On the 17th February the Horizon team visited the French Navy Frigate FS Alsace D656. The vessel was on a routine stop at Malta’s Grand Harbour for a few days before joining the Orion 2023 naval exercise.
Alsace is the seventh of the nine Aquitaine Class frigates which were ordered by the French Navy in the mid 2000s. She is the first of two Aquitaine Class ships with FREDA specifications whose main task is primarily anti-air defense.
The vessel was launched at Naval Group in April 2019 and got commissioned two years later, in April of 2021. Ever since she has been part of the Charles De Gaulle Carrier Strike Group around the Mediterranean Sea.
Alsace shares the same technical characteristics with the rest of her nine sisterships. She is 142 meters long, 20 meters wide, and her draught reaches 8 meters and she has a total of 6 decks.
She is primarily propelled by four MTU 4000 series diesel generators with a total power output of 6.7 kW which supply power to two electrical engines, giving her the ability to sail at a speed of 17 knots. In addition, she is equipped with a pair of gas turbines which boost her service speed up to 27 knots in clear weather conditions. She also has a retractable azipod with adjustable blades which allows the vessel to sail up to 6 knots towards any direction which is also used when the vessel is maneuvering in port. Her range is approximately 7.000 nautical miles when propelled only by the diesel-electric powerplant which is equivalent to 45 continuous days at sea.
This frigate requires a relatively small number of 120 crewmembers to be operated, and that’s due to the highly sophisticated automated systems onboard the vessel. Speaking from an engineering perspective she truly is a marvel of engineering, her design allows her to have quite low infra-red & radar signature. Furthermore, she is equipped with a Multifaction Radar System which provides her with 3D radar watching. Other than that, she has a CAPTAS-4 towed-array sonar and a UMS 4110 CL sonar mounted on her hull.
The artillery of Alsace consists of 1 x 76 mm Super Rapid gun,3 x 20 mm Narwhal remote weapon systems, 32-cell SYLVER A50 VLS for Aster 15 and Aster 30 air defense missiles, 8 x Exocet MM40 Block 3 anti-ship missiles and lastly by 2 x B-515 twin launchers for MU90 torpedoes.
Alsace can host almost every modern combat helicopter on her landing deck although the aircraft that meets the requirements of the Aquitaine Class ships is the Caiman NH-90 helicopter which is a multipurpose helicopter operated by multiple nations around the world. The Caiman can be used for transporting goods and troops, it can also extend the vessel’s range of surface and submarine detection capabilities. The most fascinating thing about this specific helicopter type is that it can be commanded by one single pilot.
The Alsace and her sisterships can accommodate a single NH-90 on their hangar. We also managed to witness how the MANTIS RAM aircraft tug pulling out of the Hangar the NH-90 Caiman, a tug that helps the crew with so much ease pull and place the helicopter in the desired position they would like, this happened exactly before we were leaving the FS Alsace.
Horizon would like to thank the French Embassy in Malta for their support to be able to coordinate such a visit.
