SHAH ALAM: Latest pictures of Maharaja Lela. When the PAT visited the BNS last week, MAF Facebook page did not published pictures of any of the LCS hulls including the first one, PCU Maharaja Lela. It published some pictures of the PAT inside the hulls and even KD Kasturi undergoing a refit at the same yard. Some of the pictures including the Kasturi one were deleted a few days later for no apparent reason.
However, eagle eyed Naval News founder and chief editor Xavier Vavasseur found the latest pictures of Maharaja Lela and tweeted it of course. After a Google search I found the same images on BNS LinkedIN page. The images were part of a post on the visit by participants of the National Resilience College (though called National Defence Institute in the post) to BNS on Nov 16.
The visitors posed a photo with PCU Maharaja Lela. BNS via LinkedIn.
November 16, 2021 – A study visit by course participants of National Defence Institute (NDI) of Malaysia to the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Programme at Boustead Naval Shipyard Sdn Bhd (BNS) was held. The visit was hosted by the LCS Royal Malaysian Navy Project Team (RMNPT). The delegates consist of the Malaysian Armed Forces high ranking officers of the ranks Colonel to Brigadier General/First Admiral of the Royal Malaysian Army, Royal Malaysian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Airforce, was led by NDI’s Senior Directing Staff, Brigadier General Sarman bin Bahrom.
The arrival of the delegation was warmly welcomed by RMNPT represented by Commander Raza Assad bin Rajab RMN while BNS was represented by Encik Zainal Abidin bin Ahmad, LCS Deputy Programme Director – Project Management (DPD-PMT) and Encik Rosli bin Mohammad, Head of LCS Project Monitoring Coordination.
A short welcoming speech and LCS Programme briefing was held at “The Promise” meeting room, at RMNPT office situated at Location 04. The session was followed by Q & A entertained by Cdr Raza RMN and Encik Zainal Abidin. Upon completion, the delegates were taken for a brief yard tour ending at LCS1 site and a group photo memento at site. Appreciation notes from the delegate’s chief ends the successful visit.
The photo above of Maharaja Lela was very similar to the picture I took in 2018 when I went to BNS for the launch of the fourth keel of the LCS minus the people of course.
Maharaja Lela at the BNS facility in October, 2018. She is still missing her mast and other items.
Another picture posted by BNS on Nov. 16 was this one (below).
Another group picture taken at the stern of PCU Maharaja Lela on Nov. 16, 2021
Compare it to the picture below, which I took in 2017 at the launch of the ship.
One of the mounting for the propeller shaft of the LCS.
— Malaysian Defence
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Sad to see her ‘rusting’ away after 4 years being launched
LOL. Why did TLDM invite other people to come see their major embarrassment? That is like inviting your guest to come see your dirty toilet.
Why not they invited the Cabinet & all the backbenchers over to see how sorry the state is and what are they going to do about it. Handing it back to BNS with no repercussion won’t kick their arses! Setup a Parliamentary committee to oversee the project progress vs milestone vs extra budgeting vs quality of works, then they will know the Government meant business!
And yet bns dares hoping to get lms batch 2 contract..so brazen (shameless)..lol..Its look like LCS 1 construction still not resuming
Firdaus – “.so brazen (shameless)”
Unlike you I’m not acquinted with all the facts and I won’t assume -yet – that BNS has a monopoly in what went wrong. It’s nice to form fast judgements and appropriate blame but we don’t have thefull narrative yet.
@Firdaus
Friend. To be in business one has to be shameless, thick skinned, backboneless, and heartless. To be a success in business one have to double up on those.
The price per unit is around 364M usd. China Type 054 stealth Frigate only cost around 348M USD! And it has displacement of 4000 tonnes with 32VLS 🤣🤣what a joke.
the way i see it Mindef need Naval Group to settle this mess.15-5 transformation require 12 LCS. So Mindef needs to order 2 LCS from Naval Group which will be built in France with the same specs as the Maharajalela Class.While doing this have BHIC to send their LCS teams there to inspect & learn how to do it right. And this needs some TOT deals (BHIC knows how to do it lol). So with this in 3 years RMN will have 2 completed LCS built by the manufacturers with blueprints.Get the remaining delayed LCS to complete by following exactly how Naval Group did it. This is the only way since the gov will need to spend some more money for it anyway.. Thank me later
There is no need to that lah, as I noted in my previous article the problems are not engineering issues.
But the perunit price almost certain will go up right? Their initial ceiling price as of now already pretty steep for a light frigate..Its useless to rue for it now, but what clear are mindef/government seriously misjudged and overestimated bns’s capability to build such ‘high tech’ ships from nol..Complete 6 ships with 10 billions are acceptable for me any higher than that then welll..
But their perunit price almost certain will go up right? Their initial ceiling price as of now already pretty steep for a light frigate..Its useless to rue for it now, but what clear are for me at least mindef/government seriously misjudged and overestimated bns’s capability to build such ‘high tech’ ships from nol..Complete 6 ships with 10 billions are acceptable for me any higher than that then welll..
It will be higher, as I mentioned in one of posts, that BNS will have to find the funds themselves
Marhalim,
Boustead Group so deep in debt, and selling it assets to redeem itself. Worst, BNS to me at least at the moment, is Boustead Group biggest liability, still need to find funds to restart the LCS project. Quite a momentous task to overcome. Like many Malaysia mega “failed” investment, do you see a sudden JV by China? 😅
No, JV with China when it comes to BNS in regards to the LCS. The French will of course leave immediately. It was like the story of the South Korean consultants, they were there to help BNS with the completion of the Kedah class and also to help them to find commercial work. Once they got working with DCNS for LCS, around 2011/12, the South Koreans had to go.
“BNS will have to find the funds themselves”
While certain cost overruns can be attributed to BNS, is the project underbudgeting really their fault or will the Government have to quietly bail the project thru pumping more money as was intended.
No doubt, bitter as it may be, the Government will have to swallow whatever it takes to complete it but after that they must be open to setup a bipartisan/ RCI inquiry to find out the real cause.