Exclusive: Interview with Chief of Royal Malaysian Navy on "15 to 5" Transformation Programme
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Interview with Admiral Kamarulzaman on the "15 to 5" transformation
programme |
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Because
of fiscal challenges and the geopolitics situation in the South East Asia
region, Admiral Kamarulzaman is rolling out a new transformation and modernization
plan called "15 to 5". There are currently 15 classes of ships
in the RMN, coming from 7 nations with an average age of 30 years. This
represents a large costs in terms of maintenance and operations. As a
solution the "15 to 5" plan calls for: 1 - Phasing out of the older vessels in the fleet. This would lead to optimized resources. 2 - Improving procurement processes (reduced and optimized procurement requirements, reduced ill practices) would lead to additional savings for the RMN. 3 - Use these savings to fund the "15 to 5" plan, while focusing on local shipyards and defence industry. The five classes that would form the Royal Malaysian Navy would be: » New Generation Patrol Vessel (Kedah-class) » Littoral Combat Ship (Gowind-class) » Littoral Mission Ship (able to do 80% of the LCS class missions at 20% of the cost) » Multirole Supply Ship » Submarines (Scorpene-class) The RMN fleet would remain at 55 vessels meaning some additional procurement even among existing classes (such as the Scorpene-class submarines, two of which are already deployed by Malaysia). |
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