Mk6 Electric Winch Need Background

Outreach Offshore were asked to provide a solution for a military vessel application earlier this year. For the project, a Mk6 Electric winch was chosen to fulfil the needs of vessel anti-submarine capabilities. The winch was commissioned to be used alongside the KraitSense™ low-profile passive sonar system.

“SEA’s KraitSense™ System is a complete anti-submarine warfare solution, featuring an innovative low profile miniaturised acoustic array” – Sea News

This is a Towed Array ASW system that is used to detect submarines from the Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV)

The entire project was part of NATO’s mission to evaluate the use of such systems in real military operating conditions. Military personnel across Europe participated in the research in late October 2019 through in-depth sea trials.

Mk6 Electric Winch Specification

The winch was perfect for this project due to its variable speed control, compact structure with multiple interface fitting options. The winch is ideal in smaller vessel applications, such as an OPV due to its neat envelope. A custom solution was needed to handle the specific array cable of this new and innovative product. For this, the Mk6 winch was modified by scaling up the size of the winch envelope which included a larger drum. This enabled a specialised array/umbilical cable to be fitted. The winch also had a more powerful control output and an overboarding fairlead guide installed. Despite the modifications and up-scale, the winch remained compact.

Outreach Offshore offers custom design solutions to meet our customer’s needs, no matter the conditions.  

Click here to sign up to our Newsletter!