Submarine Recovery System Increases Efficiency

France, Norway and the United Kingdom have established a multi-national project to develop a new submarine rescue system capable of rapid worldwide deployment in the highly unlikely event of a submarine sinking. Multi-national cooperation offers an extremely cost and operationally effective way of meeting the demanding requirements and Rolls-Royce has been contracted to provide the NATO Submarine Rescue System (NSRS) to these Participating Nations. The Engineering Business Ltd (EB) is part of the Rolls-Royce team, tasked with supplying the Portable Launch and Recovery System (PLARS).



After two years of intensive development the PLARS has successfully completed its Factory Acceptance Testing. To mark the occasion, representatives of the UK Defence Procurement Agency and Royal Navy visited EB's new Wallsend facility on behalf of the three nations to witness the PLARS ongoing trials.



The PLARS is a portable system that allows the safe launch and recovery of a submarine rescue vehicle from a suitable support vessel. The system is designed for rapid shipment by road and air and subsequent mobilisation within 18 hours. Once operational it has to be able to launch and recover the rescue vehicle in extremely challenging sea conditions (in up to 5m significant waves).



The PLARS is transported as seven separate loads; each one designed to be no bigger than the space envelope of a 40' container (40'x8'x8' - or 12.192m x 2.438m x 2.483m) and designed to fit into an aircraft.



Engineering Business has supplied many offshore launch and recovery systems for a variety of applications in submarine telecoms, oil and gas and renewables, but the PLARS has required the most exacting attention to detail to meet the design constraints.



Following a further programme of system testing and operator training, the PLARS will be delivered to Rolls-Royce before the year end.