Although the Blohm + Voss MEKO RMN design was selected in October 1997 for the hotly contested contract for up to 27 offshore patrol ships for the Royal Malaysian Navy, the construction contract for the first six ships was not signed until November 2000. The first prefabricated section for the initial ship (inset) was placed on the assembly ways at the Blohm + Voss yard at Hamburg on 13 November 2001, and the 1,650-ton, 22-knot ship is to be in service by June 2004. In mid-2003, Blohm + Voss is to provide fully outfitted, prefabricated modules for two ships to PSC-Naval Dockyard (PSC-NDSB) at Lumut, Malaysia, and construction responsibility for later ships gradually will be transferred to PSC-NDSB. The 299-foot ships will be powered by two 8,000-brake-horsepower Caterpillar 3636 diesels and will have a range of more than 6,000 nautical miles at 12 knots. Initial armament will be an OTOBreda 76-mm gun forward and a 30-mm OTOBreda-Mauser 30-mm gun aft, but provision has been made for a 21-round RAM point-defense missile, launcher forward and four antiship missiles amidships. A crew of 78 is to be carried.
Economic and political difficulties have restricted construction of new ships and craft for the Indonesian Navy, but a long-standing program to build various versions of the German Lurssen PB 57 diesel-powered patrol craft has continued. The first of an eventual 14 of the 190.6-foot craft was completed by P.T. PAL Shipyard, Surabaya, in June 1988; four of that search-and-rescue version had been completed by the following April, along with four configured for antisubmarine warfare. Two more in a simplified patrol craft version were delivered during 199091, and four of an updated variant were ordered in June 1993. The first of that latest version—the 447-ton, 27-knot Todak, here attending a naval review in Malaysia in October—was commissioned in 2001, and the last of the quartet is planned for delivery in 2004. The forward gun mount is a Bofors 57-mm SAK-2, amidships are two 20-mm guns, and a Bofors 40-mm mounting is on the fantail.
Scheduled for delivery to the Yemeni Navy early this year is the 1,382-ton (full load displacement) amphibious landing ship Bilquis (the name of the biblical Queen of Sheba), seen here last October while at the Naval Shipyard, Gdynia, Poland. Built by Stocznia Polnocna, Gdansk, to its NS-722 design, the ship is the latest variant of the long line of landing ships designated the Polnocny class by NATO. Able to transport 111 troops (169 in an emergency) and five 42-ton tanks (or the equivalent in other vehicles) some 975 nautical miles at 13 knots, the 290-foot Bilquis joins three 221-ton Deba-class utility landing craft delivered from Poland in mid-2001 to reconstitute Yemen's amphibious warfare fleet. The Bilquis also is to be used for disaster relief and as the Yemeni Navy's cadet training ship.