Ipchun-class minehunter

The Ipchun class are a group of oceangoing minehunters produced by the Onju Specialty Shipyard in Menghe. They are the first class of true minehunters built in Menghe; previously, the Menghean Navy relied on minesweepers which would tow wire sweeps through the minefield. Ipchun-class ships do carry remotely operated minesweeping boats for time-sensitive mine clearance operations, but the ships themselves are designed to operate on the edges of known minefields, hunting for individual mines with the help of hull-mounted and towed sonar equipment.

Design and development

The Menghean Navy issued a design requirement for a new class of oceangoing mine countermeasures ship in the mid-2000s. The design requirement called for a ship which could accompany amphibious battle groups in medium-range landing operations against Innominada, clearing mines along the transit route and ahead of the landing zone.

Previous Menghean oceangoing minesweeper classes used hulls made from low-magnetic steel. The Ipchun design would use a fiberglass composite hull for even greater magnetic signature reduction, and would feature improved shock resistance to withstand nearby mine detonations. These features posed a technical challenge to Menghean shipyards, few of which had experience working with composite materials. The initial contract for 12 ships was awarded to the Onju Specialty Shipyard, which had produced fiberglas-hulled coastal minesweepers in the past. Later, the Ministry of National Defense financed the construction of a new shipyard in Pungsu for the purpose of speeding up minesweeper production.

Apart from the new hull materials, the Ipchun-class minehunters use rafted machinery mounts to dampen vibration from the diesel engines, which are themselves specially-engineered low-noise and low-magnetic-signature models. The two-shaft propulsion arrangement is fairly conventional, though the ships do carry two tunnel thrusters in the bow for easier maneuvering. More exotic propulsion options, such as Voith-Schneider propellers and azimuth thrusters, were reportedly considered but rejected during the design process.