Egyptian Navy launches fourth Gowind-2500 corvette “Luxor”

The Egyptian Navy launched its fourth Gowind-2500 corvette, named Luxor at Alexandria shipyard on 12th May, the Naval Group has announced via Twitter. The Egyptian defense minister has attended the launching ceremony of Luxor, which is being built locally in cooperation with France’s defense company Naval Group.

The Naval Group praised the performance of Alexandria Shipyard and emphasized on the improved skills of a civilian shipyard being able to achieve complex military qualifications and high-quality results.

In 2014, Egypt signed a €1bn contract with Naval Group to buy four Gowind 2,500-ton corvettes with an option for two more. Three of the corvettes are to be built locally by Alexandria Shipyard within a technology transfer agreement.

In April 2015, Naval Group started cutting metal for the very first Gowind 2500 corvette, and it was launched almost a year later in September 2016 in France. At the same time that the first corvette appeared in 2016, there were major works going on inside the Alexandria Shipyard Company in Egypt to build the second Corvette, and it was launched in September 2018. The first corvette was commissioned in September 2017 and the second one is expected to enter service end of this year.

Gowind Class corvette:

The Gowind 2500 is a steel mono-hull vessel offering superior stealth capabilities. Its low-acoustic signature and radar cross section avoid easy detection by hostile platforms, making the corvette stealthier than other vessels in its class.

The vessel allows the integration of multiple mission modules to meet emerging operational requirements of the users.

The corvette has a length of 102m, beam of 16m, depth of 5.4m, and displacement of 2,500t. It can complement a crew of 65, and 15 Special Forces.

The corvettes will be armed with an OTO Melara 76mm main gun, two Nexter Narwhal 20mm cannons, a vertical launch system (VLS) for 16 VL Mica surface-to-air missiles, eight MBDA MM40 Exocet anti-ship missile launchers and two triple torpedo launchers.

The Gowind 2500 is powered by combined diesel and electric propulsion system. The power-plant provides a maximum speed of more than 25kt. The corvette can attain a range of 4,000 nautical miles (nm) at speeds of 15kt.