A Dutch F125?

It looks like the proposed German F125, initially criticized for not being desirable on the export market, may indeed have an interested customer. In a September 4th article in Mer et Marine, the Netherlands is mentioned as interested in the F125. This may or may not be accurate, but there are reasons why it probably is.

The Mer et Marine article isn't really about Dutch interest though, the article claims that the German Court of Auditors (the accountants) aren't happy about the F125 price, claiming the new ship could cost as much as 3 billion Euros. For only 4 ships, that would represent a substantial naval investment by Germany. The accountants don't seem to like anything about the contract, which they claim is designed poorly and only to the favor of the defense industry. That is their job though, sort of like how the CBO hates all procurement costs for any military program, apparently accountants are the same everywhere.

The Dutch and Germans are partners and have experience in joint programs, so this really isn't anything new about a potential partnership in a shipbuilding program. The F125 contract already has foreign expenditure in the program, and that almost certainly includes Thales NL.

When the announcement came that the 127mm lightweight Otobreda naval gun was chosen over the MONARC, it reminded me that the Netherlands and Italy had already begun working on long range projectiles for the 127mm Otobreda. Given the ground attack role of the F125, and the apparent substantial cost of the F125, it is possible the desire to cut cost in developing the new gun led to the final 127mm choice, and the existing interest by the Dutch to field such a gun in the future was as much as a factor in the final F125 design as the purchase of U212s by Italy. You never know with the webs weaved in the European defense community.

In the end though, the F125 itself is impressive. Designed as a stealth ship, which might be just a vogue way of saying 'new' in maritime circles these days, the F125 does have a considerable amount of redundancy, and is built to a higher combat standard than is typically seen in European warships, which tend to cut costs by using a modified upscale commercial standard (not to be confused with a lower cost civilian standard or a higher cost military standard common in the US Navy). At 6800 tons and designed for 2 year deployments, it is an interesting deviation from how other countries are trying to incorporate land attack on the cheap if at all, and a much broader approach than what other European Navies are considering with FREMM.