Greece's First FDI HN Frigate 'HS Kimon'

On October 4th 2023, the launching ceremony of the first Hellenic ship (HS) Kimon took place in the Naval Group shipyard of Lorient. Stéphane Frémont, head of Surface Combatants at Naval Group answers our questions during this milestone event.

Dimitris Mitsopoulos, our Greece based correspondent, explains why the FDI HN are important for the Hellenic Navy.

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The ceremonial launching took place in the presence of Sébastien Lecornu, French minister of the Armed Forces and his Greek counterpart, Nikolaos Dendias. The Chief Executive of the French Armament General Directorate (DGA) and his Greek counterpart, as well as the Chiefs of the French and Hellenic Navies General Staff were also attending the ceremony.

The launching of the FDI frigate Kimon is a major industrial and symbolic milestone in the FDI program for the Hellenic Navy. The contract for the procurement of three frigates, plus one optional, was signed with Grece on 24th March 2022. All three frigates are in production. The first pre-outfitted block of the second unit HS Nearchos has just been transferred into the dry dock for the keel laying, and the first steel-cutting of the third HS Formion frigate occurred on July 12th 2023. The next steps for HS Kimon are the first sea going scheduled for 2024, and the delivery in 2025.

The HS Kimon frigate is a 4,500-ton class high sea warship. Multipurpose and resilient, she features high level capabilities in all naval combat domains: anti-ship, anti-air, antisubmarine and special forces projection, with unique capabilities against asymmetric threats. She benefits from Thales’ latest innovations in radar, sonar and electronic warfare.

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[spiliarakos]

A beautiful and powerful design, if only we had the money to get 6-8 of them..and not just 3

[Mauros-Lykos]

Greek dominion over Aegean shall continue

[ΘανασηςΓριβας-ρφ]

A very good purchase for our navy. Hope that the idiots in our government will let our navy officers to use this expensive and very effective ship against our enemy. The Hellenic people didn't pay that ship just for foreign policy but to be used.

[chandrachurniyogi]

HN could do with a tad larger frigate of the HDI class . . . for e.g. a fleet of 8 brand new HDI class 5, 824 ton (6, 230 ton loaded) stealth guided missile advanced warfare frigate powered by iFuelCell™ RedOX-HYBRId® M-FEP system . . .

[vsimoul]

This is an excellent ship and will be a capability leap for Hellenic navy. But Greece needs to min max now and buy some cheaper and more versatile ships like the Absalon frigate (perhaps with some differentiation in the sensors so it has more commonalities with Kimon class and Hydra class). An Absalon-like solution would also give an extra dimension to the Hellenic Navy since those ships with the insane internal capacity can fulfill multiple roles, concealed from the enemy while still armed to the teeth.

[SecurityYT]

Is this design and developed by Greeks?

[theomaniatis-fe]

TURKEY BEHAVE GREECE ARE VERY STRONG AND VERY DANGEROUS DONT REGRET IT TURKEY

[baremetalmafia]

Fuckin shame GREECE!! Can’t build their own warships. Like, WTF I don’t like this timeline.