STM General Director Murat İkinci, who spoke at the panel held online and live by STM ThinkTech, made very important statements regarding the Istif (I) Class Frigate Project.
“Particularly, I would like to touch upon I class. As you are also aware of, I class frigate is platform with about 15 m long version of MILGEM Project and highly important weapon systems mounted atop it. As you know, , the first 4 ships of the MILGEM Project were succesfully delivered to Turkish Armed and Naval Forces and are currently in service in a number of places, with East Mediterranean being in the first place, which is a glad news for our defense industry as the MILGEM Project is a project that came to light in cooperation with STM and ASELSAN, ROKETSAN, HAVELSAN as well as many other small-scale subcompanies and a good example to display the level where Turkish defense industry has reached” said Murat İkinci.
“From now onwards, the 4 ships, which are a follow-up of the MILGEM Project will not be produced as corvettes. Instead, they will be in the form of I class frigates and manufactured so. The construction of the ship as the first version of I class still continues to be produced in Naval Forces shipyard run Istanbul Naval Shipyard Command in the charge of STM as the prime contractor and with the participation of a number of companies.”
“There is no flaw or delay here. On the contrary, considering the situation in East Mediterranean, we exert every effort to deliver the I class frigate to the Armed Forces before the scheduled date.”
“Our plan is that by the end of 2020, the I class frigate will be launched. I hope that following the equipping of the shit once launched, it will be successfully delivered to the Armed Forces.”
