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Saudi Arabian Chief of Staff General Fayyad bin Hamed al-Ruwaili, the Chief of Saudi Naval Forces, Admiral Fahad Bin Abdullah Al-Ghofaily, and president of Navantia Ricardo Domínguez have officially commissioned the Saudi Navy’s fifth corvette, the HMS Unayzah.
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The delivery and commissioning of HMS Unayzah, built at Navantia’s Bay of Cádiz shipyard, is the fifth and final corvette to be delivered to the Royal Saudi Navy.
HMS Unayzah, as the rest of her class, was built to be one of the world’s most technologically advanced and powerful corvette to meet the key findings of the Saudi vision 2030, possessing distinctive capabilities to handle multi-combat missions with high efficiency to enhance the combat readiness of the Royal Saudi Naval Forces (RSNF), to defend the strategic and vital interests of the kingdom, and to maintain maritime security in the region.
The delivery of HMS Unayzah was supported by the Saudi defence industrial based, namely' in-country systems integration, final construction fitting out, extensive combat systems trials, and live firings carried out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
HMS Unayzah and its sister ships are based on Navantia’s Avante 2200 design, modified to meet the requirements of the RSNF, offering advanced performance, excellent work at sea, high survivability, and ability to operate in extreme temperatures.
The contract for the construction of five corvettes entered into force in November 2018 and since the launch of the first unit (July 2020), Navantia has already launched the five units with a period of four months between each one, which means achieving this milestone in a record time of three years, with deliveries taking place after just over three years from the cutting of the first plate of each ship.
Concurrently, around 700 crew members, engineers, and maintainers of these corvettes are completing the education and training process at the Navantia Training Center (NTC) in San Fernando.
In addition to the corvette contract, Navantia agreed with SAMI (Saudi Arabian Military Industries) to create a joint venture in Saudi Arabia, an alliance that allows Navantia to position its integrated systems and technologically advanced solutions in the Arab market, an area of influence, aligned with the company’s internationalisation strategy.
The contract assumes a global workload of around 7 million hours and 6,000 jobs over five years. Of these, more than 1,100 are direct employees, more than 1,800 are collaborating industry employees (more than a hundred companies are participating in the program), and more than 3,000 indirect employees are generated by other suppliers.
