AVRASYA İNCELEMELERİ MERKEZİ CENTER FOR EURASIAN STUDIES

SPAIN SEEN JOINING , , ON EUROPEAN PATROL PROGRAM

- 10.02.2020

Defense News (07 February 2020)

Plans by Italy and France to win funding for the construction of a new corvette have been boosted as looks set to follow Greece and sign up to the program.

The planning for a new 3,000 ton corvette is a cornerstone of the new naval joint venture between Italys Fincantieri and Frances which was launched last year and named Naviris.

The two firms are hoping to match Italian and requirements with a jointly built, modular vessel that can handle patrol and surveillance missions as well as taking second-tier roles in anti-submarine and anti-surface missions.

The program, dubbed the European Patrol Corvette, has also been inserted in the EUs so-called Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO, list of recommended pan-European defense programs, which according the EU offers members options on how to plan and bridge capability gaps in a collaborative manner.

The PESCO corvette project is coordinated by Italy, with France as partner, but in recent weeks, Greece has also joined as a partner, following discussions between the countries navies. And now Spain is likely to follow, an industrial source told Defense News.

Naviris presented the program to Navantia which is interested and it is likely Spain will sign up, said the source.

On its PESCO listing for the corvette, the EU states the objective is to design and develop a prototype for a new class of military ship, named European Patrol Corvette (EPC), which can host several systems and payloads, in order to accomplish, with a modular and flexible approach, a large number of tasks and missions.

Adding new partners to the roster of Italy and France is key to winning EU funding. PESCO programs are possible candidates for cash from the , but only if they have more than two partners on board. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/02/07/spain-seen-joining-greece-france-italy-on- european-patrol-corvette-program/

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