On the manoeuvrability of naval surface ships with respect to a new STANAG

The NATO Specialist Team for Seaway Mobility has progressed significantly in the development of new missionoriented manoeuvring criteria in the format of a NATO STANAG. When this STANAG is ratified, it will present many opportunities for navies to more comprehensively and more accurately include manoeuvrability requirements in their vessel specifications. However, specifying these requirements will have implications for the navy and prospective ship builders who will be obliged to meet the requirements. Challenges will include not only designing and building a vessel that meets the required performance criteria but also achieving the target-level. The focus of this paper is on the background of the manoeuvring criteria that are imposed in the STANAG regarding prediction procedures of vessel compliance. As part of background research of the Defence Material Organization of the Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands, simulations for several different vessels that are currently in operation for the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNeN) have been performed using MARIN’s in-house manoeuvring simulation tools FRESIM and FREDYN. The conclusions of this study helped further improve the criteria, and provided a stepping stone from ANEP-70 to a STANAG. The current draft STANAG offers a comprehensive set of mission-based criteria to evaluate the manoeuvring performance of naval surface vessels. At the same time it is demonstrated which tools can be used in the early design stage to demonstrate compliance.