Türkiye to build three domestic frigates

The Turkish defence industry will use the production facilities of private shipyards to simultaneously produce three national frigates and transfer them to the command of the Navy.

While the construction of the TCG Istanbul, the first ship of the MILGEM I-Class frigate project, which is a continuation of the second phase of the MILGEM Ada class corvettes, is underway, work is beginning on the 6th, 7th and 8th ships, the head of the Defence Industry, Ismail Demir, told Anadolu.

According to him, it was decided to implement three projects of I-class frigates with Anadolu, Sedef, Sefine Shipyards, TAIS commercial enterprise and the business partnership STM Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret AŞ.

Drawing attention to the advantages of building Class I frigates by private shipyards, Demir gave the following assessment:

"To create sustainable military shipbuilding, it was considered expedient to build ships according to a model in which private shipyards are involved as manufacturers. With such a model, the advantage in the delivery time of three ships will be provided, knowledge and experience will be preserved and strengthened at the shipyards of the private sector in military shipbuilding, the growth and sustainability of the sector will be maintained, a high-quality product with great export potential will be introduced. Delivery of three ships is planned in 36 months. The total number of companies working on the project is about 200."

Demir explained that although most of the weapons and sensors on previously designed and built ships were supplied from abroad, almost all of them were developed and produced domestically.

The design of the ships is reported to include such national weapons as the Gökdeniz short-range air defence system, Cenk three-dimensional search radar, Akrep fire control radar, illumination radar, torpedo tube, the domestic MIDLAS vertical launch system and Hisar-D.