Damen Naval attends EUROGUARD milestone event in Estonia

On 21 May, colleagues from Damen Naval (Vlissingen) and Damen RD&I (Gorinchem) travelled to the Baltic Workboats shipyard in Nasva, Estonia, for an important EUROGUARD project milestone event. The workshop brought together consortium partners, representatives from participating EU member states, including a delegation from Material & IT Command (COMMIT) representing the Dutch member state, to review the project’s progress after two and a half years of development.

Text: Tom Scott

The event marked no fewer than three major milestones within the project:

• the completion of the prototype vessel hull,
• the Critical Design Review (CDR) focused on system interfaces,
• and the first virtual demonstration of the project’s software systems.

One of the highlights was a demonstration of the project’s digital backbone, based on DDS (Data Distribution Service) technology. Several partner applications were connected within MARIN’s simulation environment, showing how systems from different organisations can work together in shared digital infrastructure.

The EUROGUARD project, which started in December 2023, is developing a 45-metre semi-autonomous modular vessel for missions such as surveillance, mine countermeasures, drone operations, and search and rescue. Coordinated by Baltic Workboats, the project includes 27 organisations from 10 European countries and is one of the largest projects funded under the European Defence Fund (EDF).

For Damen Naval, the event was particularly relevant in relation to ongoing work on GENSA – the Generic European Naval System Architecture that the Damen team is working on. The goal of GENSA is to organise technologies developed and demonstrated within EUROGUARD into a reusable framework that can support future naval concepts and collaborative European programmes.
The workshop also included an update on the Digital Ship Design Environment (DSDE), a development initiative involving Damen and TU Delft.

“EUROGUARD is the first European project that is jointly developing a real prototype vessel,” said Damen Naval Strategy Coördinator RDI Joep Broekhuijsen. “To now see that becoming reality after two and a half years is very impressive.”
Process Architect Koen Droste added: “What makes this project special is the almost democratic way the design and prototype are being developed. Instead of one main contractor, all partners are equal within the project — so it really comes down to cooperation.”

All in all, it was a successful workshop – and a good demonstration of the Estonian hospitality of consortium partner Baltic Workboats.