Keel Laying of the New "Emden" Corvette for the German Navy.

The "Emden" is the seventh ship in the Braunschweig class of the German Navy. The Navy put the first five of this type of warship into service between 2008 and 2013. The Bundeswehr deploys them internationally, including for the UNIFIL United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon mission off the coast of Lebanon.

A rendering of the German Navy’s second batch of K130 corvettes (Picture source: Germany Navy)

In 2017, the Bundeswehr placed an order for five additional class K130 corvettes. Work on the new “Koln” corvette then began in February 2019.

From 2022, ships six to ten will join the Navy. They are supplied by a consortium of three companies: Fr. Lürssen Werft, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and German Naval Yards Kiel.

"Today's keel laying shows impressively how the team of employees from different companies has grown together and works in close cooperation with the customer," said Tim Wagner, Managing Director of Lürssen Werft.

Two of the five foreships are being built at the Lürssen shipyard in Bremen, three are being manufactured and pre-equipped at the German Naval Yards site in Kiel. The final five ships are manufactured at the Wolgaster Peene shipyard. The Lürssen subsidiary Blohm + Voss in Hamburg is responsible for the union of the fore and aft sections of the ship.

The roughly 89-meter-long corvettes will also be fully equipped and put into operation there. They also go through their functional tests and approvals from Hamburg - in coordination with the specialist departments of the client, the Bundeswehr and the Navy.

For the new ships in the class, changes to the first five corvettes in some systems and in the IT information technology systems are necessary to take account of the current status of laws and regulations.

Future upgrades during scheduled docking times should also bring the older corvettes up to date. These changes are visible in a new cladding for the turret of the main gun and in a second speed boat as a dinghy for the ships.

Last but not least, the construction of the "Emden" is a special step for the navy because the new corvette will take on a traditional name. As the third ship of the Bundeswehr, it will be called "Emden". The Navy's previous “Emden” was a Bremen-class frigate that had been decommissioned in 2013. The Navy decided on the name in 2018.