Electric propulsion has made its way back into the limelight on the military stage in the past decade. Although it has never really gone out of fashion, conventional submarines staying true to this concept for over a hundred years, electric propulsion was last seen in its prime during World War II when the USA had over fifty surface such ships in its fleet. With the developments in electrical machines and semiconductor technology electric propulsion is back and several nations - in particular the UK, USA, France and the Netherlands - have adopted this on their new-builds, this time taking it a step further making electricity the principal means of distributing energy onboard thus creating an All Electric Ship (AEA). The new-builds that have adopted AES are mostly larger ships such as destroyers and carriers. But the AES concept is also a good solution for smaller ships and Sweden is one of few countries exploring this idea and has undertaken studies which demonstrate that the AES concept works well when applied to corvettes and boats. The advent of electrical weapons and armour makes it even more important to develop the small AES. This paper gives insight into a small country's efforts, with limited budgets, in the area of small AES.
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