The French Naval group for the manufacture of warships and submarines announced the success of the first sea trials of the Egyptian corvette ENAS EL MOEZ 981 of the Gowind type.
This corvette was manufactured in the Egyptian Alexandria Shipbuilding Company by transferring technology as part of the Gowind Corvette deal.
In 2014, Egypt signed a €1 billion contract with Naval Group for the purchase of four Gowind-class corvettes with a displacement of 2,500 tons with the option to add two more corvettes. Separately, MBDA negotiated a contract to supply corvettes with MICA vertically launched air defense missiles and MM40 Block 3 Exocet anti-ship missiles, worth an additional 400 million euros, while Naval Group negotiated a 100-200 million euro contract for torpedoes.
Three of these ships will be built locally by Alexandria Shipbuilding Company as part of the technology transfer agreement. Obviously, it was President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who decided that these ships were what he wanted, not the Meko A200 offered by Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) or the Sigma Corvette proposed by Dutch company Damen. Egypt is in talks with France to acquire two more Gowind corvettes to be produced by France in Lorient.
In April 2015, Naval Group began metal cutting for the first Gowind 2500 Corvette, with a 29-month construction plan. It is the first of a series of four units to be delivered to Egypt before 2019. The first corvette block was laid at dry dock in September 2015. Naval Group celebrated the launch of the first Egyptian Gowind El Fateh corvette at the Lorient Naval Shipyard in September 2016. Al-Fateh concluded with a first successful Its sea trials by the end of March 2017. The Egyptian Navy took delivery of the ship in September 2017, three years after placing the order.
The corvette means “guard ship” that is lighter in weight and smaller than a frigate. Some of them have the capabilities of a frigate, except for air defense, some of them work in blue waters, and some are dedicated to regional waters according to their weight.