SHAH ALAM: Milestone reached. It appears that the THHE-Destini JV has reached another milestone in its production of the MMEA OPV. The first of class OPV has been joined together. As most of you are aware, modern ships are build in modular blocks and once these are ready, they are joined together to make a complete ship. This allow for faster shipbuilding compared to the keel up style of older generation ships.
Anyhow work to join the modules of the first of class MMEA OPV was completed at the THHE facility at Pulau Indah today, based on a Facebook post by the company hired to photograph the process. As the company is not supposed to share the pictures publicly, I will not do so here. Following the publication of this post, Malaysian Defence was provided pictures of the ship prior and during the joining process.
THHE-Destini is building three MMEA OPV based on the Damen 1800 design. Malaysian Defence previously reported that the three ships will be named after state royal towns.
The first of class MMEA 1800 OPV will be named KM Kota Bharu, the second KM Kuala Kangsar and the third KM Seri Menanti.KM Kota Bharu is of course named after the royal town of Kelantan while Kuala Kangsar is Perak and Seri Menanti, Negri Sembilan, respectively. There are nine state royal towns in Malaysian with two ships already in seservice with MMEA,namely, KM Pekan and KM Arau
Anyhow I was told that the first MMEA OPV will be launced in February or March, next year. The original plan, as previously reported by Malaysian Defence, was to launch the ship late this year, basically, next month, actually. With the ship already joined several days ahead of December, this could be done of course.
The shipyard, I was told, however, has decided to move forward the launching date in the first quarter of 2020. This I was told was to facilitate the fitting of more equipment on the ship. I was told it would be much easier to fit the equipment when the ship is still on the dry dock instead of on the water.
— Malaysian Defence
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View Comments (16)
Congrats APMM on the milestone!
glad we have good news on this..hope our govt give fund for new batch of this ship soon...
Thank you for the good news. Happy to see some things went the right way.
Good Job Tabung Haji. A very pleasant news indeed.
I saw this advertisement today. Does this mean TUDM is getting a number of S70 helicopters soon?
"PERKHIDMATAN PENGURUSAN LATIHAN SIMULATOR PENERBANGAN HELIKOPTER BLACKHAWK S-70 UNTUK TENTERA UDARA DIRAJA MALAYSIA (TUDM)".
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No those are for the VIP Blackhawks, two of them with RMAF
Perhaps the TLDM can consider buying this for the LMS instead of more Chinese ships.
Perhaps Kementerian Pertahanan can consider having all the TLDM peacetime offshore patrol tasks passed on to Kementerian Dalam Negeris APMM. APMM to be the main PIC, TLDM in supporting role. TLDM dont need to buy any OPVs as we know, OPV with high naval standards are very2 expensive, unlike OPVs specified for APMM.
"Perhaps the TLDM can consider buying this for the LMS instead of more Chinese ships."
i think base on design and basic equipment,Gagah Samudera Class is tge best platform for LMS.
..... - “Perhaps Kementerian Pertahanan can consider having all the TLDM peacetime offshore patrol tasks passed on to Kementerian Dalam Negeris APMM”
MINDEF has long considered this and has long hoped it could become reality but until the MMEA can be sufficiently funded in order to adequately conduct all it’s supposed to do; there is no alternative but for the RMN to continue to be burdened with various roles which in by right it should not be doing ....
Ideally a lot of things should happen: just like how ideally the organisation mainly responsible for safe guarding Sabah against non state land incursions should be the police’s PGA battalions, with the army playing a supporting role.
@...
Is Bandar Melaka considered a royal town? I would like to see "Don't mess with Melaka" written in big letters along the side of KM Bandar Melaka if possible.
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Malacca is not a royal town. The last Sultan died without leaving a heir, read your history books lah or Wikipedia...