November 4, 2024: The Netherlands is reviving and rebuilding its naval forces. This includes some novel innovations, like arming several commercial ships with weapons stored and operated from shipping containers. These containers would not look out of place on the deck of a freighter, and the few naval personnel needed to operate the weapons could wear civilian clothes when on deck.

The weapons in the containers include drones for surveillance as well as some drones for attacking hostile warships. In addition there might be one or two anti-ship missiles. These missiles are relatively small and can be launched vertically.

The Dutch will not reveal which of their merchant ships is armed and will provide protection to all their cargo ships operating to or from Dutch ports. There is no urgent need for armed merchant ships just now. By revealing their plans, actual or potentially hostile nations must now be worrying about Dutch merchant ships.

What the Netherlands is going is reminiscent of the Q-Ships used by Britain against U-Boats, and the thirteen armed but disguised German merchant vessels used during both World Wars to prey on allied merchant vessels. During World War I Germany was blockaded by British mine fields near the German coast and the Royal Navy based in nearby British anchorages. The German fleet sought to break out of the British blockade in 1916, but the subsequent Battle of Jutland was one by the British.

This left the Germans with their fleet of Q-Ships that continued to operate. The Q-Ships didn’t have to be built from ships in Germany. There were many nations willing to allow the local German Embassy to buy and arm merchant ships to be Q-Ships. Overall, more than a hundred British, Americans and German Q-Ships were deployed during both World Wars. The Q-Ship concert didn’t work but nations continue to change that. The Netherlands is the latest navy to adopt a Q-Ship type vessel. In this case the Dutch are arming their naval replenishment ships. These vessels deliver food, fuel and other supplies to Dutch ships operating in distant waters. Because these ships were sometimes operating in dangerous areas, they are armed with surveillance and attack drones. Hidden deck guns are now a thing of the past. A cargo container on deck full of drones gets the job done.

The Americans are arming some of their cargo containers with cruise missiles, but that is an offensive weapon presently carried by warships and submarines. The Dutch are concentrating on some upgraded and improved warship designs that plan to use missile armed cargo ships as storage vessels for missiles and a launching site for missile attacks planned by the crew of a nearby warship, or some naval officer back in Holland.

The Dutch are moving forward with their missile armed merchant ship concept. An important aspect of this is that these merchant ships can carry hundreds of cruise and anti-ship missiles. This is a less expensive solution than what the United States did with four of their SSBNs Nuclear ballistic missile submarines) converted by 2008 into four SSGNs.

The SSGN is a cruise missile-armed submarine. One of these SSGNs was used in combat during 2011 against targets in Libya. With nearly all the country overrun by rebels, it was possible to get a close look at how well a new version of the American Tomahawk did in its first combat use. The missile performed as predicted. Most of these Tomahawks were fired during the initial air attack. Moreover, most of the more than a hundred Tomahawks were fired by one ship: the nuclear submarine USS Florida. This was the first time an SSGN saw combat, but not the first time nuclear subs have fired missiles in wartime. U.S. SSNs have fired Tomahawks several times.

Each of these SSGNs carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, as well as space for 66 SEAL commandos and their equipment. The idea of converting ballistic missile subs that must have been scrapped to fulfill disarmament agreements, had been bouncing around since the 1990s. After September 11, 2001, the idea got some traction. The navy submariners love this one, because they lost a lot of their reason for being with the end of the Cold War. The United States had built a powerful nuclear submarine force during the Cold War, but with the rapid disappearance of the Soviet navy in the 1990s, there was little reason to keep over a hundred nuclear subs in commission. These boats are expensive, costing over a billion each to build and over a million dollars a week to operate. The four Ohio class SSBN being converted each had at least twenty years of life left in them.

The idea of a sub, armed with 154 highly accurate cruise missiles, and capable of rapidly traveling underwater, ignoring weather and observation, at a speed of over 1,200 kilometers a day, to a far off hotspot, had great appeal in the post-Cold War world. The ability to carry a large force of commandos as well was also attractive. In one sub you have your choice of hammer or scalpel. Whether or not this multi-billion dollar investment will pay off remains to be seen, but it certainly worked off Libya.

The current Dutch fleet consists of three diesel electric submarines, two frigates, four destroyers, four offshore patrol vessels, three amphibious warfare ships, four minesweepers, and about thirty support and small patrol boats. The Netherlands is spending nearly three billion dollars to build four new Walrus-class 3,200 ton diesel electric subs equipped with AIP (Air Independent Propulsion) and more effective lithium ion batteries. These subs won’t be completed until the early 2030s. The Dutch don’t reveal how many armed merchant ships they presently have and plan to modify or build.