a ceremony held at the naval headquarters in Bangkok on 27 July 2014. Saab’s ARTHUR is a fully coherent pulse Doppler radar which has a passive electronically-scanned array. Other users in the region
include Singapore and Malaysia and the Republic of Korea. The radar has an instrumented range of between eleven nautical miles (20 kilometres) and 32nm (60km) and can provide 120 degrees of instantaneous coverage, with 360 degrees of azimuth when the antenna is rotating. Around 100 targets can be detected and tracked per minute. The contract with Thailand suggests that the country’s military government has decided to resume its efforts
to modernise the Royal Thai Armed Forces, a procurement process that had been put on hold for several months due to a general political unrest in the country and following the military coup that occurred on 22 May 2014. Confirming this modernisation effort, Thailand’s government is said to be also considering a $80 million deal to acquire medium-range surface-to-air missiles, although further details of this acquisition have not been revealed.
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