With the multi-purpose platform Dom João Segundo preparing for operations, Portugal is putting together a new ship, a new capability and a new way of doing things – all of which will bring new impacts for the navy and the country.
The Portuguese Navy’s new ship Dom João Segundo (also known as D João II) is continuing its progress towards entry into service and towards bringing a capability that will have a politico-strategic impact for Portugal in a security context and a ground-breaking capability impact for the navy in an operational context.
At the strategic end of this scale, the multi-role, maritime uncrewed system (MUS)-focused ship will enhance capacity to support Portugal’s security and economic needs at home and further afield. At the naval operational end it is effectively a new ship type, with its capability consisting largely of MUS systems to support both naval operational and scientific research tasks.
The navy is beginning the process of bringing the ship from launch (on 7 April 2026), at the Damen Galati shipyard in Romania, to planned entry into operational service in early 2027. In so doing it is piecing together a capability that will bring Portugal a ‘strategic mosaic’ of benefits: demonstrating how the ship will be a national-level security and economic asset; briskly integrating not only traditional ship systems but an unprecedented level of embarked, organic MUS capability, enabled and enhanced by a complex but crucial command-and-control (C2) layer; and scaling up this MUS capacity on board to support the ship’s multi-role, multi-domain output requirements.
When assessing the impact of these different outputs the navy will deliver with Dom João Segundo, the ship’s first commanding officer (CO) told Warsight that this impact can be considered at two levels.
“First is looking at the ship as a strategic capability,” said Captain António Mourinha. “This is in the sense that being a multi-purpose ship allows us to fulfil a large spectrum of missions; some are connected to our maritime spaces – especially the Azores and Madeira, our Atlantic islands – and the need to be able to monitor and explore those spaces and provide support.” The ship brings capacity to maintain sea lines of communication to provide naval or national logistics support and emergency response in these areas, he added.
In naval operational terms, this illustrates how the new ship is effectively two types in one platform; its large, flat spaces, hangars, re-supply capacity and extensive C2 means it can also operate as a support ship. “The navy has been longing for a logistics vessel for a long time,” said Capt Mourinha, “so this mix is strategic for us.”
Moreover, the ship’s extensive MUS capacity will enable the testing of new concepts for tasks like logistics; for example, uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) or uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) could be used to conduct ship-to-ship or ship-to-shore logistics support.
Additionally, Capt Mourinha continued, Dom João Segundo carrying MUS and standalone sensors that can be deployed offboard to support both scientific research and military operations means Portugal will be better able to explore and secure its maritime spaces. This can comprise surveilling critical undersea infrastructure or collecting data to assist Portugal’s hydrographic office in work that includes underpinning the country’s effort to better understand its continental shelf. The ship’s ability to embark up to 36 scientists plus their equipment, including using dedicated laboratories and ISO container spaces, provides capacity to conduct scientific activities on board.
A ship of its size and endurance – displacing 7,000 tonnes full-load and with capacity for 45 days at sea (extendable through drawing on the ship’s re-supply-at-sea [RAS] rig) – can project its capabilities and capacities beyond Portuguese waters, for example to support the community of Portuguese-speaking countries: the ship’s hydrographic and scientific capabilities could again support research work in those countries’ maritime spaces, Capt Mourinha explained.
The second strategic level is Dom João Segundo’s ability to support Portugal’s economy and industry.
The ship’s concept was devised by the navy’s operational experimentation (OPEX) centre: CEOM (Centro de Experimentação Operacional da Marinha), based in Tróia, southern Portugal. “This ship can be a ‘CEOM afloat’: a mobile centre for experimentation that goes wherever it is needed to perform OPEX and to integrate new technologies, testing them in experimentation,” said Capt Mourinha. “So the ship will be able to support development of new technologies produced by Portuguese industry.”
“This is very strategic – not only on the military side, but from the technology, economy and knowledge perspectives,” he added.
With a scheduled delivery to the navy in early 2027, the ship’s programme is already very busy.
“We are working on developing all the integration processes for the ship,” said Capt Mourinha. This encompasses doctrine, organisation, training, materiel, personnel, leadership, facilities and interoperability; work on each is conducted in parallel, given the overlaps between them.
Training, for example, involves both preparing personnel for their jobs and conducting operational training with the ship, the latter contributing to the development of standards – and, thus, doctrine – for operating what is a new ship type. For example, Capt Mourinha explained, “Training connects with doctrine development because we need to develop the doctrine and the brand-new organisation of the ship to be able to develop training syllabuses we then put in place to train the crew.”
This layered process means pushing hard to get everything in place in time, but also presents an opportunity to consider new ways of operating this new ship type, especially to better reflect current and future naval operational requirements, Capt Mourinha added.
As regards timelines for generating ship operation, the first activity getting underway is commissioning individual pieces of equipment and systems on board. This complex phase, anticipated to last until October, involves running and testing these items with shipbuilder Damen.
Then, harbour acceptance trials will commence. With the ship still alongside, equipment and systems can be tested further in terms of demonstrating their operational capability.
Next, sea acceptance trials are set to take place very early in 2027, in Romanian Black Sea territorial waters. Here, the focus will fall in particular on systems that require the ship to be moving, including engines, power and propulsion, and navigation.
