BMT has announced a significant update to its iconic ELLIDA design series, including studies of future technologies and concepts to enhance naval littoral capabilities.
Building on the original ELLIDA design introduced in 2019, BMT now presents the expanded ELLIDA family – a tailorable array of scalable ship designs, developed to explore the complex needs of modern littoral operations.
Monty Long, Global Business Development Director for Defence, Maritime and Security at BMT, says:
“In a world where constant competition is a reality and the global pressure of climate change and social migration are stretching western navies, operational advantage in the littoral is more important than ever.
The growing ELLIDA family, introduced this year at DSEI, including its newest addition “ELLIDA Future”, exemplifies our dedication to exploring our customers’ future requirements such as littoral strike and support operations combined with our strategic insights, understanding of cutting-edge technologies, and a deep understanding of the evolving operational landscape.”
Designed to provide a scalable and customisable solution, the ELLIDA family comprises 130m, 150m, 180m, and 200m variants of a multi-role support and logistics ship.
Leveraging the flexibility of a scalable hull with internal vehicle and logistics decks, organic aviation, weather deck stowage, mission bays, and additional accommodation for embarked military forces, the ELLIDA family can adapt to a spectrum of missions ranging from humanitarian aid and disaster relief to warfare operations.
The new type leans on highly autonomous warship technologies to support leaner crewing models, and trends in the use of autonomous craft to enhance littoral operations.
The ‘ELLIDA Future’ allows BMT to explore these themes alongside the existing ELLIDA family and develop interesting future options for its customers. Complementing the ELLIDA family is BMT’s Caimen range of landing craft, which can be offered as an integrated package.
Andy Kimber, BMT’s Chief Naval Architect explains: “Following more than a decade of investment, the Caimen is now available as a range of variants according to loading requirement and hull material. It’s a cost-effective platform that offers superior speed, safety, and vessel design flexibility to meet the demands of the littoral operating environment and the needs of a broad spectrum of operations.”
Contenders for MRSS?
Hopefully
Must be, it’s the obvious target sale and BMT has almost become part of the MOD where ship design is concerned. But the Dutch may have other thoughts as Damen has rival designs. I just hope this project moves ahead promptly. The three Bay’s were built on the cheap and have been so hard worked (e.g. RFA Lyme Bay is about to forward deploy to Duqm in Oman) that you fear that they won’t last far in to their 20’s, whilst RFA Argus (also about to deploy to Oman) is now over 50!
Lovely looking ship but I think they’ll need to bring the two stacks forward a tad or push out the rear Phalanx for a better arc of fire? It looks a bit restricted and you want the full 360 coverage. Looks like this design has removed the two 40mms from previous design.
Lovely looking bow on that.
Ellida? Proteus? Lasers? Motherships, littoral strike ships,why don’t we debate about real warships? All these things are passing folly’s