Kedah-class offshore patrol vessel

The Kedah-class offshore patrol vessels of the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) are six ships based on the MEKO 100 design by Blohm + Voss.

[2] After receiving government approval, the Royal Malaysian Navy ran a competition for the design in 1996, planning to purchase 27 vessels over 15 years.

The specifications aimed for a design with a displacement of 1,300 tons and an overall length of 80 m. It was already noted at that time that this resembled full-fledged corvettes rather than patrol vessels, but the eventual winning bid would turn out to be even larger.

[4] Other contenders were the German Naval Group consortium as well as British shipyards Vosper Thornycroft and Yarrow Shipbuilders.

In October 1997, the German Naval Group consortium, headed by Blohm + Voss, was declared the winner with their design based on the modular MEKO family of warships, and a contract for six vessels was signed by the Royal Malaysian Navy and PSC-Naval Dockyard on 5 September 1998, with a unit cost of 270 million dollar per vessel.

The first setback occurred when the first hull completed by PSC-Naval Dockyard failed to pass pre-delivery sea trials due to technical problems and quality issues.

It is capable to track 400 air and surface targets with the detection range up to 200 km and the corresponding update times between 1 and 6 seconds.

This new design also modular where the end user can choose whether to armed this ships with guns only or to fitted for but not with missiles and torpedo.