Friday, 16 June 2017

Finnish Minister Clears Tender for Squadron 2020 Project


Defence Minister Jussi Niinistö Authorised the Finnish Defence Forces' Logistics Command to Send An Invitation to Negotiate and A Preliminary Invitation to Tender for the Squadron 2020 Project

Defence Minister Jussi Niinistö authorised, on 13th June 2017, the Finnish Defence Forces' Logistics Command to send an invitation to negotiate and a preliminary invitation to tender to three supplier candidates for the Squadron 2020 project: Atlas Elektronik GmbH, Germany; Lockheed Martin Canada Inc, Canada; and Saab Ab, Sweden.

The battle system to be delivered will consist of weapons, sensors, and command and control systems and their integration into vessels. The Ministerial Committee on Economic Policy was in favour of sending the invitation to negotiate and the preliminary invitation to tender.

The first round of negotiations will be conducted in the course of 2017 and the deadline to submit a preliminary tender is in autumn 2017. The second round of negotiations will be started already at the end of 2017 and it will be continued in winter 2018.

The final round of tenders and the signing of the agreement will take place during 2018.

At the end of last year, the Finnish Defence Forces' Logistics Command sent requests to 12 companies to participate in the tender procedure to deliver the battle system for the Squadron 2020 vessels. Eight companies sent a request to participate; of these, three were selected for the next stage.

The Logistics Command evaluated the requests in cooperation with the Navy, the Defence Command and the Ministry of Defence and an external actor verified the independent nature and quality of the request procedure.

The following criteria were applied to select the companies: integration expertise, technical competence, project competence, commercial and legal requirements, life cycle expertise, industrial cooperation, quality and safety.

Minister Niinistö has now decided to establish an obligation of industrial cooperation for the Squadron 2020 project. The decision includes grounds for establishing the obligation and it supports the central objective in materiel policy: to ensure military security of supply in all situations.

The obligation aims at ensuring that the domestic defence industry is an integrated part of Finland’s defence and security of supply while also promoting international cooperation of defence industries.

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Squadron 2020

Source: defmin.fi

The Defence Forces has launched a project to buy surface combatants to replace the Navy's capabilities which will become outdated in the 2020s. The new vessels are expected to be capable of territorial integrity surveillance, securing vital sea lines of communication and deterring attacks from the sea.

To be able to carry out these tasks, the vessels have to be able to monitor maritime areas above and under the water surface and in the air space and to use weapons to counter potential threats from enemy forces.  The exact configuration of the battle system will be decided in the course of planning but at least sea mines and missiles are likely to be included in the main weapon systems.

The vessels are designed primarily for the needs of national defence and it is vital that they can operate also in winter conditions; they are expected to navigate through ice-covered waters.  In addition, they could be used for international crisis management. At this point the plan is to construct four vessels.

The life-cycle of six current surface combatants will end by mid-2020s; these include Rauma-class fast attack missile crafts and Hämeenlinna-class minelayers. Minelayer Pohjanmaa was decommissioned already in 2013. The life-cycle of the vessels to be decommissioned cannot be extended in a cost-efficient way.

The Finnish Defence Forces Logistics Command will send requests for information (RFI) to potential suppliers.

The planning phase of the project is 2015-2018 and construction is scheduled to start in 2019. Building these capabilities requires a funding of over billion euros. Source: defmin.fi

Squadron 2020 - The Finnish Defence Forces’ strategic project PDF: HERE

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