Pirate attack on "Hellas Aphrodite" - another serious incident off the coast of Somalia. The Greek product tanker Hellas Aphrodite (30,000 tonnes, flagged Malta) was boarded by armed pirates around 560 nautical miles south-east of Eyl on 6 November. The 24 crew members saved themselves in the ship's citadel before the...
Rohde & Schwarz Spain has supplied communication systems to the Spanish Navy and Navantia for the first of the Navy's new F110 frigates. The F110 frigates of the Bonifaz class will replace the Santa Maria class and are intended for a variety of maritime security and defence tasks. Rohde & Schwarz Spain has developed a comprehensive external communication system for...
With its carrier group in the eastern Mediterranean, the Armada has shown what the actually quite old Harrier vertical take-off aircraft are still capable of in their land attack support role: From the "Juan Carlos I", the core of the Dedalo carrier group consisting of the frigates "Blas de Lezo" and "Victoria" as well as the amphibious assault ship "Castilla" and another two...
The Catalan daily newspaper 'La Vanguardia' reported that the elder of the two daughters of the Spanish royal couple Felipe VI (56) and Letizia (52) is now completing her naval service in the Armada Española as part of her three-year military training. For the 19-year-old heir to the throne, Princess Leonor of Spain, the new year begins with an approximately five-month...
As much as the construction progress of the new F 110 frigate at the Navantia shipyard in Ferrol is ahead of schedule in Spain, the results of the submarine construction at the Cartagena shipyard (also Navantia) are behind the planned milestones. The first boat, the S-81 ISAAC PERAL, has been underway for several months...
Since April 2019, the state-owned Navantia shipyard has had a contract with the Spanish Navy for the construction of five F-110 multi-purpose frigates - first delivery in 2028, worth around 4.4 billion euros. Special new features of this ship type are the block production in 33 hull sections introduced for the first time at Navantia and a land-based "digital twin", which...
The Armada currently has eleven frigates: From the 1980s/90s, six slightly modified replicas of the American OLIVER H. PERRY frigates of the SANTA MARIA class (F80, 138 metres, 4,000 tonnes) and five frigates of the ALVARO DE BAZÁN class (F100, 146 metres, 6,200 tonnes, German-Dutch-Spanish design, built by Navantia) from 2002 to 2012....
The OCEAN OSPREY (67 metres, 2,300 tonnes) was purchased by the Spanish Navy's Logistics Command from the shipping company Navaleva SL in mid-September for around 15 million euros in order to be available in future as a multi-purpose logistics vessel and tug for the Armada from the Ferrol Naval Arsenal (north-west Spain). Ten years ago, the...
Once again this year, the Armada shows a cross-section of its capabilities in one hundred seconds - short, concise, with strong images. "We are navy" is the title of the world's second-oldest navy with a sense of history and self-confidence (only the Portuguese navy has been in the business a few years longer). Not only because of its 27,000 posts, but also with its tonnage...
The "Armada Española" is passé! The Spanish navy has been called the "Armada Española" since Franco's time, no "Real" before that, because back then the Generalissimo ruled - and the king was far behind. Before that, it was called "Marina Española" (after restructuring in the early 1900s), and before that also "Marina de Guerra" (sometime in 19....
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