German Navy

[kato]

Two of the three ships, Emden and Fehmarn, were commissioned last month. Third one is planned to commission before end of the year.

The third fast customs patrol ship - Friesland - was commissioned a week after that post.

Rheinmetall CEO Papperger held a speech at the handover since he intends to buy the shipyard (subject to approval by authorities). He mostly claimed wanting to double revenue generated by the shipyard, although not necessarily with ships but instead also using it to prefabricate armor parts for tanks.

WSV multipurpose emergency ship Scharhörn (one of those 105m, 7000t ships) should also be commissioned sometime soon. Her predecessor of the same name went up for sale this week. Her certifications expired in June.

 

[Ananda]

More firepower - F127 Frigates to be Armed with 96 Vertical Launch Cells - Naval News

The future German F127 air defense frigates will be significantly more combat-ready than previously planned. As hartpunkt has learned from industry sources, the ships are to be equipped with a total of 96 cells for the Vertical Launch System (VLS).

www.navalnews.com

F124 AAW Frigate replacement will be much more significantly armed and larger in size and length. 96 VLS cells clearly move away from present German Navy design on smaller number of VLS relative to the size.

 

[kato]

German Hydrographic Service BSH - part of the Ministry of Transport - has ordered two new survey vessels from Astilleros Gondan.

https://gondan.com/en/gondan_contract_build_two_re/

German Government awards Astilleros GONDAN the construction of two advanced hydrographic research vessels

www.navalia.es

The two new 70m vessels will replace two 52m vessels built in the mid 90s (Deneb and Wega) with planned delivery in 2029 and 2030 for a cost of around 135 million Euro per ship. Primary task for these ships is offshore detail survey of the seaground and underwater obstacles using sonar and other means, including for military purposes; in addition they perform maintenance on BSH's network of large sensor buoys.

According to BSH the new vessels will also deploy autonomous UUVs in addition to ROVs (and divers). Unlike other BSH ships - the agency has three more - they are not intended to work as motherships for smaller survey boats.

Gondan is a Spanish shipyard that mostly does ships for the offshore (wind/oil) industry as well as smaller ferries and mid-sized tugs, but also has recent experience with super-silent hydrography/oceanography vessels (e.g. they built the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen) as well as with more sensitive government contracts (patrol boats for Guardia Civil). The only German competitor submitting a bid in the tender was apparently Fassmer.

 

[kato]

WSV multipurpose emergency ship Scharhörn (one of those 105m, 7000t ships) should also be commissioned sometime soon. Her predecessor of the same name went up for sale this week. Her certifications expired in June.

Scharhörn commissioning is planned between April and June. They've scheduled another trial cruise before that - to Norway - during which the towing capacity will be tested to the design 145-ton bollard pull. The ship is at her new homeport in Kiel since mid-December.

WSV has a problem with the ship - and its size - at their base in Kiel though. The current WSV base in Kiel-Holtenau was planned to move about 800m north into the former Naval Aviation base in Kiel-Holtenau, where there are two quays of 120m length available. The current base has a dedicated quay of 80m length sized exactly for the old Scharhörn. This move was also part of a larger renovation of the former Navy base by the city of Kiel, which was planning to have 2000 apartments built there as well as a small new commercial zone next to the new WSV base.

The shaded blue/white area (labeled "ABz Kiel") is the planned new WSV stationing - the red area was the old one. The Kiel canal exit connecting North Sea and Baltic Sea is immediately south of this with the Navy Base beyond that, the small Kiel Airport (owned by the city) is immediately to the west.

As of July 2025 these restructuring plans were put on hold since the Bundeswehr has issued a stop on sales of any former military areas. The City of Kiel does own most of the area, but has entered (ongoing) negotiations with the Bundeswehr since with the current geopolitical climate there's the potential for the federal government simply expropriating the area for military use.

The new Scharhörn is now temporarily moored at a commercial port area (Ostuferhafen Cargo Centre) just north of the Navy Arsenal - several kilometers south. Since Kiel doesn't really have much commercial shipping moorings of that size - it's mostly a ferry/passenger port besides the Navy use - they're probably paying premium for that spot though.

 

[kato]

P.S. to last post: I just read the ten-year-old feasibility study for that move of ABz Kiel of WSV.

The base has to accomodate more than just Scharhörn of course. It's a wider-use station for non-navy public services, and especially if the investment to move it is taken that plus possible further integration has to be taken into account.

Planning - if you update it to current ships - requires:

• mooring 1 (quayside): accomodates either Scharhörn, Arkona (the other WSV multi-purpose vessel for the Baltic) or one of the above 70m BSH vessels - primarily for loading of equipment, crew changes, refueling, minor maintenance, unloading the oil pollution tanks etc.
• mooring 2-3 (pontoon): accomodates two ships, intended for the 38m small OPV Schleswig-Holstein of customs, the FPB27 coastal patrol boat Falshöft of state police or alternatively Saatsee (a WSV 26m multipurpose tug for the Kiel Canal).
• mooring 4-5 (quayside): accomodate two BL20 class small coastal buoy tenders of WSV, Seeadler and Bussard - required to be next to buoy depot.
• mooring 6-10 (pontoon): accomodate five 17m speedboats (the customs patrol boat Amrum as well as four pilot boats - currently separate from the WSV base, but were considered for integration. Might be again now, after their separate base was flooded in 2023).

Fehmarn, the new 55m OPV (for customs) for the Western Baltic - which is subordinate to the customs precinct Kiel - is not actually stationed there (but at Lübeck port), so does not have to be accomodated.

 

[kato]

The last Sprotte class LCM is finally leaving public service in Germany this year.

The Sprotte class (Type 521) was a modification of the British LCM(8) with 28 units built in 1965 to 1967 for the Bundeswehr's amphibious logistics units, then by the 80s assigned to naval base commands for logistics purposes. The Bundeswehr retired most of these boats at the end of the Cold War, with 11 units sold to Greece (and still in service there). A handful ships were retained in Bundeswehr Service, though from ca 2000 laid up at the Navy Arsenals. Those were sold to private owners and scrappers around 2008.

Five Sprotte class LCM were transferred to the German coastal states in 1995 which used them for pollution control duty with only minor modifications - they were mostly used to transport and deploy larger floating oil barriers (deploy = have people push 'em over the bow ramp...), but also to land material and Bv206 tracked vehicles. The last one of these remaining is LCM16 Orfe used by Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state.

The coastal states jointly ordered a replacement for Orfe from Damen at the beginning of 2025 which just had its launch three weeks ago and is planned to commission early this year. This is a more standard 24m multi-purpose tugboat with an open workdeck. She's planned to also be used for patrols, survey and research, and for that reason can carry containers and has a moonpool for UUV deployment. Like Orfe she'll be stationed at Lubmin/Sassnitz on Rügen island for duty along the eastern sea border of Germany.