Pictures: German Navy’s First F125 Frigate Baden-Württemberg Begins Sea Trials
http://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3816By Stelios Kanavakis
German Navy’s (Deutsche Marine) first F125 frigate has begun sea trials on 6 April. The “Baden-Württemberg” has sailed from the shipyard in Hamburg to Cuxhaven. With a crew of 60 men and women, the vessel will assume a series of tests for the systems, subsystems and weapons of the platform.
German Navy’s (Deutsche Marine) first F125 frigate has begun sea trials on 6 April. The “Baden-Württemberg” has sailed from the shipyard in Hamburg to Cuxhaven. With a crew of 60 men and women, the vessel will assume a series of tests for the systems, subsystems and weapons of the platform.
The F125 frigate "Baden-Württemberg" at sea (source: 2016 Bunde Wehr / Alexander Gottschalk)
The F125-class frigates are built by ARGE F125 consortium, lead by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and supplemented by Blohm + Voss, Nordsweerke and Lurssen Werft. A total of four vessels will be built for the German Navy. The “Baden-Württemberg” is scheduled for delivery in 2016 and the last one in 2019.
Although the F125-class ships are frigates their displacement is much larger, closer to that of a destroyer, as it reaches 7,200 tonnes. They are built to replace the eight Bremen-class frigates, which entered service in the ‘80s, and carry out a wide range of missions, both combat and humanitarian.
Their crew is comprised on average of 150 people, although that can change depending on the mission. The vessels’ main weapons are the Oto Melara 127/64 LW Alleggerito gun, 2 x remote-controlled 27 mm Rheinmetall MLG27 cannons, 5 x HITROLE naval turrets with 12.7 mm heavy machine guns, 8 x Boeing RGM-84 Harpoon missiles, 2 x Raytheon RIM-116 RAM CIWS systems and a series of non-lethal weapons.
