French frigate Chevalier Paul joins Operation Atalanta to counter-piracy.

According to a tweet published by the EU Navfor on January 7, 2022, the French Horizon class frigate Chevalier Paul will reinforce Operation Atalanta to cover the vast area of operations.
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French Horizon-class frigate Chevalier Paul (Picture source: EU Navfor)

Chevalier Paul is a Horizon-class frigate of the French Marine Nationale commissioned in June 2009, the third vessel of the French Navy named after the 17th-century admiral Chevalier Paul.

The main mission of this type of ship is the escort and protection of a carrier strike group formed around an aircraft carrier, usually, the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle or an amphibious operation carried out by amphibious helicopter carriers.

The ship's specialty is air traffic control in a war zone, but it can be employed in a wide variety of missions, such as intelligence-gathering, special forces operations, or protecting less well-armed vessels.

The ship is equipped with 32 Aster 30 missiles and 16 Aster 15 missiles, housed in vertical silos of the Sylver A50 type, located on the foredeck. A main anti-air missile system (PAAMS), combined with an EMPAR multifunction radar operating in C-band, controls launch and target tracking.

Operation Atalanta, formally European Union Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) Somalia, is a current counter-piracy military operation at sea off the Horn of Africa and in the Western Indian Ocean, that is the first naval operation conducted by the European Union (EU).