The French warship North West Wind is a very special warship, which is a product of civil-military cooperation. It costs only one-tenth of an aircraft carrier, is 200 meters long and has a take-off deck area of 5,200 square meters, allowing six helicopters to take off and land at the same time. It can serve as a command ship, perform intervention missions in combat, and even transform itself into a maritime hospital.
Both French and foreign servicemen have praised it: the 'North West Wind', a warship long awaited by the Navy. The Australian Navy is ready to order two, and other navies are seriously considering it. The North West Wind is a success, both in terms of the fast plus innovative way it was built, and in terms of the sophistication of the structure as a whole.
This new generation of warships is referred to as the BPC, that is, it can go out on missions as well as being an operational command platform. Its mission is to conduct amphibious operations, as required by the EU defense agreement. The nickname given to it is good but not expensive: to say that it is good is in fact somewhat controversial, mainly because the ship seems to be missing half of its hull when viewed from behind. But for 300 million euros a ship, it is better suited than a carrier, the behemoth of the sea, to carry out some of the missions favored by commanders: such as the rapid landing of troops to deal with crises, as was the case recently in Africa, and the rescue of populations that have suffered a natural disaster. Warships can also house operational command centers or staffs for the various services, or even allied forces.
The North West Winds have many advantages, most notably the ability to be on call 365 days a year. The ship's four Finnish-built Vatsila diesel alternators have an overhaul interval of 12,000 hours, which means they are overhauled only every so often. The overhaul also takes only 36 hours and can be carried out while underway!
The great advantage of this condition is reflected in the warship's ability to be on standby for all kinds of emergencies around the globe. Let's take a look at the situation at the time of the tsunami on December 26, 2004: France's only helicopter carrier, the 40-year old Joan of Arc, arrived in the area of the incident 3 weeks later with 4 light helicopters, 16 doctors, and humanitarian supplies. The results of a month's work in Indonesia's Mirabai waters were as follows: 1,400 medical consultations and 8,600 children vaccinated.
The North West Wind warship on the mission may be slightly faster, but more to the point, it will provide an incredibly large technological and medical platform capable of rapidly increasing the medical emergency capacity of the area in question. This could be done by using the equipment provided by the Military Medical Service to set up a critical burn ward, or an extremely modern operating room, or a radiology suite with state-of-the-art equipment. Similarly, surgical procedures can be performed with the technical support of telemedicine. The installation of these sets of equipment, along with the supply of sterile fresh water, electricity and medical oxygen, was planned long before the warship was designed.
The second strong point of the NWS is to undertake the preparation and command of joint military operations. The warship could have a command post at the shipboard operational level, i.e., a staff office 15 nautical miles (28 kilometers) from the coast closest to the area of operation, equipped with all the modern equipment necessary to command a combat operation, especially communications facilities.
The communications equipment that allows the NWO to function as a command post is the same as that used on the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Not only does this system allow for real-time communication with a high information flow, but it also makes it possible to hold highly classified videoconferences on board, as the traffic is four times higher than on the best-equipped U.S. warships. The task of air control in the combat zone could be given to a modern destroyer, such as the destroyer Jean Barthe, which could take on the task of control tower.
On the North West Wind, the size of the space reserved for the command post is adjustable thanks to a system of removable bulkheads. It can accommodate up to 300 personnel and information electronics. Thanks to a plug-and-play approach, the command post is ready to work once the equipment is connected.
The North West Wind's role is particularly important in another situation, that of troop relocation. Lessons learned from recent operations have shown the necessity of keeping troops on board for long periods of time. On the North West Wind, the 450-strong force has a 150-square-meter gymnasium and cabins for every four or six men, enough to rival those on the Queen Mary 2 cruise liner.