The German Navy’s first F125 Baden-Württemberg-class frigate has been christened during a ceremony at the Hamburg site of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, a unit of ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions.
Scheduled to be delivered in November 2016, the first ship is being developed by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems-led ARGE F125 consortium.
ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions CEO and ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems supervisory board chairman Dr Hans Christoph Atzpodien said: "The F125 is a completely new type of frigate with numerous technological innovations, which will secure a solid basic workload for the shipyards involved in the coming years and help the German naval shipbuilding industry maintain and expand its leading position in key technologies."
The ARGE F125 consortium, comprising Friedrich Lürssen shipyard and Blohm+Voss Shipyards, received €2bn contract in 2007 to build a total of four F125 Baden-Württemberg-class ships for the German Navy.
The four Baden-Württemberg-class F125 vessels, which will replace the German Navy’s F122 Bremen-class ships, will be developed specially for current and future deployment scenarios for the German Navy.
Capable of remaining at sea for 24 months, the 149m-long and 18m-wide ships can be deployed for conflict prevention, crisis management and intervention/stabilisation operations in the international arena, as well as for the traditional tasks of national and alliance defence.
Integrated with two 21-cell Mk49 launchers, the Baden-Württemberg-class ships are also armed with the Raytheon RIM-116 rolling airframe missiles (RAM) and can operate the NH-90 helicopters.
The 7,000t vessels can cruise at a maximum speed of 26k using new combined diesel electric and gas (CODLAG) electrical propulsion system with a General Electric LM 2500 gas turbine, four MTU 20V 4000 M53B diesel engines and two Siemens electric motors.
Image: Illustration of a German Navy’s F125 frigate fitted with Cassidian’s TRS-4D naval radar. Photo: courtesy of Arge F125/© 2012 Cassidian an EADS Company.
