On September 28th, Nikólaos Panayotópoulos, the Greek Minister of Defence, Pierre Eric Pommellet, CEO of Naval Group, and Eric Béranger, CEO of MBDA, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to open negotiations to provide the Hellenic Navy (HN) with three Defence and Intervention frigates (FDI HN) and their equipment as well as an optional additional frigate.

The FDI HN frigates will be built in the Naval Group shipyard in Lorient, where the second in the series for the French Navy has just entered production.

The FDI HN will be an asset of power and sovereignty for Greece.

With the FDI HN, the Hellenic Navy will have a state-of-the-art, high-performance surface fleet.

As a first-rank frigate, the FDI HN is a compendium of the best technologies of Naval Group, Thales and MBDA, which will notably supply the ASTER 30 B1 and Exocet MM40 Block 3C missiles. It will be fully interoperable with European and NATO fleets.

Greece will become the second customer of this multi-mission frigate, bringing the number of units produced from five for the French Navy to eight in total, plus one as an option.

Naval Group is the European leader in naval defence. Naval Group uses its extraordinary know-how, unique industrial resources and capacity to arrange innovative strategic partnerships to meet its customers’ requirements. As a system-integrator and prime contractor, the group designs, produces and supports submarines and surface ships. It also supplies services to shipyards and naval bases.

Attentive to corporate social responsibility, Naval Group adheres to the United Nations Global Compact. The group reports revenues of 3.3 billion euros and has a workforce of 15,798 (data for 2020).

MBDA is the only European defence group capable of designing and producing missiles and missile systems that correspond to the full range of current and future operational needs of the three armed forces (land, sea and air).

With a significant presence in five European countries and within the USA, in 2020 MBDA achieved revenue of 3.6 billion euros with an order book of 16.6 billion euros. In total, the group offers a range of 45 missile systems and countermeasures products already in operational service and more than 15 others currently in development.

MBDA is jointly owned by Airbus (37.5%), BAE Systems (37.5%), and Leonardo (25%).