Kazakhstan to buy two mine 'hunters' from Russia

Kazakhstan mulls buying two 10750E harbor minesweepers from Russia to use them at the Caspian Sea, Interfax-Kazakhstan reports citing deputy Director General on military-technical cooperation of Sredne-Nevskiy shipyard Aleksander Vlassov. “Our plant has signed a contract with Kazakhstan for supplies of 10750E harbor minesweepers. The model has fundamental differences from the ships of 10750 Sapfir project built in the 1980s. The last of them was supplied to the Navy in 1996. Several such ships are still used in the Baltic and the Black Sea Navy,” Aleksander Vlassov told the journalists at the 6th International Naval Salon in Saint-Petersburg. The ships supplied to Kazakhstan will be “very much different from those built for the Soviet and Russian Navy, especially in terms of equipment: most of it has been imported. The ships will be equipped German-made main energy block upon Kazakhstan’s request. The hydro-acoustic equipment will be French. It is aimed for mine intelligence and minesweeping,” he said. “That means that the once minesweeper has been turned into a mine hunter: it will search for and detect mines using autonomous underwater units, while elimination of the mines it finds will be performed remotely from the shipboard,” he said. “The ship will also perform traditional sweeping functions with the use of Russian made drags,” Vlassov added. Answering a question on the number of the mine hunters ordered by Kazakhstan, he said: “One, and there is a memorandum for the second one.”