The Belgian Defense will soon be equipped with a new mine-clearing vessel. The ship is currently under construction in Brittany and will soon be delivered to us. Its name: the Tournai, the very city where the Minister of Defense is from. On site, in Concarneau, our journalist Simon François presents the specific features of this state-of-the-art boat.
The Tournai is our new state-of-the-art mine clearer under construction in Brittany. It is an M941.
The main specificity of this ship is its hull. It was in fact entirely designed with steel. Until now, a mine hunter used a plastic hull to not attract mines that were sometimes magnetized.
“Here, we change our philosophy”, Simon François, RTL info special correspondent in Concarneau, tells us. “Belgium decided to build a boat that would stay outside the minefield and could work with a whole series of drones, aerial drones, surface drones and underwater drones, a sort of remote-controlled torpedo that can be used to clear an area of mines.”
The Tournai is the second ship of an order for six placed in the Breton shipyard. There is still a lot of work to be done to finalize its construction. All six minehunters ordered by the Defense should be ready for 2030.
tournai defense mine clearer
