French Procurement Agency orders 9 Zodiac "ECUME" RHIB for French Navy Special Forces
 
France’s Direction générale de l’armement (DGA) announced it ordered on December 9th 2013, 9 multimission rigid hull inflatable boats from Zodiac Milpro. The multi-mission RHIB are for the French Navy’s special forces (Commandos marine). The order is part of the ECUME (Embarcations commandos à usage multiple embarquables) programme.
France’s Direction générale de l’armement (DGA) announced it ordered on December 9th 2013, 9 multimission rigid-hulled inflatable boats from Zodiac Milpro. The multi-mission RHIB are for the French Navy’s special forces (Commandos marine). The order is part of the ECUME (Embarcations commandos à usage multiple embarquables) programme.
 
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Naval Forces News - France
 
 
 
French Procurement Agency orders 9 Zodiac "ECUME" RHIB for French Navy Special Forces
 
France’s Direction générale de l’armement (DGA) announced it ordered on December 9th 2013, 9 multimission rigid-hulled inflatable boats from Zodiac Milpro. The multi-mission RHIB are for the French Navy’s special forces (Commandos marine). The order is part of the ECUME (Embarcations commandos à usage multiple embarquables) programme.
     
French Procurement Agency orders 9 "ECUME" RHIB for French Navy Special Forces
The Ecume is the first Special Forces RHIB with diesel engine.
(Picture: French Navy/Alain Monot)
     
The Ecume is the first Special Forces RHIB with diesel engine. It is capable of water raids over long distances as well as ships assaults at sea. Delivery of the 9 vessels is scheduled for the first half of 2015. The order follows the evaluation of the prototype boat by teams from the DGA and French Navy. These evaluations were successfully completed in late November 2013.
     
French Procurement Agency orders 9 "ECUME" RHIB for French Navy Special Forces
The Ecume is able to perform a broad spectrum of missions.
(Picture: DGA)
     
The Ecume offers significant evolutions of certain performance required by the Commados marine. Flexible and versatile platform, fast, rugged, particularly manoeuvrable even in heavy weather, the Ecume is able to perform a broad spectrum of missions. It may carry raids on water over long distances from a carrier vessel (such as an OPV), catch up with an hostile ship to take it over. The Ecume comes with an airdrop system allowing urgent and distant deployement directly at sea with C130 Hercules, C160 Transal or Atlas A400M military transport aircraft.
     
The Ecume is based on Zodiac Milpro's ZH935 Mach II
     
Based on the Zodiac Milpro Hurricane ZH935 Mach II, the Ecume has a full load displacement of 7 tons, a length of 9.30 meters and a width of 3 meters. It is capable of reaching speeds of over 40 knots and travel about 200 nautical miles (fully loaded).

Link to Zodiac Milpro Hurricane ZH935 Mach II technical datasheet