German Navy

kato said:

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

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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.

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.

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



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 said:

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.

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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.

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.

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.

WSV finally took delivery of its new large hopper dredge Osteriff in December.

The ship was ordered in late 2016 from Pella Sietas and was originally planned to be commissioned in December 2018. Officially there were then delays in procuring equipment - unofficially delays were because the shipyard didn't pay for dredging out the river sludge and thus couldn't launch the ship as it couldn't lower the pontoon it was sitting on. Construction "continued" until the shipyard went bankrupt for a second time in 2021 and finally folded. End of 2022 WSV contracted Blohm+Voss (NVL) to complete the semi-finished ship. Due to this history cost increased from 95 million to 142 million Euro. Sea trials were conducted October to November 2025, federal flag hoisted on Dec 17th.


Osteriff will be stationed in Wilhelmshaven next to the Bundeswehr's main naval base and - among other similar tasks - is used for dredging the seaside path to the base to maintain its accessibility. She'll also be used in the Weser and Elbe estuaries, although especially in the Elbe dredging is mostly contracted out. Osteriff is a 133m long mid-sized commercial-design hopper dredge with about 12,000 tons / 7,500 m³ transport capacity and facilities for 24/7 two-watch operations - for which WSV also maintains two crews for her.

Pella Sietas built two other ships of the same design for a German company before. Both now operate for other owners around South-East Asia and Australia. Offhand one is being used in an ongoing decade-long contract to dredge at the port of Melbourne.

WSV operates an older hopper dredge of near-identical size - Nordsee - and was originally planning to operate both in parallel. In particular the commercial dredging industry is pushing for WSV to retire Nordsee (and contract them instead). This is somewhat unlikely since a) WSV tends to retain older ships until no longer viable to run and b) Nordsee was rebuilt in the 80s to also support pollution control operations.

Couple pictures:
http://instagr.am/p/DSVBCqOCOIY/ http://instagr.am/p/DSVE4YEDO29/

Fassmer has formally started a second production site by renting Hall 290 of Volkswerft Stralsund.


First shipbuilding project will be the assembly and outfitting of Walther Herwig IV, an 88m / 5,700-ton fisheries research ship for federal agency BLE.

Supposedly (well, the press states it like that) Fassmer is "considering" using the shipyard for building ship hulls in the future. Currently Fassmer generally subcontracts this part to Western Baltija Shipbuilding in Klaipeda, Lithuania - 50 km from the Russian border, and hence geostrategically in a somewhat difficult position.
Plans to move that seem to be quite a bit more concrete than "supposed" though. Fassmer currently - since right before christmas - has a job offer open for a "Manufacturing Coordinator", tasks include "management and manufacturing oversight for ship hull building for new ship projects at the Stralsund site".

Volkswerft Stralsund last ran under the "MV Werften" group (owned by Hongkong-based cruise ship company Genting) from 2016 to 2022. During the Cold War - as a state-owned shipyard of East Germany - the shipyard concentrated on building fishing trawlers for export to the Soviet Union, to the point where they were apparently the biggest certified producer worldwide in their niche between 1975 and 1989, with around 1400 ships (of only a handful standard designs) built during that time.
Hall 290 was built at the site in 1997 as part of the privatization restructuring towards building passenger cruise ships. It supports construction of ships up to 300m length and has a ship lift for launch/recovery able to lift 21,000 tons (one of the largest worldwide).

kato said:

Supposedly (well, the press states it like that) Fassmer is "considering" using the shipyard for building ship hulls in the future. Currently Fassmer generally subcontracts this part to Western Baltija Shipbuilding in Klaipeda, Lithuania - 50 km from the Russian border, and hence geostrategically in a somewhat difficult position.

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I would imagine any further new builds in Klaipeda would be questionable given the current situation.

kato said:

Hall 290 was built at the site in 1997 as part of the privatization restructuring towards building passenger cruise ships. It supports construction of ships up to 300m length and has a ship lift for launch/recovery able to lift 21,000 tons (one of the largest worldwide).

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Any new potential large builds in the pipe for Germany? Two yards working on F126? There seems to be a lot of reorganising of facilities and ownership. TKMS NVL, yards at Kiel, restructures etc.

StingrayOZ said:

I would imagine any further new builds in Klaipeda would be questionable given the current situation.

