On 29 September, the Istanbul Shipyard held the steel-cutting ceremony of the Pakistan Navy’s (PN) first MILGEM corvette. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presided over the event alongside various government, naval and industry officials from Turkey and Pakistan, including Pakistan’s Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Zafar M. Abbasi.
The PN currently has four MILGEM corvettes on order, with all four ships due for delivery to the PN by 2023-2024. Construction of the first ship will last 54 months, but the remaining three ships will follow the first in quicker succession, i.e., at six month intervals of one another.
Under the contract, which was signed in July 2018, the first two ships will be built at Istanbul Naval Shipyard in Turkey, while the third and fourth ships by Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works Limited (KSEW) in Pakistan.
Pakistan will also receive “complete transfer of technology and the transfer of intellectual property rights for the design of these ships,” according to the contract.
The fourth ship was to be a new frigate class (i.e. Jinnah-class) jointly designed by the primary contractor, ASFAT (Military Factories and Shipyards Management Inc), and Pakistan’s Maritime Technologies Complex (MTC). However, it appears that the new frigate design will apply to all four ships.
MILGEM-Class Ship is a capable warship which could be compared with any contemporary warship of modern navies. The new MILGEM-Class corvettes feature stealth technologies and can perform search, rescue, patrol, observation, and anti-submarine warfare operations.
The corvette has an overall length of 99 meters, a waterline length of 90.5 meters, a beam of 14.4 meters and a design draft of 3.6 meters. The displacement of the vessel is 2,000 tons. It can be fully operated at the sea state 5 and accommodate 93 crew members, including the aircrew.
The corvette is equipped with eight Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles and a single mk31 RAM self-defense missile system, which can launch RAM anti-aircraft missiles. The Harpoon missile can strike the targets in a 124 km range while traveling at a speed of Mach 0.71.
The ship is fitted with two 324 mm mk32 tubes to launch mk46 torpedoes. The torpedo has a range of 7,315m and can attack high-performance submarines.
A 76 mm dual-purpose gun is fitted on the vessel. In addition, two remotely controlled 12.7 mm machine guns are mounted on the stabilized machine gun platform. The corvette is equipped with an aft flight deck to allow the operation of a helicopter.
