According to Der Spiegel, former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government agreed to sell three MEKO A200 frigates to Egypt shortly before the inauguration of the new German government led by Olaf Scholz. The publication claims that, on December 7, then-Economy Minister Peter Altmaier sent a letter to the Bundestag about the agreements. The agreement exports three MEKO A200 frigates to Egypt and 16 Diehl Defence air defence systems.
The MEKO 200 is a frigate design by the Blohm + Voss shipyard of Germany, part of the MEKO family of warships. They are 121 metres long and can carry 120 crew members. It is armed with a main gun, two secondary guns, two cannons, eight surface-to-surface missiles, 32 surface-to-air missiles, two anti-submarine warfare (ASW) torpedo tubes, and sea mines.
The frigate is designed for long-term operations across various general missions and tasks, including patrol and interdiction, special force operations support, SAR, and humanitarian operations.
It can also engage in full-four-dimensional warfare (AAW, ASW and ASuW, BCW). The frigate has a maximum speed of more than 29 knots and a range of 7,200 nautical miles at 16 knots thanks to a CODAG-WARP (water jet and refined propellers) propulsion system. This arrangement allows for extremely quiet acoustic signatures, a high degree of propulsion redundancy and damage survivability. The frigates are primarily built by the German company TKMS.
