HrMs's Vlaardingen and Zierikzee are known as Alkmaar class minehunters
The main task of the minehunters is to keep the sea, coastal waters and harbour approaches free of mines. They also protect maritime units in areas where there are mines by conducting specific mine countermeasures operations.The minehunters can be deployed anywhere in the world to provide support to land operations from the sea. But they can also operate closer to home, locating and clearing mines and other explosive ordnance at sea in the Dutch sector of the Continental Shelf. Thanks to their special glass-reinforced polyester construction, minehunters produce very little sound and no magnetic field disturbance. They will not, therefore, set off a mine if they pass over it.
The size of the crew depends on the tasks to be carried out. The total size can vary between 28 and 38 crew members. Everyone on board has their own tasks and specialty. In addition, every crew member has a specific role in the event of, for instance, a fire or if the ship sustains damage. At all times, the crew is a single team, working closely together in a relatively small space, often under difficult circumstances. The 6 minehunters of the Alkmaar class operated by the Royal Netherlands Navy are a joint design of the Netherlands, Belgium and France. France built the mine-hunting equipment, Belgium provided the electronics and the Netherlands constructed the propulsion train. To reflect the cooperation between the three countries, the international name of this class of ship is the Tripartite class.As a cost-cutting measure, four minehunters were decommissioned in 2011. These were HrMs Haarlem, HrMs Maassluis, HrMs Hellevoetsluis and HrMs Middelburg.
HrMs Zierikzee (M862)
HrMs Vlaardingen (M863)
