VIENNA — Swedish defense firm Saab has secured an 8.7 billion kronor ($900 million) contract to supply combat systems and sensors for the German Navy’s new MEKO A-200 DEU frigates, the company announced Thursday.
The deal with German prime contractor TKMS comes just weeks after Berlin scrapped its troubled, heavily delayed F126 frigate program, pivoting instead to a smaller, off-the-shelf design to fulfill urgent NATO anti-submarine warfare requirements.
Under the agreement, Saab will provide composite superstructures and integrate its 9LV combat management and fire control systems onto four vessels.
The sensor package includes the long-range Sea Giraffe 4A Fixed Face and the lightweight Sea Giraffe 1X radars.
Saab stated that deliveries to TKMS will take place between 2029 and 2032, aligning with Berlin’s aggressive timeline to get the first ship in the water by the end of the decade.
The Bundestag’s budget committee greenlit the roughly €6.3 billion ($7.2 billion) procurement of the four TKMS-built warships on July 8, which includes an option for four additional hulls.
Saab CEO Micael Johansson noted the deliveries would “significantly enhance” the German fleet’s anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-surface warfare capabilities.
While the 4,000-ton MEKO A-200 DEU represents a more mature, commercially available design than its canceled 10,000-ton predecessor, the accelerated timeline and complex multinational systems integration pose unique challenges of their own.
Linus Höller is Defense News’ Europe correspondent and OSINT investigator. He reports on the arms deals, sanctions, and geopolitics shaping Europe and the world. He holds master’s degrees in WMD nonproliferation, terrorism studies, and international relations, and works in four languages: English, German, Russian, and Spanish.