As Norway reshapes its naval and coastguard forces, Kongsberg Maritime is positioning itself to sit at the heart of the Royal Norwegian Navy’s future surface structure. The company has entered the pre qualification phase of Project P1118, the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency’s ambitious programme for a family of up to 28 standardised vessels that will underpin almost every non combatant mission the fleet undertakes. The move coincides with Kongsberg Maritime’s spin off from Kongsberg Gruppen and planned listing as an independent company in April 2026, underscoring how central naval business has become to its strategy.

A standardised backbone for a small navy

The P1118 is the cornestone of a structural reform of how the Royal Norwegian Navy acquires and operates auxiliary and support tonnage. The programme’s stated aim is to procure a new class of standardised vessels that can assume a broad portfolio of roles now performed by disparate coastguard and support ships, thereby driving down lifecycle costs and simplifying training, logistics and upgrades.

The Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency has framed the current phase as a national competition for vessel design and concept development, deliberately harnessing the country’s dense maritime cluster. For industry, the stakes are high. A common hull and systems architecture, multiplied across potentially 28 platforms, promises a rare long term production run in a European market where naval orders are often fragmented and bespoke. For Norway, it is a chance to hard wire industrial policy into fleet renewal, anchoring high value design and systems work on home soil while generating export ready solutions.

Concept imagery associated with Kongsberg Maritime’s ship design portfolio hints at what such a standardised platform might look like. A UT series multi purpose vessel (akin to the UT 512 coastguard and safety design) combines an ice capable hull with a large working deck, container positions for modular payloads, an amidships mission bay and aviation facilities. This kind of offshore derived architecture is optimised for towing, oil recovery, law enforcement, SAR and survey work, all missions that feature prominently in Norway’s future requirements. It is not yet a blueprint for P1118, but it illustrates the direction of travel: robust, multi role platforms rooted in proven North Sea designs.

Why Kongsberg thinks it can win

Kongsberg Maritime’s pitch for P1118 is built around scale, experience and integration. In its official announcement, the company stresses that it is entering the competition “with our full product portfolio, including ship design and integrated system solutions for advanced vessels”. That portfolio spans propulsion, power generation, automation, dynamic positioning, navigation, deck machinery and the Unified Bridge concept – a level of vertical integration few rivals can match.

The numbers are equally important to its narrative. Kongsberg Maritime has delivered complete ship designs for more than 1,000 vessels and has technology installed on more than 900 military platforms. It is already a key systems supplier on the multinational Type 26 frigate programme for the UK, Canada, Australia and Norway, providing several of the most critical maritime systems on board.

For Oslo, this track record reduces technical and programme risk in a flagship standardisation effort that will touch everything from coastal patrol to offshore support. Executive Vice President Per Havard Siljan Hjukse frames the bid as both a commercial and national project. P1118, he argues, is “a unique opportunity” for Kongsberg Maritime and the wider Norwegian maritime cluster, one that can generate significant export potential if the domestic reference customer is secured. The company’s promise to deliver solutions that blend “operational performance, cost efficiency and technological innovation” speaks directly to the Navy’s requirement for a versatile but affordable workhorse fleet. Norway’s harsh operating environment and dispersed coastline favour rugged offshore heritage hulls with high manoeuvrability and redundancy – precisely the design space where Kongsberg’s UT series has been refined over decades.

A spin off tailored for naval growth

The P1118 campaign also serves as a signal case for Kongsberg Maritime’s impending independence. Following shareholder approval in January, the division is on track to be listed as a stand alone company on the Oslo Stock Exchange on 23 April 2026, while Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and Kongsberg Discovery remain together in a restructured KONGSBERG focused on defence and surveillance. The Norwegian state has committed to retain its 50% stake in both entities, preserving their status as strategic national assets.

For the naval domain, the separation has several tangible implications. First, capital and management attention inside the new Kongsberg Maritime will be concentrated on maritime technologies – from offshore energy and merchant shipping to coastguard and naval platforms – without competing directly with missile, sensor and space programmes. This focus should allow faster decision making on investments in new ship designs, integrated bridges, autonomy and digital services that are increasingly central to naval procurement.

Second, an independently listed Kongsberg Maritime gains a clearer commercial profile for export customers. Foreign navies already know the brand through its contribution to Type 26 and a host of coastguard and auxiliary platforms; the spin off makes it easier to present a coherent, end to end maritime systems offering, while still leveraging close ties to Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace for combat systems and weapons where appropriate. In effect, Norway’s naval industry gains two specialised champions that can team flexibly at home and abroad.

Finally, the move locks Kongsberg Maritime even more tightly into the fortunes of the broader Norwegian maritime cluster. With more than 8,000 employees in 35 countries – around half of which in Norway – and over 80% of revenue generated outside the domestic market, the company is both a national industrial pillar and an export engine. CEO designate Lisa Edvardsen Haugan argues that an independent structure will better position the firm to seize “upcoming value creation in the global maritime sector”, particularly in dual use solutions that straddle civil and defence requirements.

In that light, P1118 is a proving ground for how an independent Kongsberg Maritime, working alongside a re shaped KONGSBERG and a dense ecosystem of Norwegian yards, designers and suppliers, can deliver a modular fleet concept that smaller and medium sized navies worldwide are actively studying. If Kongsberg secures the programme, the standardised vessels steaming out of Norwegian yards in the 2030s could double as a powerful showroom for the country’s maritime technology – and as the first major success story of Norway’s newly reconfigured defence maritime industrial landscape.

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