Aurelio Giansiracusa” Update 2″
After Greece, Spain also officially joins the European Patrol Corvette (EPC) program.
The main Spanish companies involved in the program will be Indra and Navantia.
“Update 1″
– Greece has officially joined the program that from binational to trinational becomes with the benefits that this novelty will bring to access the European funds connected to the Pesco initiative -“
The European Patrol Corvette is a PESCO (Permanent Structure Cooperation) project. A third batch of 13 additional projects to be developed under PESCO was adopted by the Council on 12 November 2019. The objective is to design and develop a prototype for a new class of military ship, named “European Patrol Corvette” (EPC), which allows to host several systems and payloads, in order to accomplish, with a modular and flexible approach, a large number of tasks and missions. Project Coordinator is Italy and project member, with Italy, is France. It seems that Greece, Bulgaria and Portugal are joining this program.
Fincantieri and Naval Group are the main contractors in this project. The EPC is likely to be the first vessel designed by the newly formed Italian-French joint venture NAVIRIS, with headquarters in Genoa, Italy and R&D center near Toulon, France.
The new EPC ship will displace between 3,000 and 4,000 tons and will be called to replace the Comandanti- Cassiopea – Vega-class patrol vessels of the Italian Navy (10 ships) and the Floreal-class frigates of the French Navy (6 ships ), as weel as other types of patrol boats and old corvettes.
These ships will be highly handy, will have excellent nautical qualities and seaworthiness, long range and will be able to operate in open seas missions and to manage protracted helo and uav operations. The vessels will be built following stealth principles. The EPC will be able to accommodate different Combat System versions and operational configurations.
