According to reliable information, the decision to procure the 4 new corvettes from the Navy of our country has been postponed. As sources of the Ministry of National Defense emphasize, there will be an extension of a few months in the final decision. The responsible minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, stated in an interview in mid-June (in “News”) that “at the moment, the Navy is examining the final proposals from the companies interested in the corvette program and the upgrading of four MEKOs so that the decisions be taken within the summer, according to the timetable’. Summer has passed, autumn has come and as those in the know point out to us, we will go for winter and see…
The reason is that in addition to the French, the Dutch and the Italians who have expressed a relative interest in us buying this particular type of ship from them, the Americans are now coming and making a new tempting proposal that needs further consideration. The USA offers us state-of-the-art corvettes, where there will be Greek participation not only in their construction (which is a prerequisite anyway) but also in their design.
Until recently, those in the know point out that the French builders had the qualification, even with a small difference from the other countries that try to tempt us to buy ships from their own shipyards. The key asset was that the French Gowind corvettes offer interoperability with the Belh@rra frigates we have already ordered. After all, if the corvettes are selected, they will also be built in the shipyards of the Naval Group group in France.
It should also not be forgotten that these state-of-the-art ships (both the Belh@rra frigates and the smaller Gowind corvettes) have the ability to “lock on” targets at fairly long distances, which means that the Greek Fleet will it can control not only the Aegean, but also a significant part of the eastern Mediterranean.
The Italians, for their part, offer us the also very reliable corvettes of the Trieste-based Fincantieri company, which is the largest shipbuilding group in Europe and the fourth largest in the world.
