Finally the Corvettes for the Greek Navy (either from France or Italy or from another country).
The Minister of Defense in an interview with the show of Aris Portosalte, on Skye 100.3 radio station, said the following:
Part of Nikos Dendias' interview:
Α. PORTOSALTE: Well, let's go now to see since we're in the water, unfortunately the lake was made there, let's go first to see the Navy and the agony. There's an agony in the public. They hear some of the armaments that Turkey is doing now and they have an anxiety about our frigates. Have we got back orders?
Dendias: No, none at all. What we have done is that I decided, after I recommended this decision to the Prime Minister, to stop the existing arms build-up and to study our priorities from the beginning.
We have not suspended any of the contracts or systems that we have ordered. But from now on, what we do will be put to a close evaluative use so that the Greek taxpayer's backlog will have the best and greatest return on the field.
One other thing, there will be a prioritization of co-productions and productions. Not on the off the shelf market. We don't just want to be buyers and consumers of weapons systems. We want there to be our participation in production or we want there to be our own production. And again, I give the example of Israel, which started in '48 under a full embargo until the 1970s with zero production.
Israel was a simple agricultural economy and ended up being one of the largest producers and exporters of advanced technology products on the planet, it is an excellent example that Greece has the potential to copy, follow and implement. And we are doing it. The legislation will be consulted in the coming days.
Α. PORTOΣALTE: Yes. Will the MEKO-type frigates be replaced, improved, replaced?
N. DENDIAS: We have a huge fund, the order of the three amazing French ships. I have already received the KIMONA, in a short time we will see it in the Aegean.
We have two more. So we will have a skeleton around which to build. We need to modernise a number of our existing frigates, which actually have some years on them. From there, we need to start looking at the next generation frigate.
Uh, no, we can't go back to buying a ready-made weapon that somebody else has designed.
Α. PORTOΣALTE: Is this going to be built in a Greek shipyard, possibly?
N. DENDIAS: It will also be built in a Greek shipyard. It depends, of course, on the number, on our planning. Let us be clear: We are not talking about tomorrow. We are talking about years ahead, we are talking about the next generation. But this next-generation ship is one in which Greece must be involved in its design. It cannot be a ship that Greece will go, let me repeat myself, to buy off the shelf after it has been built according to someone else's ideas. And we must not limit ourselves there.
Α. PORTOSALTE: Which ship, possibly, any of them, does not have a crew on board?
N. DENDIAS: That's what I would say to you now. There are the conventional ships as we understand them now. But there are also the self-propelled ones. Automatically moving at sea, automatically moving under the sea. We must, at long last, get into these technologies too.
Greece, through PESCO, is preparing unmanned underwater vehicles against Turkish plans
Greece through PESCO prepares unmanned underwater vehicles against Turkish plans
We recall that Greece, Bulgaria, France, France, Romania participate in the PESCO (Unmanned Surface Vehicle- USV) program of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), with a perspective concerning the energy and defense sector, especially if the East Med pipeline is implemented.
The project, according to PESCO, aims to develop an interoperable specialised modular system for full-spectrum defence underwater interventions in an expeditionary environment.
The DIVEPACK module will integrate a wide range of diving hardware and unmanned underwater vehicles, operated by specialist personnel, into an integrated capability package.
The "plug-and-play" philosophy of the open adaptable mission architecture will facilitate flexibility of response in the context of EU CSDP operations and provide a rapid response capability applicable to a wide range of underwater warfare scenarios, both on the high seas and coastal areas in the absence of Special Forces missions.
The war in its new manifestation already has another front, which concerns anti-submarine warfare (ASW) drones.
These are unmanned submarines in the field of anti-submarine operations, combined with energy projects, mining platforms, etc.
The news here is that soon and after the construction of natural gas pipelines such as this East Med, and the transmission of electricity from Israel to Cyprus-Greece and Egypt through a special cable, we will have a new kind of warfare concerning the security of all these projects.
That is why, as everything indicates, we will have a new submarine warfare command consisting of special underwater vehicles, manned and unmanned, and commando divers to deal with possible terrorist actions by individuals or states that will attempt to sabotage any project of this type in which they are not involved.
