First steel cut for French FDI frigate programme

Naval Group has begun the manufacture of Amiral Ronarc’h, the first of five new Frégate de Défense et d’Intervention (FDI) frigates for the Marine Nationale (French Navy).

A steel cutting ceremony was performed on 24 October at Naval Group’s Lorient shipyard in Brittany, northwestern France. The commencement of the programme’s manufacture phase follows the completion of a design definition review in late May.

Scheduled to enter service with the Marine Nationale from 2025, the 4,500-tonne displacement FDI ships are planned to progressively replace the five existing La Fayette-class frigates. The new ships, which will serve alongside eight Aquitaine-class Frégate Européenne Multi-Missions (FREMM) multi-mission frigates and two Horizon air defence frigates, are being introduced to meet the requirement for 15 first-rank frigates confirmed in the Loi de Programmation Militaire (LPM) 2019–2025 military funding programme and the navy’s own Plan Mercator force structure roadmap.

The Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), the French armament procurement agency, in April 2017 notified main contracts to Naval Group and Thales for the EUR3.8 billion (USD4.2 billion) FDI programme. Naval Group is leading the ship design and construction activity and is also responsible for the ship’s SETIS combat management system. Thales will supply the principal above-water and underwater sensors (including the Sea Fire four-face active electronically scanned array (AESA) multifunction radar, Sentinel digital radar electronic support measures system, and the CAPTAS-4 compact low frequency active/passive variable depth sonar), and the Aquilon integrated communications suite. Other key suppliers to the programme include MBDA, Bertin Technologies, Safran, MTU, and iXblue.