Sebastian Schulte, Bonn - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
17 October 2016
Germany will buy an
additional five K130 type corvettes in 2017 to offset delays to the MKS 180
Multi-Role Combat Ships (MRCSs) programme, the German coalition government
announced on 14 October.
"To meet new security
needs in the Baltic Sea, in the Mediterranean Sea, and globally, the coalition
plans to buy five new corvettes for EUR1.5 billion [USD1.64 billion] for the
German Navy," the two rapporteurs for the ruling coalition on the
influential parliamentary budget committee, Johannes Kahrs and Eckhard Rehberg,
said in a joint statement.
The news follows the
German Ministry of Defence (MoD) notifying parliament in early October that the
final contract negotiations concerning the planned four MKS 180 MRCSs needed to
be extended, delaying the project by six months.
A new EUR1.5 billion
budget line for the programme will be added into the 2017 defence budget. It
has been suggested that the five ships will be funded by drawing on the MKS 180
budget and an increase of the defence budget. The repurposing of MKS 180 funds
towards the new batch of K130s will be introduced into the final reading of the
upcoming 2017 budget in November. The first two corvettes are expected to be
delivered in 2019, with the remaining three ships to follow in 2023.
The delay does not spell
the end of the MKS 180 programme, but means it will be up to the incoming
government and new parliament (following the federal elections in late 2017) to
re-evaluate the project. IHS Jane's understands that both the
German Navy and the MoD
intend to stick with the planned four, plus an optional
extra two, MKS 180 ships. The plan to build more K130 corvettes is thus an
attempt to both prevent capability gaps resulting from delays to the MKS 180
project and to increase platform numbers at the same time.
Original post: janes
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K130 Braunschweig class Corvette: Details
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