Keel laying for the second K130 Batch 2 Corvette of German Navy

Wolgaster Peene shipyard of Lürssen Defence Co. laid keel of the second K130 Braunschweig class corvette named “Emden” on 30th January, German Navy (Bundeswehr) has announced via official website and Twitter. At the announcement, they emphasized that the first steel components of the ship had only been cut four months earlier.

The “Emden” is the seventh ship in the Braunschweig class of the German Navy. The Navy put the first five of this type of warship into service between 2008 and 2013. The Bundeswehr deploys them internationally, including for the UNIFIL United Nations Interim Force in Lebanonmission off the coast of Lebanon. In 2017, the Bundeswehr placed an order for five additional class 130 corvettes . Work on the new “Cologne” corvette then began in February 2019 .

Starting from 2022, six to ten ships are planned enter the service for Bundeswehr. The construction process is supplied by a consortium of three companies: Fr. Lürssen Werft, Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems and German Naval Yards Kiel.

During the ceremony, “Today’s keel laying shows impressively how the team of employees from different companies has grown together and works in close cooperation with the customer,” said Tim Wagner, Managing Director of Lürssen Werft.

Two of the five foreships are being built at the Lürssen shipyard in Bremen, three are being manufactured and pre-equipped at the German Naval Yards site in Kiel. The five stern ships are manufactured at the Wolgaster Peene shipyard. The Lürssen subsidiary Blohm + Voss in Hamburg is responsible for the union of the fore and aft ship, which is known as the “wedding thrust”. The roughly 89-meter-long corvettes will also be fully equipped and put into operation there. They also go through their functional tests and approvals from Hamburg – in coordination with the specialist departments of the client, the Bundeswehr and the Navy.

Braunschweig-class corvette :

The K130 Braunschweig class is Germany’s newest class of ocean-going corvettes. Five ships have replaced the Gepard-class fast attack craft of the German Navy.

In October 2016 it was announced that a second batch of five more corvettes is to be procured from 2022–25. The decision was in response to NATO requirements expecting Germany to provide a total of four corvettes at the highest readiness level for littoral operations by 2018, and with only five corvettes just two can be provided.

The K130 corvettes are designed with stealth features, low draft, and highly automated weapons and defence systems to support littoral warfare and particularly for operations of a multi-national crisis reaction force.

The corvettes have a continuous maximum speed of over 26kt and a cruising range of more than 2,500nm. The displacement is about 1,580t, overall length 88m and breadth 13.2m. The K130 corvettes have an endurance of seven days or, with tender support, 21 days.

The K130 class carries four RBS15 missiles and two Raytheon / RAMSYS Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) 21-cell mk49 surface-to-air missile launchers. The ship’s main gun is the Oto Melara 62-calibre 76mm Super Rapid naval gun, which has a rate of fire of 120 rounds a minute. The corvette also carries two 27mm Mauser guns.