Saudi Arabia To Buy German Submarines Worth $16 Billion

Saudi Arabia will reportedly purchase five Type 209 submarines for 12 billion euros ($16.5 billion) from Germany.

And plans to buy 25 vessels in all in the long term, according to German weekly Bild am Sonntag.

The newspaper said it had information that the German chancellery had in the summer already signaled a willingness to examine such requests from Saudi Arabia "favorably" as soon as a new government was in place. 

The submarines would be constructed by the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) and the Nordseewerke Emden, both shipbuilding companies located in the north of Germany, according to the report. 

The company ThyssenKrupp, to which the two shipyards belong, said there was "no project involving submarines for Saudi Arabia," but refused to say whether preliminary talks on such an order had been held.