Four Lockheed Martin Freedom-class ship variants are set to form the backbone of the Royal Saudi Navy’s Eastern Fleet as part of a $11.25 billion foreign military sales case presented to Congress on Monday.
[...]
Lockheed as presented several sizes of the Freedom for foreign sales and is yet unclear what the final tonnage of the Saudi variant will be.
The quartet — as described in the DSCA notification — will emphasize traditional anti-air warfare and will be built around two eight-cell Lockheed Martin Mk 41 vertical launch system (VLS) and an Airbus TRS-4D active electronically scanned array (AESA) air search radar.
The list also included 532 Raytheon RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) which can be loaded four to a Mk 41 cell. With 16 cells per hull, the Saudi Freedoms will be able to potentially field 64 anti-air missiles per-ship.
A December Naval Sea Systems Command contract award to Lockheed Martin included about $93 million for Mk 41 systems for Saudi Arabia, giving early hints to the direction of their SNEP II ship buys.
The ships will also field the 1980s era Boeing RGM-84 Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles (ASM), anti-submarine warfare (ASW) sonar suites and torpedoes as well as an OTO Melara 76 mm main deck gun.
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Ok, US Navy, the Saudis just paid for the engineering work to get the LCS' to have VLS. Put it in the SSC frigate, damnit.
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