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I think Walther Herwig is actually the only hull that Fassmer still has in Klaipeda. Possibly one of the two Singaporean BP86-derived OPVs they started in April - one of those was definitely transferred to Germany in December. Two more of those are still on contract, but haven't been laid down yet.

There's a couple current projects Fassmer is probably trying to get. One is SAMSE for school boats (tender for first two open since October i think), one is MUSE for six 10,000-ton new tenders (was planned to be signed in 2026). The Navy also needs new harbor tugboats sometime soon, possibly a couple more than the six they currently have. And Federal Police still needs a replacement for their 66m OPVs sometime around 2030.

The ships being discussed seem to be much bigger than the Type 404s, which I think is what they're meant to replace. Is this to do with deployment further from home?

swerve said:

Is this to do with deployment further from home?

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No, slightly different requirements resulting in a different ship profile.

The currently afaik fixed-down requirements (since April '25) are for a 130m-long, 10,000-ton displacement "compact variant" with three main tasks:

• supply and support of boat squadrons (corvettes, minehunters, submarines), mostly for fuel and ammunition - primary task
• limited transport of troops (special forces platoon) and vehicles (maybe 300 lane meters) in a reconfigurable flex deck
• possibility of deploying UUV, USV, UAV from flex deck via helicopter deck, stern boat ramp etc.

The vehicle transport capability is neither amphibious nor large-scale, but intended for e.g. deploying a harbor security company with its vehicles. Think very similar to the flex deck on Danish Absalons. Alternative uses for the flex deck are e.g. patient transport / medevac, or carrying a relatively large number of containers internally - also for containerized workshop sets (for SUG system support groups like on Elbe).

The supply capacity is sized around supporting corvette squadrons, and basically around four to five times the capacity of the current Elbe class. The current Elbe class ships are simply too small for that task, they'll fill up a single empty K130 and would then have to refuel themselves. They're also planned to be a bit faster for optionally acting as an escorting supply ship for solo frigate deployments. And they'll get proper RAS gear.

Like the Elbe class they're planned to serve as command ships with staff rooms for a CTG, In comparison to the Elbe class the new tenders will be better armed, although that doesn't make for a difference in size. Pair of RAM launchers plus 30mm guns. Helo deck for a heavy helicopter with onboard resupply facilities, no hangar (same on Elbe).

During planning they also evaluated a more compact version (without flexdeck or troops, just container space - pretty much a direct Elbe replacement with larger supply capacity) and a less compact version (mostly larger flight deck and hangar facilities, possibly something welldeck-like for also supporting larger UUVs). The big variant would have been around 160m and 13500 tons, i.e. LPD-sized.

Ta. I see how it could be useful.

P.S. to above: They basically looked at what industry had to offer, and then scaled back and stated what they wanted different. Industry offers were basically Fassmer's MPV120 and NVL's NTV130. The current NTV130 is fairly close to requirements, as NVL only cranked it out after the preliminary ones were published. (*)

The flex deck came about because on the Elbe class, the containerized SUG is a) not NBC-protected and b) exposed to the weather. That's basically what they wanted to change. Plus the containers on deck are really bad for the radar cross section. And since they're putting in a large container deck internally for that reason anyway, sizing it for other transport roles was a given.

(*) NVL, based on that, is now trying to "sell" it as a drone mothership.

There are reports in the media that Germany is talking to TKMS about buying three MEKO A200 frigates, prompted by dissatisfaction with & delays in the F126 project. It's suggested that it's a stopgap.

Thoughts? Has anyone heard more?

https://www.reuters.com/business/ge...least-3-frigates-tkms-sources-say-2026-01-21/

The government has (supposedly) decided to sign a socalled "pre-contract" in which they give TKMS money to "prepare" for a contract for Meko frigates. This pre-contract has two deadlines with different payouts - March 31st and April 30th, with the latter lining up with the date by which they have to decide whether to continue the F126 project and which new general contractor to switch it to.

A local CDU politician (who's also sitting on the defense committee and is the navy matters spokesman for his party in parliament) has been lobbying for this on behalf of TKMS for a couple months. They'll basically hand TKMS 150 million just to get ready for a potential switch in design in case they decide to terminate or reduce F126. The pre-contract concept as a "safety option" was pushed in through the budget committee on behalf of both government parties.

Both the number and the type of Meko frigates hasn't been published in any way, and is complete hearsay. Same for any construction deadlines.