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At last, common sense and rational considerations appear to have prevailed over ambitions and pride. The United Arab Emirates' frigate programme, which of late had raised increasing perplexities by taking on sort of hubris aspects, has been brought back to the realm of what the UAE will actually be in a position not only to procure, but also to man and to operate efficiently. At the same time, a new crash programme for large FPBs has been launched, the latter representing the indispensable basis on which the frigate programme will be built and, thus, taking priority over the former. With the UAE's overall naval expansion programme now formulated in a coherent and credible form, we can finally start talking serious business - at both industrial and operational level.
Over the past few years, the UAE Navy (actually, Abu Dhabi) has been pushing forward a programme for a class of up to six multi-purpose frigates, expected to cost a total of some $2 billion. The key operational rationale for this programme is the perceived need to counter the Kilo class submarines in Iranian service, but there also are other considerations; in particular, the relative ease with which Coalition missile-armed helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft dispensed with Iraqi surface naval assets (including modem and well-equipped ex-Kuwaiti vessels) during the Gulf War did not go unnoticed, and stresses a requirement for robust air defence capabilities. Accordingly, although the new frigates were originally visualised in the region of a 1 lOm/2,500t design (which, incidentally, would have already implied quite a significant quantum jump for the UAE's fleet), the Emirates' demand for a very capable combat system, including most notably a medium-range surface-to-air missile system for area air defence as well as two ASW helicopters with their relevant hangars, quickly pushed dimension to 125m and well over the 3,000t mark.
In early 1994, five shipyards - DCNI of France, Lurssen Werft of Germany, Newport News Shipbuilding of the US, Royal Schelde of the Netherlands and Vosper Thornycroft of the UK - were downselected for the programme, and by December 1994 they had all duly submitted their proposals based on two different equipment options. After downselection, Lurssen reached a technical cooperation agreement with Blohm + Voss (which had been eliminated from...