The class, consisting of four 4,300 t vessels straddling the line between corvettes and frigates will form a key part of the Finnish Navy and the Finnish Defence Forces as a whole once in service, replacing three older minelayers (one of which is already retired) and four small fast attack craft. The program is also the largest naval program in Finnish history, both when it comes to cost as well as the size of the vessels, the country’s defence forces being focused on the ground forces.
The first two vessels are currently under construction, with the lead-ship having seen first cutting of steel in late October 2023, followed by the keel-laying ceremony half a year later in April 2024. The second vessel follows more or less a year after the first, with steel being cut 9 October last year. Notable is that despite the class being named Pohjanmaa – honouring a 260 year old tradition of naming vessels operating in Finnish waters after the historical Finnish regions – so far no decision on the name of the individual vessels have been made.
The first vessel is now in “hull completed” status, which also includes having been painted. Prime contractor, Finnish shipyard Rauma Marine Constructions (RMC) and its subsidiary RMC Defence Oy, will continue the work fitting out the vessels, with the vessel going into the water during the coming spring.
The project has not gone completely without issue, being hit with a six to twelve month delay du to the COVID pandemic and the design work needing extra time, and seeing a 200 million Euro cost increase from an original budget of 1.2 billion Euros in direct program costs outside of the standard defence budget. As such, the current schedule will see the first vessel being ready for delivery to the Finnish Navy and accepted into service during 2027, with the other three following until the whole class is in operational use sometime during 2029.
The building of vessel number three is expected to kick off in the near future, followed by the last vessel during the latter half of this year, and as such we will likely see the gap between vessels becoming smaller compared to what it was between the first and second one.
In the meantime, training and crew allocation is already underway. The Navy will not see a significant increase in personnel compared to the vessels the Pohjanmaa-class replaces thanks to the extremely lean manning of a crew of approximately 70 for the corvettes. However, the roles and specialisations will change somewhat, with air defence, electronic warfare, and subsurface/ASW capabilities all seeing significant jumps in capability. With the current security situation of the Baltic Sea being rather tense, it is also clear that retiring outgoing vessels to convert their crews is something that will be done only when absolutely necessary, creating the need for a balance.
