The Royal Saudi Navy frigate Al Riyadh began sea trials this September. To be delivered next July by France's DCN, Lorient, the 4,650-ton, 25-knot, diesel-powered ship is not scheduled to enter active service until April 2003. Also ordered in 1994, the second ship, the Makkah, was launched on 20 July 2001 (see inset). The Al Damman, added to the three-ship program in 1997, was laid down on 26 August for launch next April. The 436-foot-long design is an expanded version of the French La Fayette-class "stealth frigate" but with a heavier armament that includes an antisubmarine warfare capability. Two eight-cell vertical launch groups for Aster-15 surface-to-air missiles are installed, and the ships also will carry eight MM 40 Exocet antiship missiles. Plans to install two launchers for Mistral heat-seeking point-defense missiles have been abandoned on cost grounds. The 100-mm gun seen forward will be replaced by a 76-mm OTOBreda gun prior to the Al Riyadh's delivery, and the other two ships will have the less-expensive gun from the outset. Also fitted will be four fixed 21-inch torpedo tubes and a hangar for two AS.365F/AS Dauphin helicopters. A crew of 25 officers and 155 enlisted is planned. The design may be further adapted for a series of 17 frigates to be built for the French Navy.
The Greek Navy's newly acquired frigate Bouboulina, seen here undergoing a refit prior to delivery on 1 December, had served since 1983 as the Royal Netherlands Navy's Pieter Florist. Decommissioned on 24 January 2001, the 3,786ton ship was bought on 7 June to become the seventh Kortenaer-class frigate to be operated by the Greek Navy; an eighth is expected to be acquired soon as a result of the retirement on 12 October of the Jan van Brakel. Only two Kortenaers remain in Dutch service-the Philips van Almonde, to be retired next May, and the Bloys van Treslong, which is to deploy to the Caribbean for two years next July and then to return home for disposal. Two others have been sold to the United Arab Emirates. The Netherlands may continue to operate two modified, Standard SM-1 surface-to-air missile-equipped units, the Jacob van Heemskerck and the Witte de With, for up to another decade.
A sort of "Non-flying Dutchman," the ever-completed aircraft carrier Varyag is seen here on 11 July 2001 still in the Black Sea a year after beginning a 16month tow to nowhere while the Turkish and Chinese governments wrangled over whether and how to move the 1,005-foot hulk safely through the twisted channel of the narrow Dardenelles. Agreement finally was reached late in October, and 11 tugs replaced the single commercial tug that had been forlornly towing the Varyag in circles since shortly after departing Mikolayiv, Ukraine, 16 months earlier. The unlucky ship broke loose from her tow on 4 November after passing through the Dardenelles, and was temporarily adrift in the Aegean Sea. The Chinese government had agreed to pay for any damages the ship might have caused while in Turkish waters en route to China to become a floating casino. Not only has the rustedout hulk been stripped of all weapons, sensors, cabling, and even the engineering plant, but even the hull plating forward at the waterline has been removed and crudely patched. Clearly, fantasies about the ship being completed as an operational aircraft carrier for the Chinese Navy are unfounded.