NRP Vasco da Gama
These ships are based on the MEKO 200 project from Blohm & Voss, which was also adopted by Australia, New Zealand, Turkey and Greece, being the Portuguese variant known as MEKO 200PN. One of the main advantages of the MEKO 200 project that made it coveted by several countries is its modular construction, which allowed different equipment in the frigates of several countries, as well as facilitates future upgrades.
Built in Germany to the Blohm + Voss MEKO200PN design, the Vasco Da Gama-class frigates were commissioned into service in 1991. Their equipment fit includes a single 100 mm gun, an Mk 29 octuple launcher for RIM-7P NATO SeaSparrow missiles, eight Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Mk 46 Mod 5 lightweight torpedoes, and a Phalanx Block 1B close-in weapon system. The ships have also received modifications to enable them to serve as NATO flagships.
The Vasco da Gama NRP was built in 1990 at the Blohm & Voss shipyards (Hamburg, Germany), being the first of three ships of the "Vasco da Gama" class. Since its inception on January 18, 1991, it has represented the country and national interests in various settings, namely in Angola, the Adriatic Sea, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste, the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of Somalia.
NRP Álvares Cabral is the second ship of the Vasco da Gama class and was the first to be designed at the HDW shipyards in Kiel. It was added to the number of Navy ships on May 24, 1991. As part of Portugal's contribution to ensuring international maritime safety, NRP Álvares Cabral has participated in several operations within NATO and EU, to point out: Operation NATO "Active Endeavor" to combat Terrorism in the Mediterranean; NATO "Ocean Shield" operation to combat piracy in the Horn of Africa region; EU Operation "Atalanta" to combat piracy in Somalia; Diverse participation in Operational Sea Training (OST), in the United Kingdom, of operability certification for combat.
The NRP Corte-Real was built in 1991 at the HDW shipyards (Kiel, Germany) and was the third vessel of the Vasco da Gama class. He was inducted into the Portuguese Navy on November 22, 1991, at a ceremony where his godmother was Mrs. Maria dos Anjos Nogueira, wife of the then Minister of National Defense Dr. Fernando Nogueira. The ship left Kiel at the end of January 1992, to dock for the first time in national territory on February 1, 1992, at the Port of Vitoria on Terceira Island, Azores.
NRP Corte-Real is a frigate-type ocean-going escort, characterized by a medium-sized and large-tonnage platform, with significant polyvalence in command, control and communication systems, weapons and sensors, highly versatile employment, good self-support and whose combatant potential assumes fullness when integrated into naval forces. By 2018, the Frigate Corte Real had carried out about 35,250 hours of navigation, that is, about 4 years continuously at sea, having traveled 430,374 nautical miles, corresponding to about 20 round the world.
The three ships of the Vasco da Gama class will lose combat capacity in high-intensity theaters at the end of this decade. These frigates "are going to be the poor relative" of the Navy's modernization programs for the next few years, one of the sources heard by Diario de Noticias assumed this 22 October 2018. This information will have been one of the topics addressed during the first official visit to the Navy this Monday by the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (CEMGFA), Admiral Silva Ribeiro - who is aware of the matter for having participated in the work of revision of the Military Programming Law (LPM).
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