Article Posted on : - Oct 22, 2012

Normandie, the French navy's third FREMM frigate, was launched Oct. 18 at the DCNS shipyard in Lorient. A DCNS photo.

PARIS (BNS): French naval shipbuilder DCNS has launched the third of the 12 FREMM multimission frigates ordered by the defence procurement agency (DGA) for the navy.

The FREMM multimission frigate Normandie was launched recently at the Group's Lorient facility in the presence of Minister for Defence, Jean-Yves Le Drian and Minister for the Economy and Finance, Pierre Moscovici.

For the next few months DCNS teams and subcontractors will continue construction and assembly work on the frigate. The next major phase is installation of the mast infrastructure, which will house the vessel's sensor suites such radars, antennas, cameras, jammers.

Construction of FREMM Normandie, the third unit of the class, got underway in October 2009. This next- generation multimission frigate will carry a complement of 108, or around half as many as previous- generation vessels with similar capabilities. It will offer highly flexible capabilities for anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine missions, according to DCNS.

The FREMM programme calls for 12 ships - 11 for the French Navy. They were ordered by the DGA, which appointed OCCAr, the joint armaments cooperation organisation, to oversee the programme. The 12th vessel will be built for the Royal Moroccan Navy.

FREMM frigates are built under DCNS prime contractorship. These heavily armed warships carry state-of-the-art weapons and systems including the Herakles multifunction radar, Aster anti-air missiles, Exocet MM40 anti-ship missiles and MU90 torpedoes.