Bundestag Approves the F128 Option — Four More MEKO A-200 DEU Frigates From TKMS, EUR 5.6 Billion
Berlin, 8 October 2026
Key points
- The Bundestag's budget committee approved on 8 October the exercise of the option for four further MEKO A-200 DEU frigates from thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS); with the four approved in July, the navy buys eight identical ships, designated F128, for anti-submarine warfare
- A finance-ministry submission reported by Reuters puts the construction contract for ships five to eight at about EUR 5.3 billion and the second tranche's total, with project support and a management reserve, at EUR 5.6 billion; construction is to be completed by 2035, and operating costs for the four to 2045 are put at about EUR 1.55 billion
- The defence ministry's release gives no figure; industry, it says, has committed to deliver the first of the eight in 2029, at the end of 2029 by TKMS's account
- The submission called the decision unavoidable in time because the offer period for the option expires at the end of 2026; the agenda paired it with notice of an above-plan commitment authorisation on the frigate budget line
Germany has bought the second half of its replacement for the cancelled F126 three months after the first, and the price of the eight is now on the record in two lots that are not priced on the same basis.
The first tranche cost about EUR 6.3 billion including development, Reuters reported from the submission; the second's EUR 5.3 billion is construction alone, about EUR 1.33 billion a hull against about EUR 1.57 billion in the first lot. The new tranche is to be built from the early 2030s. Work on the first lot is under way: sections have been fabricated since February, modules since April, and the keel was laid in May, the ministry said on 9 October; after the first ship, the others are to follow at intervals of about nine months. The committee's agenda also carried the ministry's first quarterly progress report on the programme, one of the conditions attached to the July approval.
The first lot was priced partly on the assumption that eight ships would be bought; all eight now are, and no source reports a repricing. Trade reporting in July attributed part of the per-hull rise to a calculation that had assumed eight ships, the premium the July dispatch read as Berlin paying for its own optionality; exercising the option buys the series without recovering that premium on anything published. The other July condition is industrial: TKMS is to take on, where possible, the yards and suppliers idled by the F126's end — the firms Damen says most of its EUR 4.68 billion claim is owed to — and the ministry is to examine parallel production. TKMS says it is still examining how that capacity can be brought in, and in August it asked Rheinmetall's naval yards to bid for second-lot shipbuilding. Signal No. 163 named the second lot's supplier list as the thing to read; whether its steel goes to a second yard is the test of parallel production.
Related · Germany's F126 replacement
- Germany Cancels F126 Frigate Programme, Orders Up to Eight TKMS MEKO A-200 DEU
- Germany's F128 Frigate Submission — Four MEKO A-200 DEU for EUR 6.63 Billion — Pulled From the Budget Committee
- Saab Takes a SEK 8.7 Billion TKMS Order to Equip Germany's Four F128 Frigates
- Damen Claims EUR 4.7bn From Germany Over the F126 Termination — Contractual Payment and Indemnity Claims, Not Damages
