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| Singapore's Formidable class Frigate |
By Wendell Minnick
TAIPEI — Europe dominates the Southeast Asian market for littoral and frigate/corvette vessels despite US efforts to break in with its littoral combat ships (LCS): the monohull USS Freedom built by Lockheed Martin and the trimaran USS Independence built by Austal USA.
Both active Freedom-class ships have operated in the region. The Freedom wrapped up a nine-month deployment to Singapore at the end of 2013, and the Fort Worth is in the midst of a 16-month cruise, also operating from Singapore. The presence of both types of ships in the region could have increased interest in procuring them.
Barry McCullough, a retired US Navy vice admiral and Lockheed's vice president for international business development, said there had been no movement on sales pitches to the Southeast Asian market. McCullough, who manned the Lockheed booth at the International Maritime Defence Exhibition (IMDEX) in Singapore last month, said interest in their variant of the US Navy's LCS was stronger in Japan and in the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
If regional navies are not buying European, they are building their own vessels, said Richard Bitzinger, a defense industry specialist at Singapore's Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Singapore has designed and built four Endurance-class amphibious operations ships and is also building one for the Thai Navy, he said. Indonesia has procured four South Korean-designed Makassar-class amphibious ships built by Daesun Shipbuilding and now the Philippines has two on order from a contract signed with South Korea in 2014.
Singapore is the market leader in producing sophisticated platforms that allow them to acquire European shipbuilding skills without diminishing the quality of the vessels — the six Formidable-class frigates modeled on the French-designed Lafayette frigate, for example. France's DCNS shipbuilding designed and built the first frigate in France and Singapore's ST Marine built the remaining five locally from 2002-2006.
In 2004, Indonesia followed the same model to acquire shipbuilding skills with the Makassar class, with two built in South Korea and remaining two in Indonesia.
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