CO RV ET T E S A platforms. More versatile are the Diponegoro class, four Sigma class corvettes built by Damen Schelde which are much more capable multi-role vessels. They are the favourites for Jakarta’s Nasional Korvet Plan (National Corvette Programme) whose objective is to build up to 20 ships in local yards. Financial limitations (and probably problems with yard capacity)
The very sophistication of corvettes may make smaller navies, in particular reconsider acquiring them
suggest that no more than one ship a year will appear possibly from 2012/2013 but Jakarta is seeking a foreign partner with Damen Shipbuilding the prime candidate although Fincantieri and Russian yards have not been ruled out. The very sophistication of corvettes may make smaller navies, in particular reconsider acquiring them. This is believed to have been
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what happened in Brunei which acquired three 1,940-ton Brunei class multi-role ships with local area defence Seawolf air defence missiles. A legal dispute over their capability ended in the yard’s favour and the ships are now up for sale from a subsidiary of Friedrich Lürssen Werft which has sold Brunei three Darussalam class ‘OPVs’ which should be with the Royal Brunei Navy by the end of summer. Bizarrely new ships, which are 80-metres long, feature Exocet MM40 surface-to-surface missiles, a Bofors 57mm gun and Terma Scanter 4100 2D surface search radar augmented by a Thales Sting Mk 2 electro-optical director. The Australian Customs Service (ACS) operates three OPVs which are converted merchant vessels of various sorts while New Zealand’s Project Protector included two Protector class OPVs based upon a Kvaerner Masa Marine design. They have, however, given some problems and in December, when they were due to deliver scientists and supplies to Campbell Island in the sub-Antarctic and HMNZS Otago was forced to return to