French Navy Commissions New Spy Ship

eDefense - Detect. Decide. Shoot. Survive. (dead link)
This looks like a good idea. Put SIGINT equipment on a ship. 1 persistent surveillance platform. Have to read up more on its capabilities...

(UPDATE: 27th May 2007) Since the demise of eDefense, opswarfare has found a comprehensive (but in french) page on this vessel. Fire up your translation software...

(UPDATE: 14th March 2008) Using the wonders of technology (more exactly the Internet Archive), the text of the original eDefense article is reproduced below.

Named after famed French naval engineer Stanislas Charles Henri Dupuy de Lôme (1816-1895), the Dupuy de Lôme or "MINREM" (Moyen Interarmées Naval de Recherche ElectroMagnétique) was handed over to the French Navy at Toulon on Dec. 15, 2005. At the ceremony, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie described the new signals-intelligence (SIGINT) vessel as "a unique strategic weapon against terrorism and a system that will allow France to hunt for enemy radio communications worldwide, close to any flashpoint."

The Dupuy de Lôme is France's newest spy-ship. She was handed over to the French Navy on Dec. 15 2005. Built in the Netherlands and outfitted in France with her complete array of secret radio-interception and communications instruments, the new vessel is regarded as a potent tool in the global war against terrorism.

French Navy

The development of the Dupuy de Lôme is the first project of its kind for the French Navy, as it was designed from the outset, under a $147.4-million contract, as a SIGINT vessel to replace the modified vintage BTS (Bâtiment de Transport et de Soutien) Bougainville, a converted cargo ship that has been in service with the Direction du Renseignemt Militaire (DRM, French military intelligence) since 2000 (see "France Orders New SIGINT Vessel"). The performance of the ship is directly linked to her intelligence systems, the key capabilities of which are interception, eavesdropping, direction-finding, and technical analysis of radio and radar signals at sea, including the latest waveforms and the most advanced types of communications.