Germany's Second F-125 Frigate Class Ship Completes Builder's Test

Germany’s second F-125 frigate class ship Nordrhein-Westfalen has completed builder’s test.

From 27 January to 4 February 2017, the new vessel demonstrated its navigation characteristics and naval engineering functions, Unified Armed Forces of Germany announced last week.

“Everything has gone smoothly and the results are really good,” said Marc Steffens, F125 project manager at BAAINBw.

During the next weeks and months, the “Nordrhein-Westfalen” will be travelling the North and Baltic Sea. It will be put through its paces in a number of further sea trials before its acceptance by the BAAINBw acceptance committee.

While at sea, the military crew will undergo training on the ship like it was done on the lead ship of this new frigate class, the “Baden-Württemberg”.

Two quadruple missile launchers for the Boeing RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile are installed on the missile deck forward of the funnel. The Harpoon missiles are armed with a 227kg warhead and use active radar homing. The missiles have a high subsonic speed (Mach 0.9) and a range of up to 130km.

The F125 has two 21-cell MK49 launchers armed with the Raytheon RIM-116 rolling airframe missile (RAM). The RAM point defence missile is a lightweight, infrared-homing, surface-to-air missile for deployment against incoming anti-ship cruise missiles.

The forward launcher is installed immediately forward of the bridge and the aft launcher is installed on the roof of the helicopter hangar just forward of the helicopter deck.