Navantia details Navantia/Saab/CEA bid for Canadian Surface Combatant

On 30 November, Navantia announced that it had submitted a bid for the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) programme. The team, which includes Saab and CEA Technologies, is offering a solution based on Navantia’s F-105 frigate design fitted with Saab’s 9LV combat management system and CEA’s radar.

Navantia’s F-105 frigate is a well-proven design: five units are currently operating in the Spanish Navy, five with the Royal Norwegian Navy and one unit, HMAS HOBART, has recently become operational in the Royal Australian Navy. MONS asked Navantia what are the main design modifications that have been made to the frigate to respond to the CSC programme requirements: “The most remarkable changes in the ship are due to the new combat system, but the impacts of those changes have already been assessed and are limited to specific areas of the ship.”

Moreover, as the ship will be required to operate in environments as diverse as Northern waters and tropical climates, MONS asked Navantia how the baseline design of the ship would be modified address these challenges. Navantia responded that the ship class had already proved itself participation in Operation “Atalanta,” an ongoing counter-piracy military operation off the Horn of Africa and in the Western Indian Ocean and during the deployment in 2016 as flagship of the Standing NATO Maritime Group One (SNMG-1) in Northern Europe. Navantia added: “F-100 design has been adapted to address these issues without a significant impact on the ship.  The design solutions that Navantia offers provide a wide range of proven options in diverse operational scenarios, which is an advantage with regard to shortening the design phase and enabling the start of the production of the vessels on time.”

The proposed design will be capable of covering operational requirements from frigates’ low and mid-intensity missions to destroyers’ higher threat scenarios. To this end, Navantia will also provide training support to the Canadian shipyard, together with Canadian companies. “Training services are critical for the qualification of future crew and maintainers of the future frigates. Local capability to deliver the training services will benefit the Royal Canadian Navy throughout the lifetime of the 15 vessels,” Navantia concluded.

AV