Romania Commissioned a Sandown-class Minesweeper

The former British minesweeper HMS Pembroke has joined the Romanian Navy, where it will become the second operational ship of the Sandown class.

The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom press service announced this.

HMS Pembroke was officially commissioned into the Romanian Navy under a new name – Capitan Constantin Dumitrescu (M217) – during a ceremony in the port of Rosyth, Scotland. For the first time, the Romanian flag was raised on a minesweeper.

The ship joined its classmate, the former minesweeper HMS Blyth, which was commissioned into the Romanian Navy in September 2023 under the name M270 Sublocotenent Ion Ghiculescu.

Romania purchased both Sandown-class mine countermeasures vessels in cooperation with the UK’s Defense Equipment Sales Agency, which operates with decommissioned military equipment. Before the transfer, they were repaired and modernized at Babcock’s facilities.

Major General Rich Cantrill of the Royal Navy noted that the minesweepers will play a key role in the security of the Black Sea. Working with coalition forces, they will ensure the security of maritime communications.

Currently, an international minesweeping group is operating in the Black Sea, including the navies of Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, to clear mines that have been drifting in some areas of the Black Sea since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Sandown class minesweepers

The Sandown project ships are a 450-ton class of minesweepers developed in the 1980s as a specialized ship for detecting, identifying, and destroying sea mines in coastal waters.

The hull of the 52-meter ship is made of reinforced fiberglass to reduce magnetic footprint and hydroacoustic visibility, which is essential in environments saturated with sea mines.

The ships of this project do not have equipment for trawling for mines. Their only function is to find and destroy them using remotely operated search vehicles.

To search for mines, the Sandown ships are equipped with Sonar 2093 variable depth sonar systems, in which the receiver and transmitter can be lowered by cable under the ship to a depth of 200 meters. This makes it possible to penetrate the temperature layers of the water column, providing reliable search and identification of objects.

The minesweepers are armed with a 30-mm combat module and several turrets for heavy machine guns. The crew consists of 34 people.