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Athens · Thursday, 15 October 2026

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The grey Egyptian MEKO A-200 frigate Al-Aziz, hull number 904, on the water at Wilhelmshaven with cranes behind it

Defense Industry

Germany: MEKO A-200 DEU frigate programme grows to eight ships as four more are approved from TKMS

The Bundestag’s Budget Committee approved four more MEKO A-200 DEU frigates from TKMS on October 8, exercising the contract option and raising the programme from four to eight ships. The first frigate is due to be delivered to the German Navy at the end of 2029.

GEOPOLITIKI GEOPOLITIKINewsroom
2 min readUpdated

Archive photo: the Egyptian MEKO A-200 frigate Al-Aziz at Wilhelmshaven before its delivery, May 2022. It is not one of the German MEKO A-200 DEU ships. Photo: Ein Dahmer, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped to 16:9 and converted to WebP.

The Budget Committee of the German Bundestag has approved the procurement of four more MEKO A-200 DEU frigates from TKMS on Thursday, October 8, triggering the option provided for in the contract. The programme thus grows from four to eight ships, Defence Industry Europe reports.

The programme has entered its implementation phase and is the largest surface vessel contract in TKMS’s history. The first frigate is expected to be delivered to the German Navy at the end of 2029, with the rest to follow in rapid succession.

Fast production to fill a capability gap

“The Budget Committee’s decision is a strong sign of confidence in us,” said TKMS chief executive Oliver Burkhard. “Now we can swiftly continue series production and thereby make an important contribution to closing as quickly as possible an impending capability gap in the German Navy,” he added.

The additional frigates will use the structures, processes and supply chains already established, without fundamental changes. TKMS plans broad participation by the German shipbuilding industry and is examining how to use shipyard and supplier capacity that will be freed up when the F126 programme ends, always within the customer’s contractual requirements.

The link with Greece

The MEKO family is familiar to the Hellenic Navy, which operates four MEKO 200HN frigates of the Hydra class, designed by Blohm+Voss, a company now owned by TKMS. The A-200 version is the latest development of the series and already serves in the navies of Algeria and Egypt.

Frigates Germany MEKO TKMS

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