HNLMS Karel Doorman

The Royal Netherlands Navy wanted a versatile ship that can resupply other warships, transport significant loads of equipment and vehicles, act as a disaster relief centre, take on hospital duties and even act as power plant for land-based hospitals. HNLMS Karel Doorman is the largest ship of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

About “HNLMS Karel Doorman”

HNLMS “Karel Doorman” has been designed for the Royal Netherlands Navy to operate both in lower and higher levels of the force spectrum. The main mission of the JLSS will be strategic transport, Replenishment at Sea and sea basing. The vessel accommodates 175 crew members and up to 125 opstappers, such as helicopter crew medical teams and several platoons. For the support of operations a fully equipped role three hospital is installed.

The JLSS has 2000 lane meters for transport of materiel, has a helicopter deck with landing spots for operating two Chinooks, and a hangar with a storage capacity of up to six helicopters. The JLSS has the facilities for loading and unloading materiel and goods in harbors, near the shore or at open sea using two Replenishment At Sea masts, a deck crane, a roll on/roll off facility for vehicles and a steel beach stern construction for accommodating cargo transfer via landing craft.

In order to reduce the vulnerability, the vessel has been outfitted with signature reduction measures, ballistic protection, blast resistant constructions, redundant and shock resistant systems, a gas citadel, and extensive firefighting systems. The power of this ship class is that it can supply other NATO vessels and it can transport a large amount of materials. The JSS is with a height of nearly 50 yards not only the longest, but also the highest ship of the Royal Netherlands Navy.

Karel Doorman Class Sensor Technology

HNLMS Karel Doorman  is the fifth ship within the Royal Netherlands Navy to be fitted with Thales Integrated Sensor & Communication Systems (ISCS).

The system integrates optical sensors, RF systems and radars. ISCS includes:

  • Sea Master 400 SMILE air warning radar;
  • SeaWatcher 100 active phased-array surface detection and tracking radar;
  • gateKeeper Electro-optical 360° surveillance system;
  • Satellite Radio Communication System.

Karel Doorman Class WCMS

The wireless communication and messaging system on board HNLMS Karel Doorman is about using function based workflow to provide intelligent messaging to and from crew members.

The first group of intelligent messaging is called system maintenance messaging and provides real time maintenance information  from platform systems generating system messages & tasks to be accepted by the responsible crew member. These system messages will be controlled by supervisors and/or automated escalation control procedures eg a non-confirmed fire detection notification. In this case the damage control assistant, responsible for lets say the damage control section AFT, will receive a short system instruction to check the fire alarm accordingly. DCA-AFT is requested to report immediately along the chain of command towards the damage control officer.

The second group of intelligent messaging is all about crew member conference grouping, intercom users setting up predefined voice conference groups to retrieve and share information between high mobile crew members at the calamity spots and low mobile crew members at the information management centres.