Upon conclusion of these trials, Damen is scheduled to deliver the ship to Portugal.
With the navy now moving through this three-step process, Capt Mourinha said plans currently are on track to meet an April 2027 delivery date.
Post-delivery, the navy will undertake work for a month or so on what the CO called ‘fine tuning’, like adjusting systems to reflect the navy’s doctrine. In addition, final crew training on ship safety and operation will occur, led by the navy’s ‘sea rider’ training staff. From this, the crew and ‘sea riders’ will develop both ship safety and operational training plans. The latter is important, Capt Mourinha explained, because it will enable the crew to prepare to meet the first few mission requirements.
The first mission capabilities likely to be developed are capacity to host scientists and conduct scientific research; to bring on board MUS systems and their teams; and to exploit the ship’s organic and embarked sensors, Capt Mourinha said.
Central to the operational training plans is developing capacity for the ship to accommodate different capabilities – provided in a modular manner by embarked teams, exploiting the ship’s space and flexibility – to meet the multi-role output.
The operational training plans will then be performed at sea to demonstrate the ability to operationally integrate the embarked capabilities and teams. “This is like building up a large mosaic, where several pieces are being added. The pieces require at least four important things: people, equipment, doctrine and training,” said Capt Mourinha. “The training together of these teams with the ship will be formalising the addition of a new capability to its portfolio.”
Regarding embarking new capability, “When we talk about MUS systems, we need to take into account that each single one is like a new addition too because it needs to be integrated and operated on board and to have doctrine designed for how we operate it,” the CO explained.
In early 2027 the navy is also aiming to achieve initial operational capability (IOC) with Dom João Segundo.
“Because of our IOC concept, this will be fulfilled before the ship sails for its first mission,” Capt Mourinha said. “As soon as we have a mission and we are trained and set to do it, we consider that we have fulfilled IOC.”
Beyond this, the navy plans to push ship capabilities forward with a view to meeting a longer-term aim for full operational capability (FOC) delivery in 2028. However, this timeframe is far enough away that it is not set firm. “FOC is a lengthier process because it requires adding these pieces that build the full mosaic of ship capabilities,” said Capt Mourinha. “We would like to have FOC in 2028 …. [However], a lot of things in the ship and a lot of stuff that is being done on board are quite new, so we need first to assess how long it will all take to be implemented.”
The complexity of a phase like FOC underlines the navy’s broader challenge of delivering a lot of work in a short timeframe to bring a new ship and a new concept to operational life. The navy is very focused on this challenge, however. “Integrating all this into a ship, into a single piece, is … complex and requires a lot of work. That is my main challenge now: to link all this together and put it into the ship,” said Capt Mourinha.
Alongside linking the new systems and capabilities, a particular layer of complexity is the C2 architectural framework to integrate, manage and operate these capabilities.
“The C2 is complex for a couple of reasons,” said Capt Mourinha. First, not only will the ship have more organic assets on board compared to other ships before (with the exception of an aircraft carrier), but these organic assets will be mostly, if not all, uncrewed. The concept is that many of these MUS will be operated simultaneously too, he added.
Second, the ship and its complex MUS operations will occur in waters where many other ships will be present, including from naval allies with some operating their own MUS. Many of these MUS systems, and the ships embarking them, will be connecting to maritime operational centres (MOCs) ashore as well. “So we need to have a common operational picture [COP] where we see each other and where we co-ordinate our operations,” said Capt Mourinha. To help unpick this C2 complexity, the navy has developed a modular C2 architecture platform bespoke to Dom João Segundo. Called Tróia, it was developed by CEOV (Célula de Experimentação Operacional de Veículos Não Tripulados): the navy’s MUS technology innovation and development cell, headquartered in Almada.
The IOC timeframe is also a framework within which the navy will have embarked on board Dom João Segundo an initial set of MUS capabilities, Capt Mourinha explained. While only an initial ‘load-out’, it will still demonstrate the multi-domain operational requirement the MUS capability must meet.
The initial fit will include four types of UAV systems: the Heifu Pro/BHV616 advanced tactical hexacopter; the VTOne fixed-wing UAV; the Uavision Ogassa; and the Tekever AR3-EVO.
Four USV types could be embarked: the navy’s own Barracuda, developed under CEOV’s Sea Tractor programme; two small, short-range USVs for hydrographic purposes (and in use with the hydrographic office); and possibly a multi-purpose version of the Portuguese-made MV7 (itself evolved from the Ukrainian Magura USV).
UUVs number two types: the Teledyne Gavia autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV); and the indigenous (navy/Porto University) SeaCON AUV.
The presence on board of MUS from all domains underscores the operational need to deliver MUS effect in all domains.
“These are the MUS we are planning to have at the very beginning,” said Capt Mourinha. “Then, we’ll be integrating new MUS as soon as they become navy capabilities. Meanwhile, we will be experimenting with others that might come from the navy and CEOV, or from industry.”
MUS capability will be embarked under X31 squadron: the navy’s in-house, all-domain MUS acquisition, experimentation, integration, and operation unit. X31 sits administratively under CEOM in Tróia and operationally under the Fleet Commander. Its task of accelerating delivery to the operational commander mirrors Dom João Segundo’s own concept of bringing new MUS capability into operational service quickly.
